A Volcano chaser visits Room 7!

Mr Ross, Sandy's dad, is a volcano chaser! He travels the world filming erupting volcanoes. Today he visited Room 7 and showed our class some amazing films of volcanoes in different stages of eruption. The picture of Sandy and Ian in front of the Icelandic volcano was great! We also got to hold lava that Mr Ross had collected when it was only 3 minutes old!

Thanks Mr Ross for coming and talking to us, we really enjoyed it. 

'Mantle of the Expert' being used in Room 7

Ms Gain, Room 7's teacher when Mr Dobson has Associate Principal release days, has been teaching using 'Mantle of the Expert' each Friday in Room 7. She has made this blog so you can follow the amazing things your child does each Friday. As you can see from the photos and discussion, powerful learning can happen when children are role playing!

Plate Tectonics

Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmC-vjQGSNM

Then with your buddy, using Comic Life, explain "What is Plate Tectonics?"

Make sure your page has:-

• sentences explaining key ideas
• pictures that re-enforce the key ideas 
• is clear to read and easy to understand. 

 

Installing the refreshed Pou

Last week saw the newly refreshed Pou being blessed and introduced to the school. The Pou, the big, beautiful poles you can see in the video, represent our place in the world. In the future, no matter where we end up living, be it locally or on the other side of the world, there will be a little spot in Muritai that belongs to us.

Cross country fitness

We are outside every morning , weather permitting, getting fitter and ready to compete in the school cross country.

Room 7 Orchestra

Today our class orchestra performed their lovely piece of music! The class has been practising with Mrs Hooke for a number of weeks now. Don't they sound GREAT!!!

Looking back over Term One

What has been the best thing we've done this term? Leave a comment below...

Performing arts

Today we continued our performing arts lessons with Mrs Hooke. We are making music and performing as a group, following a music score. We LOVE making music!

Grace's farewell morning tea

Today we sadly farewelled Grace who is off to live in Massachusetts, USA for the next 8 months. All the very best Grace! We look forward to seeing you back in Room 7 in November!

Small ball skills

Reading our Haiku poems in assembly

Kahu, Luke, Maui, Holly, Alana and Sam M read their lovely haiku poems to the school at assembly today. Lovely reading everyone!

Crayola, take your marker....

"The Good Stuff" is a monthly podcast that showcases children problem solvers who've figured out how to 'flex their citizen muscle' and find solutions to a huge range of environmental and social problems.

In the podcast below, children who live in California formed a 'kids that care' group with the purpose of solving the problem of Crayola felt tips ('markers') which cannot been recycled.

If you layed out end-to-end all the Crayola markers made each year, they would stretch around the world THREE times. Since they cannot be recycled, they all end up in the rubbish dump.

Listen on iTunes to how these children got involved to solve this problem.

Link to iTunes
The podcast is 12 minutes long.

Link to the Crayola petition
Room 7: Please talk to your parents before signing ANYTHING online. Your Parents need to help you decide if its OK for you to sign this or any other online petition.

Science Club

Today at science club we investigated if a solid can also be a liquid at the same time!

We added water to cornstarch (corn flour) and experimented with the texture of the mixture when we applied pressure and when we did not.

How Big? How small?

Ever wondered how big is big? How small is small? Today in maths we explored this amazing website to help figure it out. From a 'planck length' to the observable universe, take a look at the biggest and smallest, and everything in between!

http://htwins.net/scale2/

What a busy week we've had!

First, Sandy has been making "Angry Birds" with Plasticine and writing stories about them.

 We are getting so good at composing music! Ms Gain, each Friday, has been teaching the class how to compose music.

Mr Dobson is studying to become a scientist! This week we looked at how Yeast, a living organism, produces a waste product (Carbon Dioxide).

The Year 3-4 Rippa Rugby teams went to Petone Rec on Tuesday to play in the WRFU Rippa Rugby Tournament. We had a great day and both teams won 3 of their 4 games, placing them second in their pools. Well done!

Butterfly Anatomy

We have been learning about the anatomy of a butterfly this afternoon. We used plastercine to make a butterfly and then label it's body parts on paper. By Mr D.

Line art dying

In room 7 we are doing Line art dying for art first we drew ten spots then we drew lines going to the two big dot we drew then we coloured it in with two or three different colours but not same colours touching each other then we dyed them but only our pieces of art we used orange yellow and red colours for our dye
By Alana and Molly.

Observational drawing

Sometimes our brain subconsciously makes us draw what we think something should look like. We need to retrain our brain to draw what we actually see...

Our marvellous medicines

Today we have been making medicine using ideas from reading chapter 3 of George's marvellous medicine.

Our first day in Room 7

What a great first day! We made y charts to help us think about what being a good friend might look like, sound like and feel like.