Week 1 - Technology Definition

This term, while continuing our Inquiry work, we are also going to be focusing on technology and how it helps us out.

On Monday, we worked on defining technology.  There were lots of different examples that we looked at and sorted in our define map (see below). We made decisions based on whether an object is an example of technology or not.  Once we had sorted all of these we then made statements about what technology is.  Most of our statements decided that technology has some sort of wire or power or runs off a battery.

We are prepared for our thinking to change as Mr Riceman challenged us to think of how a tap is a technology.  Please let us know what you think technology is by posting a positive, thoughtful or helpful comment below.

Week 9 - Our own student led toolkits

On Friday, all of our senior school students were involved in student led toolkits.  Earlier in the term, 24 students from Te Waka Ako attended the cluster toolkits, you can read about these in this post.

Our aim was to bring the learning back from the cluster day and share it with all of the other Year 5s and 6s at our school.  This meant that from 9:15-12:45 students ran and participated in lots of different workshops that help us to use and create in interesting ways.  You can see all of the presentations and the things that the students were involved in on our Toolkits page on our Syndicate Site. We had a great time, found out heaps, made connections with others in our classes and even had the chance to present the learning to our Principal Mrs Peterson too!

Our next step is to share further and wider and we are looking forward to sharing this learning with our families. It is also important for us to think of ways to use these new tools to create digitally with our learning.

If you would like to find out more, or you have any questions about our presentations or our day, please leave a comment.  You could also make connections with the presenters and their blogs too. We would love to hear from you!

Week 9 - Art Festival this week

Kia Ora bloggers,

Last week we shared and explained the process that we had gone through to create Art for our festival and this week it happened. It was really exciting to see all of our work up and shared with the other children's from around the school.

We had our special opening evening on Tuesday night and here are some photos to show some of the things that were displayed and were happening.  As a Manukau class, we created a short Google Slide show to show how we created our Art.  You can see two of these below, there are many more on our individual blogs too!

Please feel free to check them out, and to leave us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment!

Week 8 - Putting together our artwork

Hi Bloggers,

This term we have been working to create a piece of art for our bi-annual art show.  This year our theme for the art show is animals.  It links with our Inquiry work too.  Manukau have just about finished their pieces.  We have been combining quite a few techniques to create 3-D fish in an underwater scene.

Firstly, we created paper mache fish using water balloons, paper and paste.  While these dried we designed and created an underwater scene on A3 paper. As part of this, we were learning about mixing and blending pastels to create new colours and smooth effects. Some of us also chose to collage extra features onto our scene.  Once our balloons were dry, we cut them in half, hot glued them to cardboard then added the fins.  We chose New Zealand fish for inspiration.  With our plan ready, we then cut these out using craft knives and painted our fish appropriately.  The final stage was positioning the two fish we created on our background, again using hot glue.


Next Tuesday evening is the opening of our art show.  We hope that you can join us.  Lots of work has gone into these as you can see.  You could also check out our individual blogs to find out more about students' individual pieces of art.

Week 7 - Zoofari adventures for the seniors

On Thursday the 14th of June the senior school were lucky enough to enjoy a trip to the Zoo as part of our Inquiry focus this term.  There were a number of activities we completed during the day.  Firstly, we had a short time exploring the Zoo with our parent helpers.  Then, we took part in a session with our Zoo educator John.  John took us to the Kiwi enclosure where we found out about the eggs, size of eggs and the important project Operation Nest Egg.



John then took us into the NZ bush area where we connected our learning to the information that we gained during our trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island.  We really know lots about these birds.

Then, we spent some time interacting with the exhibits in the bug lab. We found out lots more and were really excited to spend the time in this newer part of the Zoo.


Finally, we explored the rest of the Zoo with our parents before catching the double decker bus back to school.  It was a great day that supported our learning and gave us the chance to answer some of our questions about the Zoo too.

If you would like to find out more, please leave us a positive, thoughtful or helpful comment below.