Term 4: The "Working Hard" investigation, and the "Green Gecko" project!

Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to a new school term! While we all seem to be missing a little of school holiday excitement that was the Rugby World Cup, it's nice to back at school and ready for the final 7 weeks of the school year.

Room 7 is undertaking a short, focused investigation into 'child labour' in other parts of the world, and how this can 'stop kids from being kids'. After an investigation into what child labour is and why it happens, we plan to make a small difference in the lives of other people by getting involved in 'The Green Gecko Project'

 

Other important events this term include the school's athletics day on Tuesday of Week 4. We will start practising athletic events every Tuesday and Thursday up until the school athletics day. After that, we will be heading down to the Eastbourne pool for swimming most (fine, sunny and warm) days until the end of the school year.

As always, feel free to email me if you have any questions regarding this terms upcoming events.

New Dinosaur related learning on the "Class of 2011" Blog

Over the last couple of weeks, Room 7 students have been adding dinosaur related posts to the Class of 2011 blog.  If you haven't visited recently, then pop over and have a good look around. Just remember, this blog is full of student learning, so be supportive with your comments!

Tim's new Dinosaur Blog!

Tim has been very busy at home making a really cool blog about dinosaurs!

Tim's Dinosaur Blog

You can visit his blog by clicking HERE, or click on the link under the 'student blog' heading to the left.

Well done Tim- your blog will be a good source of information for our individual research projects next week!

Applying knowledge and understanding

For the last 3 weeks, Room 7 has been in the Excite! and Explore! stage of our term long Dinosaur investigation. "What do I think I know" and "What have I found out" have been the questions during this phase. Now it is time to start putting the pieces together, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. The final, longest stage of the dinosaur investigation is about to commence, the Explain! stage, where the key question is "What does it all mean?"

One of the explaining tasks the children have been given is to create their own, recently discovered dinosaur species. They need to apply all that they have learned about dinosaur habitat, eating/hunting habits, appearance and other characteristics, to their newly created dinosaur. They will write a 'scientific report' that describes their dinosaur for the wider scientific community (other classes!).

In this post are photos of the first stages of the 'creation' process, where children brainstorm their ideas first, then organise these ideas into different categories. These categories serve as the basis for paragraphs in the 'scientific report'.

Zoom Dinosaurs

Zoom Dinosaurs is a great website for kick starting that exciting 'finding out about' dinosaurs stage of our dino investigation!

 

More snow video...

Snow on Cuba Mall in central Wellington (HD) from Ro Tierney on Vimeo.

The day it snowed at school!!!

UPDATE: Monday 3.30pm

During the day on Monday

Snow at sea level? You better believe this was a 'once in a lifetime' event!!!!!

Dinosaur Maths

This week for Maths we have been investigating the sizes of different meat eating Dinosaurs. To do this we had to learn how to compare and sort information.

Once we had graphed the different sizes of the dinosaurs, we took some chalk outside and, using metre rulers, worked out how high the smallest and largest dinosaurs stood. We drew them in chalk, and had our photo taken next to our drawings.

Last Space Shuttle flight :-(

I am very sad. The last Space Shuttle mission.

Our "Mystery Stories"

We have been reading the picture book "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" by Chris Van Arlsberg. In the book, each page is a new story, with only a picture and a sentence of writing to tell the reader the story.

Here are some pictures from the book:

So we in Room 7 decided to take a page/story each, and fill in the missing parts! We have been writing our mystery stories for the last couple of weeks, and have recorded some of them on Vocaroo to share with each other. These can be found over on the "Class of 2011" blog.

We also plan to publish our stories on A3 paper and make a 'big book' called "Room 7's Big Book of Mysteries'. We will share the book with our buddy class when it is finished.

Other writers have been inspired by 'The Mysteries of HB" as well. In 1993, Stephen King published his solution to the mystery of The House on Maple Street in a story collection entitled Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

For those children who have LOVED writing their mystery stories, there is an official 'Mysteries of Harris Burdick" website for you to explore. It even shows what happens afterwards to the hovering Nun!

UPDATE: I recently found this website, where other children have written stories to solve 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick'.

Making and lanching our rockets!

This week we have been making, then launching our water and air pressure powered rockets. We have been designing our rockets to minimise drag and weight, which has presented some challenges!

The launching of our rockets was alot of fun. We had to watch our launch carefully to see what our rocket did, and how far it flew.

Too fast for the camera! But you can see the trail of water as the rocket blasts off!

We then used this information to re-design our rocket to make it fly even higher! 

The 4 Forces of flight

 We are winding up our study of the 4 forces of flight. As a fun assessment activity, Room 7 students have been using a 'free' (up to a point!) on-line application called 'Go Animate'.

The children have each made a short animation showing what they have learned about the 4 forces of flight. These animations have been posted on the 'Class of 2011" blog. Please take a moment or two to head over there and leave a comment on an animation or three!

Here is an example of one of Room 7's animations:

GoAnimate.com: Samantha's funny animals. by muritai7

Voices in the Park

We have finished recording our "Voices in the Park" stories and have posted them for you to listen to over on the "Class of 2011" blog.

This story by Anthony Brown tells the simple story of a trip to the park, through the eyes of 4 very different characters- Charles, his mother (who we call "Mrs Charles"), Smudge and her father (Who we call "Mr Smudge").

We have chosen one of these character 'voices' to tell the story of the trip to the park.

We hope you get a chance to listen and leave a comment.

The power of 'Thrust'

We have been investigating the power of thrust. We made balloon rockets that run on a string cable.


We measured how far the balloon rockets would run vs. how much thrust they produced (i.e. how much air was in the balloon). We are learning how to be good scientists by making sure we are testing using 'fair test' principles.

Making a tea bag rocket

This week we have been exploring the 4 forces of flight- lift, drag, thrust and weight. In this demonstration we can see what happens when the force of lift finally overcomes the force of weight!

Our seedlings are now plants!

In Term One we grew spinach, cauliflower and bok choy seedlings in tea bags. We planted them in Room 7's garden and watered them every second day. Now, six weeks later, they have grown so much! They should be ready to harvest in time for Matariki later this term.

Next Weekend's Telethon for Christchurch

PS22 Chorus: Awake My Soul

PS22 Chorus: Awake My Soul: I wish my school choir when I was at Primary School all those years ago was like this! Well done kids- you've done it again!

Making piklets, the "Samuel Show" way!

Here is the link for "How to make Piklets"- the "Samuel Show" way!

Welcome back- Term Two has started!

Welcome Back everyone!

Did you know that this week is "National Primary Science Week"?  In Room 7, term two got underway today with a really exciting science demonstration to get us thinking in a scientific way. 

Then we are celebrating as a whole school on Tuesday with the FIRST ROCKET LAUNCH using our new rocket launcher.

The science focus will continue all term, with an exploration of 'flight' and 'weather'. The Year 3-4 newsletter has all the details!

This week for homwork, instead of Spelling and Basic Facts, there is an ANZAC Day task for each child to complete. Details are in the homework book, as well as on the 'special homework' blog .

As always, a really busy and exciting time in Room 7!