Middle Team Soccer Tournament

Well done to Brazil (Room 14) and Slovakia (Room 13) in the final of the NSS Middle Team soccer tournament! It came down to a penalty shootout! Ka rawe!
We all had fun playing and cheering the other classes on and the teachers were super impressed at your 'fair play' and great attitude to the sport!

We look forward to having more interclass competitions!

Endangered Species talk 2

THANK YOU, Mrs Dudunski for sharing with the Middle Team at NSS of your experience working with Chimpanzee's! What an incredible life changing experience that would have been. We have learnt how humans play in making animals endangered and how we can make a difference in saving animals.

What a week!

We have had a very busy week 10. Today, it is exactly six months until Christmas much to the delight of Room 13 (and their parents). Congratulations to Mrs Clark's maths class where two thirds of the class have moved to stage six in number knowledge. That is a fabulous effort so keep using those strategies and remember, you all need to be learning your 7 and 8 timetables.
We carried out a Smarties activity for probability this week and we will be continuing on with this next week by presenting our findings using the various graphs in MS Excel.
Right choice on Thursday, so make sure this week you continue to make those right choices.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy your winter sport even if it is in the rain!

Adios!

Our trip to Mount Pukaha (Mt Bruce)

Last Friday we finally got to go to visit the bird sanctuary at Mt Pukaha. We had a really neat time. We will be writing some storyboards which you will soon be able to check out under our literacy link. For some of us, it was the first time we had seen a real Kiwi! They are HUGE - okay, not as big as us but they are still a big bird and they can move quickly! We all enjoyed seeing the eels and most of us got to feed the eels! They looked very slimey.

Endangered species - Africa theme

The middle team had a visit from Mrs Hay who has worked with zoo animals AND who also has been a tour guide in South Africa. We had a great time seeing amazing photos of endangered animals and we learnt some interesting facts. Thank you for coming to share your experiences with us. We hope you enjoy our photostory.

Our bone inquiry

WALHT (We are learning how to) identify the bones in our skeletal system.
WILF that we can put the bones together in the correct place

Our geometry lesson

Art

In Room 13 we have been learning about an artist called Pablo Picasso. Because we are learning Spanish we also learnt that Picasso was Spanish too! We learnt how everyone can paint differently.

This week we learnt how to take a 'dot' for a walk! Everyone must have thought Mrs C was going crazy when she asked us to close our eyes and we had to follow the bones in our face while we kept our whiteboard marker on the piece of paper. Mrs C gave us instructions and she made sure that no one was peeping. It was hard to draw AND trace our face with the other hand. We were all amazed at how great they turned out and some of them even looked a little bit like Picasso's paintings! Okay, not quite! We used whiteboard marker for the outline, then we used the primary colours to colour it in it and lastly, we brushed dye over the picture. We have them displayed in our classroom.

Simulation Games about Endangered Species

Week 8
Rooms 13 & 12 had a marvellous day! Because our trip to Mt Pukaha was postponed our teachers came up with a different way to introduce our next Inquiry Unit about Endangered Species.
Firstly we had a big discussion about the Gulf of Mexico and what was happening there. Some of us wondered what that had to do with us, but later on, we saw the importance of it.
Then we were put into 7 teams or Tribes and the game began. We were told that in this game we were all starting a new civilisation, so we discussed what we needed to survive. This was our list:
 food
 shelter
 water
 love- we decided that this was going to be taken for granted as we are great children.
 And because our teachers didn't want us to be naked we also had to think about clothes.

We named our Tribes and decided where on the paper island each Tribe would live. When Mrs F. rung her chime she tossed a dice. If it landed on an odd number she read out a negative thing that happened on our Island and if it landed on an even number she read out a positive thing. Each Tribe then had to decide how the event effected them. Some of the things that happened were:
• A forest fire burnt through a lot of the forest;
• Many of the animals produced twins or triplets;
• An earthquake created a tsunami;
• Half of the animals got struck down by disease;
• The rivers had been overfished; and
• It was a good year for crops.
Every once and a while we had time to trade between the Tribes. Of course, some Tribes had more to trade than others. The Tribe that controlled the water supply was quite popular. None of us wanted the negative things to happen to us. Some of the negative things had a major effect on a Tribe and some didn't.
By the end of the game we could explain the things that could affect species and the meaning of the two words ‘extinct’ and ‘endangered’.
Many of you were able to work fantastically in groups especially when it came to negotiation time with the other Tribes. Good job!
What a great start to our Inquiry. Hopefully the weather will be better next Friday and we will be able to visit Mt Pukaha.

By the way
I wonder where Mt Pukaha is?
I wonder what Mt Pukaha used to be called?
I wonder what happens at Mt Pukaha?

Week 7

Hola mis amigos

Ka pai with your wonderful window 'posters' on the skeletal system! You all realised the importance of bones and ways to look after them (eating the right food). I look forward to seeing your next inquiry presentation on your own choice of another body system.

Congratulations to Bonnie for super mathematics thinking (great work in positional and orientation - geometry), Cory for displaying great confidence in all areas of learning, lastly, to Riana for excellence in all academic areas.

Next week we have a short week. It is a public holiday on Monday, teacher only day on Tuesday and on Friday we have our day trip to Mount Bruce. You will need to make sure you pay the money and return the permission slip to school by Friday at the latest.

Your homework this week is: Spelling and maths from your notebook; think about your inquiry topic on a body system; think of an end of term activity once the marble jar is full and lastly, think of some things to do for Right Choice Day. What do you want to do?

Remember, the best time for your whanau to catch up with me is after school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Que tengan una semana encantadora mis amigos.
(have a lovely week my friends).

Senorita Clark