We were really lucky to have Dawn McMillan visit our school on Friday. Dawn has written some picture book treasures like Why do Dogs Sniff Bottoms, Where do flies go in winter? Pancake Attack! A Fishing Story, and my favourite Glasseye Creek, amongst many others.
Dawn spoke to us about where she came up with her ideas and gave us some great insights on what it takes to become a great writer.
Thanks Dawn for a great afternoon and we are looking forward to your next book!
As part of our school program we are looking at the Habits of the Mind. We are examining what it takes to be a good listener at the moment and this is what we have come up with so far.
Look through our student blogs soon to see how they rate!
Ever wondered what our year sevens and year eights get up to every Friday at Technology? Here is one of the products the year sevens have created in Workshop, as well as one of our students enjoying something he created at Food Technology.
We have been researching constellations that are related to our star signs in Room 1 and here are some of the great work that we have created. Check out our student blogs for more! I thought Logan’s and Jade’s was particularly good because they have used their own words really well when re-writing their information into their power point. Kate and Ella have done a great job having a go at putting their information onto videos.
Also Room 1, I have a question for you. Can you explain what a Sidereal year and a Tropical year is, and describe the difference? I will give out 2000 HPS for the BEST answer (This will take more than just a couple of sentences!) CLUE: You need to discuss the equinox and solstice in youranswers for a tropical year.
For our options every week we are doing some sort of art activity. In Room 1 we are looking at making some music and this is what Kakariki House created. Not bad for 20 minutes!!!! You other houses have a great standard to uphold!
As part of the Taranaki Arts Festival we were extremely fortunate to see STRIKE at Kaponga. These guys were amazing!!! They displayed a whole range of different sounding beats and rhythms on loads of different drums and equipment and were hilarious as well!!! Thanks to Kaponga School for organising the event to come to South Taranaki. A must see if they come again!!
I thought the best part of the strike trip was the fire part because the fire came out a purple kind of colour and the sound of the flames sounded kind of like music.
We have been talking about how big the universe is and have come to the conclusion that it is really REALLY big!!
As I said Room 1, I have a question (or two) for you. They are…
1) How big is an AU and what does AU stand for?
2) What is a light year?
3) Why can’t we, people who live in New Zealand, see “Northern Hemisphere” constellations?
First correct answer to all three questions in one post get the 2000HPS!!
GOOD LUCK!!
Here it is!!! After a week or so of studying all sorts of things about space, these are a few things that we already know! Amazing!!! See how well you do in the test, let me know your scores. Click on the link below to be sent to the game.
Welcome back everybody to 2009’s term 3!! We are having a great time already with our Astronomy unit and I will post a few pictures of what we are doing during theme time. The students are doing some interesting statistics investigations at the moment that are producing some interesting results. Look for those on their own blogs. I have also been busy warming up for the cricket season. See if you can get more runs than me!!!!!
Today our entire school went to visit Hollard’s Gardens in Kaponga. We had a great time and learnt more stuff about plants.
This is the Chatam Island Christmas Tree, only found in the Chatham Islands and Pitt Island. There are not many of these trees left because most have been cut down to clear land for farms.
This tree is native to Chilli. They make good firewood and the Hollard Gardens have six of these growing here. There are two ways to preserve trees. Exsitu is when trees are moved to another better area to grow and insitu is when trees remain where they are and are protected by fences etc.
These trees are rhododendrons and were part of a hedge of plants. The trees in between these two have been removed to give these two some space to grow in. The trees in between were also mulched and the mulch was sprinkled on the ground to help feed the plants…like weet bix. We also talked about photosynthesis which is when the leaves turn the sunlight into food/sugars that are transported around the plant and stored.
These trees are used for wind breakers to protect the other plants from the wind. It is important to collect the seeds from these trees to plant new ones rather than taking cuttings because the cuttings will produce identical copies of the trees. This helps protect the plants from disease and extinction so that each one is different .
Around the district of Kaponga all the land around Hollard’s Garden was cleared for farming except for this area because it was too swampy to farm.
It is important to plant plants in the right areas so that they can grow. In this area it was really swampy so they have to plant plants that can grow in swampy places.
A big thanks to Mr Rine who took time out of his day to walk us through the great garden!
We have just started our planning for next term as a class. This is our first stage in our Inquiry Process where we are deciding what we know, what we don’t know and what we are unsure about.
First we stickered everything we know about astrology with blue stickers, then grouped them according to catagories such as planets, stars, moons and “others” (ones that we couldn’t catagorise). We then thought of different questions and stickered them on the page in pink labels. After that we found we could answer some of the questions already with things we already knew. So now we are left with some unanswered questions that we will tackle next term!
