We are very excited to learn that we will be doing a Mystery Skype tomorrow. It is when you ask questions to find out where the other school is. Today we wrote some questions that we can use to guess the school. Some questions we thought of:
Are you in NZ? Are you in Australia? Are you in London? Are you in Asia?
Are you in Wellington? Are you in Hamilton? Are you in Auckland? Are you in Adelaide
Is your school in the city?
Is your school big?
Is your school a primary school?
What temperature do you normally live in?
Does your school go to year 6, 8, 10, or 13?
Do you have a uniform? What colors are your uniforms?
Our new Inquiry is all about Kitchen Science. Our students have started to add to this padlet about our favourite foods. Some students from Sunnyhills School in Auckland have also added their favourite foods. Please add if you haven't (Remember to add your name and school)...
Dear Chrissy, Nicola, Scott & Shona, Thank you for this lovely work. Our children really enjoyed it. What is the age group of the children who worked it out? It's amazing. Please say our thanks and love to the children who worked on this. We are in the process of printing these poems. We will keep one copy in our school's library and will provide a copy to each child of the poem sent for him or her. We are working on our end to make poems and drawings with our children for yours. It will take a week or two. Is that fine? Thank you once again. Much love and peace
We are connecting with a school in Pakistan- a place that is not as peaceful as ours. We have been writing "Peace" poems and will share these with the school in Pakistan.
In August, I will be travelling to Singapore with 11 other educators across New Zealand. I have been connecting with teachers from Bukit Timah Primary School and our students have been starting to learn about Singapore. This week in Tautoru, we have started to write letters to the school and I will bring these over as part of a gift. By the time our youngest students are in the workplace, the number of middle class in Asia will have increased to over 3 billion… 60% of the world’s middle class will be in Asia by 2030. Three of the four top economies in the world will be in Asia… 1 - China, 2 – USA, 3 – India, 4 – Japan.
New Zealand’s economy is increasingly reliant on our export markets in Asia. China is our biggest export market through our Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in 2008. We also have FTAs with Korea and ASEAN countries with negotiations underway with India.
In New Zealand itself our demographics are changing. In the last 20 years our Asian population has grown from 3% to 12% and predicted to be 21% by 2038.
To better prepare our children for their future we are currently exploring how we can develop students’ knowledge, skill and understanding of Asia and Asian cultures.
Our students have generated some questions for Bukit Timah Primary School:
What kind of food do you eat?
Do you celebrate Christmas?
What do you celebrate?
Do you get awards for your good behaviour or your learning?
How many classes do you have? How many students do you have in each class?
Where do you learn?
What do you learn?
Do you have a uniform?
What time do you start school?
What time do you end school?
What do you guys do for lunch? Where do you eat your lunch?
How many teachers do you have? Who are your teachers?
What languages do you speak?
Do you have technology? If so, what do you use?
What materials do you use for learning?
Why are some of your building shaped like flowers?
What kind of plants do you have?
What furniture do you have in your class? Do you have desks?
What games do you play?
What do you have in your view?
What type of playground do you have?
How big is your school? How many children are there at your school?
Do you go on field trips?
Do you have menus for lunch?
We have permission from Bukit Timah School to post this clip.
We have come to the end of our project, "If You Learned Here". We have put together the pages for the global ebook. Our students have worked really hard to contribute to the project and they should all be very proud of themselves. We're all looking forward to reading the book... Watch this space!
Our focus this term is collaborating. Our Year 3 students have been helping our younger students to use Google Apps for Education (GAFE). Our Year 1 and 2 students have their own folders in our shared account. We are writing for our project, "If you learned here." We had a great morning connecting with people that we don't usually work with.
We have had a few people adding to our presentation, "Rock Pools Around the World" If you would like to contribute, please add some photos to the PRESENTATION: ROCK POOLS
Theme 4 of "If You Learn Here" focuses on reading. We have made a short movie about books that we like to add to the project. We have also started book reviews (watch this space)... Find out more: http://ifyoulearnedhere.weebly.com/
We are learning about debates and as part of our inquiry, we want to find out about the environment. Our inquiry is called, "who should look after the environment". So far we have made brainstorms. We think that everyone should look after the environment.
Yesterday, we did Google Hangout with Room 10 at Kelburn school. They are near Zealandia. They are very lucky because they see lots of native birds such as kaka, tuis, sparrows, kereru and they even saw a shag fly over the other day. They are also interested in the environment and want to trap pesky rats and other pests. They talked about smart rats who managed to dodge the traps. They are designing different traps that will attract the rats.
We also found out that Mahutonga have also been setting traps for the rats down the bank. The rats are not going for the food in the traps as they don't feel comfortable enough to eat there.
By Lizzie, Max, Ben, Mateo, Jan, Finlay, Izar, Liam, Zach and Theo B
Enviromment by Theo B
Care for the environment, oh please please please,
our future depends on us, it realy does please.
it’s for me, it’s for you
it’s for everyone on the globe
let’s keep our earth clean and very bright green
just care for it it’s now a big deal
if we did look after it a few years ago this would not
Some of us Mystery Skyped a class from Whangarei Primary School. It was fun having to research and find places on a map. We took turns and asked questions to each other to narrow it down until we got the correct school.
