Ignition Day - Sustainability

 Ignition Day  - Term Two

On the first Monday of term two the middle school had an ignition morning in the hall  to introduce the children to the term concept - Sustainability.

On the left you can see we had a poster with all the children's prior knowledge - ideas - about what they thought sustainability is.

 The children listen carefully to the opening video and the introduction by some of the teachers, including Mrs Nieuwboer.

 Mrs Nieuwboer comes up to the front to speak as Mrs Waititi and Miss James assist with the preparations in the background.

 Each teacher or teacher aide monitored one activity where the idea of sustaining something was explored.

 Miss James pasted up children's attempts to cut up a piece of paper into the longest unbroken strip.

 Mrs Waititi tested children's ability to sustain the flight of a feather by blowing it from a line.

 The children moved around to the different activities and there was a little singing and dancing.

  Mr Bach was timing how long children could sustain keeping there eyes open and not blinking. The best children got up to 2 minutes without flinching.

Some of the children's illustrations and ideas about what they thought sustainability meant or was about.

 Interhouse Cross Country 2013 

Room 6 students trained up hard over 6 days at the beginning of term 2. We ran for ten minutes every day around the school filed and recorded the number of laps we completed. Our training goals and record of laps run will be put into each child's portfolio

Some children made more progress with their fitness than others

 Poppy trained hard. Here she is putting her hand out to get a lap marker from Mr. Bach.

Naina runs past Mr Bach who kept track of the children's progress. Mr. Bach used to run with the children in past year to improve his fitness, but unfortunately a severe ankle sprain has lead him to retrie from running and focus on biking and kayaking.







Willem and a group of mixed room 6 and 7 girls make their way past the recording point.

 Room 6 children performed well at the school cross country held in the Redwood Forest last Wednesday. Josh (above) and Alex and Misty (below) all got high placings in their year group.

 

Koby (above) and Poppy (below) also ran well for excellent placings in the cross country event.

Some of our year 4 children will be attending the interschool cross country event for certain.














All of the St Mary's staff helped out during the event. Here Mr Volschenk is guiding children to the recording table. Mr Bach was the unofficial photographer and First Aid Coordinator!!!

   



Mrs Park and some girls at the recording station.

The children cheered on the other children from their houses in the races.

 Some children really got into the cheering business.

Sustainability -Term 2 Concept

 Our concept this term at St Mary's is ‘Sustainability’. Children will learn what difference they can make to their immediate environment. We will focus on sustainable gardens and recycling will also be part of the programme. Middle School children will be using the school gardens, looking after the chickens, recycling scraps, running a worm farm and trying very hard to persuade others to do the same.

 The middle school has exclusive access to the school garden's this term and room 6's day in the garden is Wednesday. In class we will be talking about sustainable practices and why sustainability is important but on Wednesday's we are allowed to get our hands dirty weeding the gardens, getting the scraps from the chickens and keeping an eye on the worm farm.

 The children enjoyed their first afternoon in the garden and found lots of fascinating things to talk about. Tae'o and Misty in particular seem really keen to share something with Mr. Bach.







The children were not scared to get stuck in weeding the gardens and looking for insect pests on the leaves.

 Some caterpillars were found on some of the cabbage leaves but with autumn upon us there should be no more butterflies laying eggs.

 This week Poppy also shared something very interesting for news. She brought a large abandoned nest from last summer, probably made by a larger bird like a blackbird or starling. Interestingly among the twigs and leaves used to build the nest was a piece of plastic rubbish.

Koby was also lucky enough this week to receive a special prize at assembly for his holiday reading. He won one of the main prizes - a book voucher. Well done Koby.

 Room 6 News - an opportunity to talk in front of the class

In Room 6 more and more children are taking the opportunity to talk in front of the class and give a piece of personal news. Sometimes during the term we are so busy with our maths, reading and writing learning that we often don't have or make the time to have news. But at the end of the term we often take lots of time each day for many children to give their news. 

Participation during news time is important for all children as it gives practice in talking in front of an audience and finding the words to verbally express oneself. Children also take great pride in explaining some of the things they are doing and achieving. 

Tyler was justly proud to bring in a monster carrot that had grown in the family garden. It was so big it had two root ends that made it look a bit like a giant orange tooth.





If you have something unusual to show the class or an interesting thing happens to your family maybe we can all hear about it during news time.

Communities - Term One Concept

 Communities Concept

The Term One Concept at St Mary's School in 2013 is Communities. The children looked at different types and sizes of human communities and how they function. The children also looked at the roles and responsibilities of everyone living in various communities. They learned that the word  'interdependence' means everybody relies on everybody else in any community.

The children then learned about ant communities and how they work and compared them to bee communities.

The children completed a compare and contrast map to plan their writing assessment and then wrote about the similarities and differences between ant and bee communities.

Some children are also preparing information boards using the Comic Life app on the i-Pads.

 The children helped research information about bee and ant communities and this information was displayed in posters.






 One interesting thing that we learned is that ants are very strong for their size. They can lift up to ten times their own weight. That is like Mr Bach lifting ten adults above his head. Actually he can only lift nine!!!!!!?

 Ants can farm aphids for the honeydew (liquid food) that oozes out of the aphids backs. In return the ants protect the aphids from predators, including fighting off larger ladybirds.The aphids are free to drink sap from the plant to eat themselves and provide more honeydew for hungry ants. The ants and aphids rely on each other.

 Bees are also interesting insects that live in large communities like ants. Unlike ants, all bees fly and when a worker bee finds a special pollen or nectar source she performs a dance to tell other bees. The type of dance tells the other bees in what direction and how far away to fly to find the pollen.

We also learned that the Maori for communities is He Hapori and that the various levels in the Maori community are very important to the health and the flow of life in the Maori world.

Maths in Room 6

Maths in Room 6

Maths in Room 6 is done for usually one hour every day, bright and early in the morning during the first block, before morning tea.

In Room 6 have a rotation system in place where children are grouped according to their current needs and abilities and then go through a range of activities and exercises during the one hour of maths. These exercises and activities are to support the teaching and learning of maths knowledge and number strategies by Mr Bach.

The first stage of the rotation is learning on the mat with Mr. Bach where we practice our basic facts a little and then learn a new number strategy, or talk about one we are still learning. 

At present we are learning strategies to help us with addition and subtraction.

We use materials and the interactive whiteboard to help us learn.

 Children will then work independently in the next stage of the rotation to practise the strategy that they are learning by doing book work. Worksheets will often have the strategy explained on them, and when we are lucky Miss James is often around to assist. 

 Children in the same group will often help each other with their learning, especially when the strategy seems hard to understand the first time.

 Another stage in the rotations is practising basic facts on the computers through particular websites, especially Tutpup and Studyladder. Studyladder can also help children with their strategies.
i-Pads are also used to practice basic facts.

 Veronica concentrates hard on her book work.

 Lucille tries to practise the new strategy that she has just learned.

 Malia and her classmate use play money to help them with their maths learning.

 Naina and Veronica are practising adding strategies that use tidy tens or splitting numbers by using place value (the chainsaw strategy).

Ria shows clearly how she has used one strategy to work out the addition problems.












This term we have also been learning about statistics and how the basic statistical investigation works. Find a problem - Do a survey - Record your answers in a tally chart - Put your data into a graph - Talk about what information the graph is telling us.
Children are at various stages in being able to follow this process.