Our mini exhibition next Tuesday

Parents and children all welcome!

Star Wars Squared

This week for home learning Room 14 were given this task...

SITUATION:

One of your parents has fallen in love with the idea of having this Star Wars patterned carpet in a room of your house. It costs $20 per square metre. 

PROBLEM:

Decide which room you will measure and work out approximately how much it will cost for enough carpet for the whole room. 

On Monday during our library time we thought about the process we would need to go through to complete this task, as there are a couple of steps involved. 

We tried to work out the cost of this carpet for our school library. Kelli aptly named this project 'Star Wars Squared', with each stage titled Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3. 

We first discussed the idea of 'one square metre', then planned how we could measure the size of the library. We then did the measuring and came to a consensus on the size, using string and rulers. The final stage was multiplying the number of square metres by the price of the carpet. 

This was a task that required not only some key mathematical understandings, but also for us to work well with our peers, communicating effectively and managing resources. Most children felt confident they could complete the home learning task independently, so it will be great to see them apply their knowledge in a different setting. 

If you want another fun challenge, we have just been discussing the problem below together. 

Can you work out where the extra square comes from? 

Water Bottle Tornado

Taila made this at home and brought it to school for news.

How does it work?

This is what we call a vortex. A vortex is a type of motion and is created when the water falls through an opening of both bottles.

Gravity is the force that pulls the water down into the hole and the vortex looks like a tornado in the bottle. Look carefully and you can see the hole in the middle of the vortex that allows the air to come up inside the bottle.

To create a vortex you need to swirl the water. If you don't swirl the water there will be a glug-glug sound. That is because the air and water is taking turns to pass through the gap between both bottles.

Taila

Room 12 Provocation

Our provocation through the big theme "My place, my world" has gone well this term and we're now moving into IPs (Interest Projects) following on from this.  In our provocation we have been using a thinking strategy called "I see, I think and I wonder" a lot about different weather pictures and videos.
















We have made Stop Motions about the water cycle and the class's favourite session was a Science Experiment morning about how difference weather phenomena are formed.

This is how we've lead into our IPs. What do you know about the water cycle? and Tornadoes?
Come to our class and find out more.

Cultural Festival 2016

Kia Ora Whanau

This is an update about Cultural Festival - The group is going well and truly into the swing of it.  Last week a notice should have come home about purchasing Cultural Festival Tickets.  It is a 3 page notice and this is what the front page looks like:



You have until Thursday the 30th of June to purchase them through me.  Cash only please.  We are performing Thursday 2nd September in the maitinee time 12:30-2:30pm.  You must be seated 10mins before the show.  If you have not received a Cultural Festival ticket notice please see me or the office.  Any questions please see me Room 12 Whaea Jo Thank You

Our Math Inquiry

   Our Perimeter, Area and Volume Learning Journey

Provocation:  We watched a video about the discovery of King Tut's tomb and  made Spaceships out of cardboard boxes.

First we cut out pictures and shapes to find the perimeter and area of.

Then we completed an area investigation using paper clips to construct as many rectangular shapes as possible. We recorded this data and discussed our findings looking closely at the relationship between  perimeter and area.

Following this, we learnt about the pyramids and tombs of Egypt. We had to design our own Egyptian tomb.  After we worked out the perimeter and area of all the different chambers. Some of us used arrays and some of us addition and multiplication.

Next we wrote a 4 sentence descriptive piece of writing about entering our tomb. Some of us also explored the volume of pyramids.

Finally we designed and made our own space rockets. As part of this we had to find the perimeter, area and volume of our rockets.

We found out:

-  A shape can have the same area as another but have a different perimeter.

 - If a shape has the same area as another, the perimeter may not be the same.

-  If you have the perimeter of a shape, then you can find the area of the shape and if you have area and perimeter you can find the volume of a specific container or 3D shape (length, width and height). 

Term Two Interest Projects

The children in Room 14 have been itching to get underway with more IPs (Interest Projects). We have spent the first half of this term engaging in predominantly 'guided' inquiry into earth systems, specifically how the Moon and the Sun work. The idea behind this was to not only gain some important scientific understandings about the world we live in, but to also spark curiosity about planet earth and beyond that we could dig deeper into through IPs. 

Again, our 3 things we must do for IPs are the same...

1. Create a plan. 

2. Document progress. 

3. Share our learning with others. 

This week we have begun creating our new IP plans. Driving questions have included, "How would it be possible to live on Mars?", "How does the Moon affect our lives?" and "Why do areas of our New Zealand environment look so different?", to name a few.

Sharing our plans with Mr K and receiving some feedback on our questions.

Two specific IP areas (linking to key competencies) that Te Harakeke will be focussing on this term are:

Relating to others - Cooperating with others when sharing resources and learning spaces.

Managing self - Making plans, organising ourselves and finishing the tasks when we say we will complete on time. 

We can't wait to begin IP workshops next week.