PIAKO RUA'S ASSEMBLY

Today the fabulous kids in Piako Rua hosted Assembly.  Our teachers said we did such a great job.  We had a special guest come today too.  You'll never guess who it was!

The Lorax!!!

The assembly was such a great way to share our learning with our families and our school.  We enjoyed singing our songs too.

Check out the cool photos of us...

WET LUNCHTIME FUN

Today was a wet lunch time.  Mr Pike spied these two clever cookies making their own bird feeder and they had even made their very own REFLECT organiser to check if it was a great bird feeder. What super team work and creative thinking.  Well done girls!

ROCKIN ROBIN

Here is a video of us practising one of our songs for assembly.

You can help at home by letting us practise singing for you.

OUR NEW SONG

BIRD FEEDER DAY!

Hooray ... On Friday we got to make out bird feeders.  We had a great time working in our groups off our plan.  We had to try and stick to our plan as best as we could.  

The teachers helped us cut the bottles because they were a bit tricky.  We loved decorating our creations.  We really hope the birds like them

RELFECT

On Thursday we took a few minutes to REFLECT on what we have learnt over that last few weeks. In our STEM groups we completed a Reflect Sheet.  We thought about what we were trying to do. We were trying to make colourful, strong, durable bird feeders made from recycled materials.  Then we discussed what we needed to do next.

PLANNING OUR BIRD-FEEDERS

On Wednesday we drew up out plans for our Bird Feeders.  We had some criteria about what a good diagram should include.  We needed to draw our bird feeder and label it.  We also had to list all the materials we would need to make it.  Here are a couple of photos of us busy working on our plans and then two designs by Zena and Aaron.

        

        

         

CHECKING THE MATRIX

Mrs Lunn was working with some children at the whiteboard table in the Rainbow Room when she saw Emily and Nicole sneak in behind her.  She wondered what they were doing and then she realised.  They were checking the matrix on the wall to see where their writing sat.  As you can see Nicole is looking very intently at the shooting star criteria on the Matrix.  They were so busy talking about the language features required in their writing that they didn't even see Mrs Lunn taking their photo!  Well done girls.  Taking the time to assess your writing against the matrix will help you know what is needed to level up.

HELPING ADAM'S PIGS

This is Adam.  He has pigs at his house and he asked us if we could please collect our scraps of food for them.  We thought that was a brilliant idea!  Not only will it help reduce the amount of rubbish we are contributing to the landfill but we will help Adam look after his pigs.  Today Adam brought a thank you letter from Crunchie and Moro, his pigs.  They are really enjoying eating our scraps.

CAPITAL LETTERS!

At Writing time lots of us are learning to use capital letters in the correct place. We have been having lots of fun editing stories and fixing up mistakes in our workshop! 

 

 

 

OUR NEW COLLEGE TEACHER

Kia Ora

My name is Travis Pike and I am 22 years old.  I have recently moved up to Palmerston North after finishing my Bachelor of Teaching in Early Childhood Education.  I am no studying the Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching - Primary at Massey University.  As part of my studies I am required to be placed in different classrooms for a number of weeks to be able to observe as well as have chances in teaching in real life situations.  

I am lucky enough to be placed at Riverdale School for 5 weeks and look forward to the opportunities this will provide me.  So please, if you see me around, feel free to come up and say hi.

CREATIVE BADGES

This term our Nga Matapono (our beliefs) focus will be being Creative.  We will all start with a Bronze Badge and earn pins towards achieving a Silver or Gold badge.  When our teachers see us being Creative, they will tell us to move our pin.  You can see how we are going by looking at the charts in the corridor that leads to the Jungle.  Some children are going to make a slideshow explaining different ways that we can be Creative.  Watch this space ... the teachers will upload the Slideshow to the blog when it is finished.

Quinn earning himself his first Creative pin 

REPORTING BACK

On Thursday we each had a very important job to do.  We had to report back to our team about what we had learnt in our workshops on Wednesday.  This is called the Jig-Saw approach.  It means that we each hold pieces of information that when we report back to the class, we can share with the group and then we have all the pieces of information we need to move forward with the making of our bird feeders.

DINO-MATHS

On Thursday, we finished our two week unit on Length. Our final activity was to measure how big a Tyrannosaurus Rex was.  Mrs Lunn found out that they were 6M tall.  So we set out to find out how many children that could be the same as.  Now because we were not able to stand on each others heads, we decided we'd better do our measuring lying down!

We wondered how we would measure 6M with just one, 1M ruler.  One of the kids suggested we could lie the ruler down and mark the end of it and then move the ruler along and measure another metre.  This worked a treat.

Once we had measured 6M we got some kids to lie down and see how many kids it takes to equal 6M.  It took 5 kids!  That's how tall a Tyrannosaurus Rex is!  We then drew a life size T-Rex.  Some of us wrote maths equations on our dinosaurs.  We called our dinosaur a Math-o-saurs Rex!

What fun!

BIRD FEEDER WORKSHOPS

Today we opted into workshops that would help us build GREAT bird feeders.  We were able to choose from a Strength Workshop, Durability Workshop or a What Do Birds Like to Eat Workshop.

In the Birds Workshop, we threw some bread and bird seed to the birds to see what they liked to eat the best.  Our hypothesis (our prediction) was that the more birds would eat one type of food than the other.

In the other workshops we tested the different materials to find out which ones were stronger and more durable.  Knowing this will help us decide which materials to use to make our bird feeders.

In the Birds Workshop, we decided that we would know which food birds liked, by feeding them some different foods to eat.  We brainstormed ideas of what we know birds eat and came up with two types of food - bread and birdseed.  We thought we would spread the food in two different areas on the court so we could clearly see which food they liked best.  There was a definite winner!  Check out the photos...

 Here we are sprinkling bread crumbs on the ground...

Two birds came to eat the bird seed...

But look how many birds came to eat the bread!!!

We have a winner!

The birds like bread the best!

BIRD FEEDERS - LOTS TO THINK ABOUT

Yesterday we each were able to choose what Bird Feeder we were interested in making.  

We made new groups with the children who wanted to make the same bird feeder as us.  We completed a WONDER sheet.  We had to ask lots of questions to prompt us to think about how we were going to make our bird feeder.  We also brainstormed all our ideas about how we could make the bird feeder, who could help us, what we would need etc.

We then shared our thinking with our classmates.