Buddy time and "Read-to-Someone"

Today we went to Room 19 and enjoyed time with our Year 7/8 buddies. We shared our autobiographies with them and read other books we are reading. It will be great to visit Room 19 or have them visit us next time. We have been learning about "Read-to-Someone" as a great way to improve our reading ability. Check out the pic collage of us doing this at the bottom of this page!

ASB GetWise Session

Today Amie visited us from the ASB GetWise Programme to teach us a bit about MONEY!! We learned that:
-If you take your time you can find things for a better price.
-You have to use a special card to get into an account. This is an EFTPOS card and is different to a Credit Card. Eftpos cards mean you can get your own money from your account. Credit Cards are using the bank's money and you have to pay it back in a certain amount of time.
-4 numbers make up a pin number on a card.
-We need to work to get money.
-It's important to do jobs at home so that mums and dads don't have to do everything.

End of Term 1

We concluded our Sustainability study last term with a walk to the beach to clean up. It was a nice way to finish up since we had been to the beach at the very beginning of the term too. We gathered a lot of rubbish..in particular lots of plastic. We know we've made a difference by stopping that plastic entering our ocean.

Sustainability and Drama

We have been learning about Sustainability through our Science Inquiry and also through Process Drama. We created an imaginary seaside town and created roles for ourselves within that town. We then imagined how we would deal with a problem in the town which was some students had come in from out of town and made a big mess on the beach. We explored through freeze frame how the people of the town felt about that. One of the students visited us in role (Mrs Fletcher in disguise) and we held a meeting. We interviewed and questioned the student about their actions and explained to the student why it wasn't appropriate. We explored things like pollution and the effect on businesses and the environment. Then we did another freeze frame to show how we felt after the meeting. Here are some of our freeze-frames. We REALLY enjoyed drama with Mrs Fletcher!!! She's fantastic.

                                   Before the meeting..

                               After the meeting..

                                 Before the meeting...

                             After the meeting...

                              Before the meeting...

                              After the meeting...

                             Before the meeting...

                            After the meeting...

                           Before the meeting...

                            After the meeting,,.

Ocean Acidification

As part of our Inquiry learning about Sustainability this term we've been learning about the effects of climate change on our oceans. We learned that the ocean is warming and also absorbing too much carbon dioxide which over time will break down the shells of sea creatures and disrupt the whole ocean ecosystem which we depend on.
To explore this further we are doing an experiment to find out what the impact of carbon dioxide emissions is on our environment, particularly the ocean environment. We put 3 eggs in different solutions to see if anything happens. We put one egg in water, one in vinegar (to mimic the acidification of ocean water) and one in baking soda (as our control). It's been interesting to see the changes. Watch this space!

Our fantastic grad school intern

Introducing Lynn Fletcher...

We are fortunate to have Lynn working in Room 10 for the rest of this term. She is training with the New Zealand Graduate School of Education. The class are really enjoying having 2 teachers this term!

Beach day Number 2 - Sand-dunes session

We had another super day at the beach learning about the sand-dunes - where they come from, why we need them, and the threats to them (both man-made and natural).  We got to make our own miniature sand-dunes and we also discussed how we can look after them. It was really interesting and we learned a lot about how important the sand-dunes are for our beach. Special thanks to Collete, Rob, and Mark for helping us on this trip. 

CCC Shoreline Study

What a fabulous day we had at the beach today. Chris, our teacher from the Christchurch City Council, guided us through a series of activities which helped us learn all about the inhabitants of our shoreline, as well as learning about the threats and dangers to these creatures. We found out about man-made things and natural things and did a treasure hunt to collect various objects from each category. We then created a message to leave behind as a stamp of our learning. Thank you to our wonderful parent helpers! We are looking forward to another day of learning down at the beach tomorrow.

Surf Life Saving Education and Beach Trip

Today we had a morning lesson with some experienced Surf Life Savers and then went down to the beach to have a go at some Surf-Life Saving activities in the surf. A HUGE thank you to our parent helpers who came along and also thanks to those who braved the conditions and got in the water.

 French lessons with Kaia on the walk down to the beach!

Class of 2015

Welcome back to school for 2015. Today we had a super sweltering first day back at school. Here we are...