Catching up with our buddies from the seniors

On Wednesday we caught up with our buddies from across the school. The seniors put on a Matariki Celebration, which kicked off with a few waiatas and then included Matariki games that they made up themselves along with Matariki Art and creations.

I am a Thinker- Finding problems and Thinking of Solutions.

Can we change the world with Maths and Writing?

We have been using statistics to find our favourite animals and also to find out how much plastic we bring to school.

Our favourite birds:

How much plastic is in our lunch boxes:

The link is that many animals are getting sick from all our plastic rubbish. We have been writing about what we think about it. The green highlighter means that we are checking our writing and using our writing goals:

Maths in action

This week groups have been working on a number of new activities in Maths. We have been investigating division and the concept of equal sharing. Using waka we have unpacked different equations to group people, disguised as counters, into waka.



We have also been working on our skip counting in threes and consolidating our skip counting in 2s knowledge. This knowledge is going to help us with our division.

We have also been investigating different 2D shapes. We have discussed their different attributes and have created robots and creatures using these shapes. Come in to the class to check out our displays.

These guys are working on 60 second challenges. How many times can they write their name in 60 seconds or stand one one foot, and even hold a smile. Great stuff.



This groups has been working on a seesaw challenge. It is to help consolidate previous learning, keep number knowledge maintained and a fun opportunity to work with a buddy on an activity.

Storytelling workshops

We had a special visitor at school on Wednesday. Apirana Taylor is a storyteller, an artist, a muscian and even a magician! He entertained us with stories and shared many of his instruments that he uses to help tell his stories.

In response to his stories we joined forces with the students from Autahi and worked on a variety of workshops around story telling.



There were drama workshops retelling the Maori creation story. This group shared their piece to an audience in the afternoon.



Another workshop worked on retelling the story of Maui and the Sun in a Kamishibai style. Which is a Japanese form of story telling

Puppet Pals was a popular workshop and students retold the story of Ngake and Whataitai, the taniwha of Wellington.









We also had students creating paper puppets and comic strips retelling Maori stories. So great to spend time with Autahi to build our relationships and also so awesome to teamwork, kindness and creativity in action.

What is your favourite ...... ?

In maths over the last week we have been investigating statistics. The students have really enjoyed developing their ideas, categorising objects, and finding out more about each other.





On Tuesday students worked in pairs to think of a question to ask people about what some of their favourite things were. We had favourite toys, birds, and even vegetables.



Later on in the week we will create pictographs to display our work and then hopefully share these onto seesaw. So please comment if you notice a post!

Inquiry Art

As part of our inquiry this term we have begun creating art inspired by the travels of Kupe, local stories of the Taniwha of Wellington harbour, and how Maori built Pataka to store food and Taonga.



Base groups have taken a theme and worked collaboratively on creating an art in response to the stories and our learning in Inquiry.



It has been great to see students share their ideas, negotiate on colours and then work on completing their work.



Students have created some great pieces that we hope will be up and ready to go for assembly this week. It will be great to get a big crowd in for the unveiling.



Keep your eyes posted for more blog posts.

We are Exploring - Technology and Travel in the Pacific

Did you know that the voyages of ancient sailors in the Pacific are like our explorations of space? These brave explorers traveled using the stars and signals from nature to help them discover new lands, including Aotearoa.

Source "Sailing The Pacific" ©Learning Media.

We've learned that signals like driftwood, clouds and birds would help them to know where new land was. They had no maps but used the stars as maps to guide them.

Their sails were woven from plants and they made lots of other things to carry things that they needed. We spent some time weaving to help us think about some of the things we could make, too.