Learning: Our Term 3 Topic Inquiry 'Wanderings'

WALHT create our own 'wanderings' for our new topic.
Inquiry Topic: Fabric, Fibres and Fashion.
This afternoon in class, we brainstormed ideas together about our Term 3 Inquiry Learning topic. We asked ourselves: What do we want to know? And here are the 'wanderings' we came up with... 
What are our school uniforms made out of?  Nepia & Colsey
What are jackets made out of? What makes them waterproof? Denzel
How do we do a fashion show? Fatu
How do we find out about fashion show stuff? Onyx
How do we walk down the stage? Colsey
How do we print a t-shirt? Colsey
How does the t-shirt design process work? Lyric
Are police jackets and hats made out of denim? Colsey and Nepia
How do you make hats out of denim? Nepia
What kind of art do they use to make fashion designs? Nevaeh
How do you design and make:
- a mask? Athens & Onyx
- jewellery? Krystal & Jazarehus
- leather and denim jackets / chino pants? Fatu
- a dress and a mask (for a ball)? Shania & Shelby

...As you can tell from our ideas, we're ALL really looking forward to creating items for our upcoming whole school fashion show here at Red hill school later this term!

All About Me - Scorpio

All About Me - Mana

This is something that the children have done for the first time using Chrome Books and Google Drawings.

Maori Language Week - Special Guests

On Monday the 27th of July, our whole school was privileged to have the James Cook Kapa Haka 2015 group come and performed for us in the morning. It was an exciting experience for all of us - and we're writing some awesome recounts in response to such an awesome experience! Ka pai!

Poetic Writing

For our creative writing lessons, we have been learning how to use our describing words to express our responses to the things we have been learning about during the course of our integrated studies. 

What is extra special about this heartfelt poem written by Lyric, is that she has written at home, in her own time, and because she wanted to share her thoughts and feelings about these brave men in a poem she could share with the rest of us at school!

Our poems were written at the beginning of Term 2, when our whole school had been learning all about the ANZAC soldiers in the lead up to the 100 year commemorations of Gallipoli this ANZAC Day. 

In E1, we had been developing our own understanding of what life may have been like for our fallen soldiers, and how they made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. 

Lyric's poem is a great example of how her own response to what she had learned around this topic allowed her to create an extremely thoughtful piece using poetic writing. 

Well done, Lyric!

Our Online Research for Our Flight and Innovation Topic Studies

In Whanakitanga Tahi, we have been learning about Matariki over the past fortnight. We found out that, as part of the celebrations for this, people may choose to make and fly kites!

So, this morning, we used the PCs in Amua Whare ICT, and we went on to Google to find some "How To" answers about this for our upcoming Innovation Day activities. 

As part of our latest ICT lesson around "Learn, Create, Share" activities, we were learning how to create an Email to share our selected websites (i.e.: by copying and pasting the website address hyperlink into the body of the Email). We then Emailed our chosen answer websites to our classroom teacher, so that we could use these to inform our technology activities.

We had two questions to ask - the first one was "How do you make a kite?" and the second question was "How do you make a parachute?". Here are some of the websites we chose to share by Email when looking for our answers to these online:

Shelby shared 
Why Make Your Own Kite?

Detroit shared 
How To Make A Kite

Shania shared 
How To Make A Diamond Kite

Krystal, Fatu and Nevaeh shared 
How To Build Kites To Suit YOU

Denzel and Lahrenzo shared 
Make Your Own Kite!

Athens shared 
How To Build A Plastic Parachute

E1 are looking forward to using their findings to co-construct instructions together using what we have found out to write an explanation, once we have had the chance to create our own kites (and maybe even parachutes!) in Whanakitanga Whare during wider Innovation Day activities tomorrow!

Youthtown "Game Sense"

As part of our PE 'Game Sense' skills sessions, Whanakitanga Whare have been participating in fortnightly team sport activities facilitated by the energetic Youthtown team.

Here are some digital photo's of some of the activities we enjoyed doing already this year!

Gymnastics

We are loving doing gymnastics. This term we get to travel by bus to get there and back. We look forward to it every week. We are learning a wide range of activities. We get to do floor excersices, beams, trampoline and also jump in the foam pit. We love it!

Papakura Ko Tui Tui and Pink Shirt Day - Anti Bullying Day

Papakura Ko Tui Tui fund raised and organised some pajamas for our students. The students were very grateful and a lot of them decided to wear these to our Pink Shirt Day to help raise for Anti Bullying Day. The students love their onesies, just in time for winter. Thank you to all responsible for this generous donation. We really appreciate it!
And we find small ways to give back! The teachers all dressed in pink too!

Our Inquiry Learning 'Wanderings' About Flight:

"How does a helicopter stay in the air?" - asked by Nepia.
"How does a jet plane's engine work?" - asked by Shania.
"How do you fly a hot air balloon?"  - asked by Shelby.
"How do they keep or fix the planes when they've finished moving people?"  - asked by Colsey.
"How long can planes fly for?" - asked by Lahrenzo.
"How do firework rockets fly?" - asked by Onyx.
"Why did the Wright brothers want to invent the first plane?" - asked by Lyric.
"Why is a space rocket bigger than an aeroplane?" - asked by Fatu.
"Why do aeroplanes need an engine?" - asked by Denzel.
"Why doesn't gravity stop planes from flying up so high?" - asked by Chaye.