The NEXT Foundation- Summer Learning Journey

Today we had a special assembly to launch the Summer Learning Journey programme along side the Next Foundation. The SLJ is to help students with their reading. The Next foundation thought it was a good idea so they gave money to help with programme. As our class got filmed I thought that it was quite weird having a camera around us. Rachel is the person that started the summer/winter learning journey talked to us about how 6 clusters around New Zealand are taking part. We had visitors from the Manaiakalani chairperson Mr Sneddon, Ms Grant, Mrs Lee, Mrs Jenson, Bill Komode the CEO of the Next Foundation Mr Grady the chairperson of the board of trustees, Hazel from Woolf Fisher and our principal Mr Johnston. I think that the summer/winter learning journey is a great programme which really develops our reading and writing skills.

Cleanup Crew

Our maths focus yesterday was geometry. To help us with this we did a coordinates  challenge were you have to follow the directions. If it say 6, 3 you have to go across first then you have to go down to get the correct mark. I think I found this easy because I have worked with coordinates before and it came up with a weird picture. 

Tech Experience

On Friday we had our last Tech lesson for the year. Our first rotation was Food Tech we got to make mince pies, chicken kebabs with potato salad and more. We learnt some good recipes and used different  cooking equipment to help us bake/cook foods. Our next rotation was graphics, we made MDF clocks. My clock was a camera because I enjoy photography. This was a long process because we did a lot of planning and colour choice was quite hard because you had a limited amount of colours. I think my finishing design turned out better than I expected. Now our last rotation was stained glass, my design was a boat. I think this was the most interesting rotation because it was something new and I haven't tried this before. This was quite long to make because I had over 4 pieces of glass to cut. I think the Friday tech experiences were very fascinating because we tried something new this year and we had things to take home. 

Summer Learning Journey

On Friday, Hazel from University of Auckland came to talk to us about the 

Summer Learning Journey. This holiday's theme is Journey Through Time in New Zealand. It sounds very interesting, and adventurous. I would like to know more about New Zealand's history. This could be a great way to learn about our history, because as well as having an adventure, you are increasing your skill with comprehension and writing skills. 

P.E @ Tamaki College

On Friday we had a extra rotation of P.E, Social Science and Robotics. I got put in the P.E group, we got to learn some leadership skills and to work together as a team. Our warm up game was infinity tag we all knew how how to play which made it quite easy. Our first game that we played was Bench Ball, there were two teams then they selected had to pick two catchers. The two catchers had to catch the ball from the person in there team, if they catch it they would be able to go on the other side. As we had another round of this, but if you shoot the yellow ball in the hoop you would win the game. Our next game was Samoan Softball it was the same as Softball but you could either kick it or throw the ball with your hand. After you hit/kick the ball you could either run to the other side but you had to leave your hand on the wall. Our team didn't win but we had fun playing and had a lot of encouragement going on and a lot of leadership that happened. 

Athletics Inter-school

Yesterday we had out inter-school athletics. I participated in four events which was 400m, 100m sprint, high jump and long jump. I place 4th in 400m, 3rd in 100m sprint, 2nd in high jump and we didn't get told what we placed in high jump. I think our school did really well because we are a small school but placed mostly in the top 5. 

Athletics Day

Today was our school Athletics day. We had different activities to take part in such as long jump, rob the nest, ball throw and more. To make it more fun and exciting we got to compete in teams, my team was the yellow team although we didn't win as much games as possible we still got to have lots of fun and learn new things. My favourite activity was the rob the nest game because we got to steal other teams eggs. At the end of the day had our school sprints where all the finalists that placed in their heat raced. I raced in the year 8 girls race as well as the school finals where you race the fastest seniors, it was really hard but I came 3rd out of 8. 

Fire Station Visit

Since our inquiry focus is "people in our community" we got to visit the fire station. They gave us a reminder of a few fire safety tips such as having a smoke alarm in your house and also what they do as a fire fighter. Did you know that fire fighters aren't there just to save people from fire accidents they are also first responders so they are trained to do that. The fire fighters showed us their training course and

Mussel Problems

This week's maths learning was based on fractions and proportions. Zahra and I worked collaboratively to find the solutions to the equations. I think the last problem was very challenging because we had to use our multiplication skills and multiply big numbers which was very hard.  

Navigating Narritives- Summarising

In one of our novel studies activities our take was to make a summary of the book. To help us with this we choose 20 important words from the text that would be useful for the summary. From there we selected 6 words that were very important and we then used those 6 words to write our summary. I think that Nazella and I made a good summary because we have understood the book. 

Navigating Narratives - Feedback

In reading, we have been giving feedback to our partner. After reading the text for 20 minutes, Mia and I gave our opinion of how we were while reading. Nazella said that I could talk about the book and how I made an understanding. I was also able to describe the pages with my own words.

Police Visit

Since our inquiry focus is about people in our community we got a police visit from Constable Cyrus and a few others. They were to show us the Eagle Helicopter it was great because it flew into our school and we had never had this happen before. Did you know that the Eagle Helicopter finds everyone that they are looking for on the police lookout. We then got to see the police dogs and how they train, these dogs also displayed some of their tricks which was very interesting because we hardly see dogs do this.  

Manaiakalani Film Festival

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary for the Manaiakalani film festival. We went to watch a few of the movies from our Manaiakalani cluster. There were different little movies about dancing, skits and experiments. After we watched a few movies we got to watch them online and leave positive comments about this. One of my favourite movies was a film by Ruapotaka school it was about Rugby values, i found this interesting because the different types of transitions in the video and the helpful advice that was given. 

Thank you Letter

My gold care award activities was to write a thank you letter to a teacher or other staff member. I choose to write my thank you letter to Mrs Anderson because she has helped me though my learning and as well as being the best leader that I can be. She has made creative learning activities such as making movies and interesting topics for reading. 

Poster showcasing life at PBS

One of my Gold Care Award activities was to "create a poster showcasing life at PBS". I added in pictures of the different activities that we do in our school like our Dance Production that happened in Term 3 which was great. We also have had camp at the start of the year which really helps with our survival skills and we got to try new challenges like the high ropes, chariot racing and more. 

Guy Fawkes Safety Rules

Since this weekend is going to be Guy Fawkes we had to give others a reminder on the safety rules of this. One of the reasons why was to keep everyone safe over the weekend. A rule that wee came up with was to keep children out of reach of Fireworks. This was an important rule because children will think it's fine because it won't harm you but it is very harmful and can cause serious issues. 

Screencastify - Finding fractions of an amount

This is my screencastify I made in class. I displayed a strategy in maths that I have been working on, which is fractions of an amount. I showcased how to work this equation out using the strategy and also what I did to make it work. To help us overcome speaking we wrote a script to help us explain our learning. I think this new learning is really a great experience because it is a different way of displaying your work and showcasing our thinking. 

Rippa Rugby Inter-school

Today was the Rippa-Rugby inter-school and our school took part in this. We had four games in total, our girls team had played against Point England the score was 1-9. We then challenged Glen Innes school which was very hard because it was windy and our tags were flying off but our team worked together to keep going. Now we were up against Tamaki Primary using our passing skills we made a lot of yardage but had a close loss. Our last game finished off with a loss against Glenbrae School I think this was our best game because we kept communicating with our team mates, scoring tries and ripping the tags. 

Holiday Blogging Challenge

In this holiday blogging activity I found out about Rainbow's End which is a very big New Zealand landmark. The questions that were asked were, where is it located, how much does it cost for a family pass and how much would it cost for your family using the ticket prices to help you. 

Democracy Flowchart

For the past two weeks we have been learning about elections. One of our activities was to make a democracy flowchart.  This flowchart showcases how our country is ran from the Queen of England to the House of representatives. This task was really interesting because I found more information about our government.