Inquiry

We are having fun looking into Renewable Energy. Have a look at this video. We chose if we would like to investigate wind, hydro or solar power. After brainstorming what we know, we thought up some questions, investigated, researched and decided what information we wanted to share.

We are making a map of the school and we are going to show the windiest places in our school grounds. We talked about the Beaufort scale which measures wind. Have a look at this video if you want to find out a little more about wind levels.

We made our own solar panels and we want to see if they will heat up in the sun.

Environmental writing

Lately at writing we have been able to choose where we write and we have used the fine weather to get outside and write about the environment or about something we love. We can choose to write on the ipad, on paper with felts or coloured pencils, in our writing books, on the blackboard using chalk or on the whiteboard. We love it when we get to choose where to write.

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Here are a couple of pieces of writing from today.

I can see lots of nature and the most beautiful one is the pohutakawa. It has beautiful flowers. The flowers are green, red and yellow. I feel lucky to have lots of nature around the school.

The ocean is blue like water. It is sparkly like glitter. The ocean is shiny like a diamond. It is sparkly when you look at it. The ocean is nice and it is calm like a wind. It is blue like paint.

Tapa Cloth!

Do you know how Tapa cloths are made?

Do you know what a Tapa cloth is?

Here is a QR code for two articles about the Tapa cloth.


On Tuesday, we made our own Tapa Cloth.
We used some brown paper, design our pattern and the best part was to scrunch it all up and open - for 53 times. This is to create that texture in the paper. Have a look at our Tapa cloth:








You can make one at home!

A mission to Mars

Scott's literacy group has been learning about Mars. Our mini inquiry has looked at space travel, space stations, and Mars.



We decided to work as a team to complete a variety of tasks as life on Mars will require a lot of team work and problem solving.



We spent a morning reading instructions on how to put a tent up. It was very tricky because they were not in English!



We each had different jobs that helped the team construct the tent.

Solar Ovens

During inquiry, we are exploring solar power.  To investigate how a solar oven works, we had a little experiment today.
We put a biscuit with some chocolate buttons into our oven. We need to make sure the oven doors are closed properly. The prediction was that the chocolate buttons will melt and the biscuit will turn brown.

Here are some pictures of our experiments.

Can you explain the science of how a solar oven works?

Discovery

Fridays in Tautoru are a time for discovery and exploring our wonderings. It is a time to make connections and collaborate with people we don't often get a chance to work with. During discovery we lead our own learning, asking questions about things that interest us and finding new and unique ways to research and problem solve.

This Friday there were a variety of provocations around Tautoru to get us started in our discovery. It was fantastic to see the amount of creativity, curiosity and collaboration happening at each provocation. The best part was seeing huge smiles, lots of laughter and wonderful discussions as we all collaborated with different people. 

Here are some links and photos below. To see more, check out Seesaw.

Music Making - Can you use these everyday objects in different way to create unique sounds and music?

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Drama - Can you create a puppet show about character strengths?

Group 1

Group 2

Characters in our show

 

Can you create a Mandala out of "loose parts"?

Solar Ovens

It was lots of fun to work with our friends in Mahutonga. We made solar ovens as part of our Inquiry.