Fun with bubbles!  

Skateboard School!

Oh my gosh, skateboarding was fantastic!



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Life Ed arrived. We learnt about keeping ourselves healthy and how our bodies work. Of course Harold popped in too.

Yay - swimming survival skills with Westwave 

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Bee rescue - the bee is drying out on the table - look at his long tongue so it can reach the nectar in flowers !  

We had so much fun researching bees. Honey bees are super-important pollinators for flowers. This means they help plants grow! Bees transfer pollen between the male and female parts of the flowers, allowing plants to grow seeds and fruit. We became so obsessed with bees we started rescuing them from the school pool. We were very fortunate to be invited to see Billy's family's beehive.

Fishing quotas are part of Sustainability.  Fishing quotas are a limit on the number of fish and shellfish that can be harvested. It gives the small fish and shellfish a chance to breed. Quotas prevent breeds of fish/shellfish becoming extinct.

This year our topic is Sustainability. It is a topic that is super important for all of us. Sustainable ​means​

Room 4 is a class of 32 students focused on caring for our environment. 

​Welcome to Room 4 2019

Now for the firing and painting.

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Clay day - it was fun.  

Another exciting day.  The whole school got together to watch Mr B and the teachers showing reversible and irreversible chemical reactions.   Thanks Mr B for the noise, flames and explosions. 
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Finally it was time for the Bug Lab and it was fantastic!  We had great fun learning about the insects, playing the games and killing the hornet!

After the native trail we went around the zoo looking at the other animals and working out the adaptations they have to live in their natural environments.

Wow what an exciting start to the term - a trip to the zoo. Thanks to the zoo, The Warehouse and Ritchies buses who sponsored us.  We went on the Native trail and a teacher from the zoo taught us about tuatara, kiwi and the wonderful native critters we have.  We also learnt about pests and the need to provide for and protect our native species.


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Term 2

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Our art is spectacular.  We have made beautiful pictures of seahorses and octopuses and have done a lot of research on them.  They are truly amazing creatures and our teachers and all of us have learnt such a lot. 


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The final lesson in our water safety classes was down at Westwave.  We had a play in the wave pool first and then our safety lesson which involved learning about and using lifejackets and buoyancy aids.

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We have been studying honeybees and have learnt what amazing, precious and vitally important creatures honeybees are.  Mrs Ayache brought a frame from a beehive to school so we could see how bees make honey in the hive. Lareen gave us some honeycomb which we all had a taste of - most of us thought YUM!

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We've made some amazing box creatures this term. Our brief was to use the boxes from our stationery packs to make an animal - real or imaginery. We have made some stunning creatures. It was fun making them and was another STEAM activity involving maths, design, technology and working together. Look at the progress of our designs.

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STEAM activity in Maths - measuring scallop shells to work out if they are legal (100mm or more) or illegal and then designing a gauge for measuring scallops when diving.

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We had a visit from Jacob's quail - so soft, tiny and fragile.

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Happy Easter everybody

Another really funny group came to school and presented 'The Gift' to us.  We laughed and laughed!

More STEAM as we construct purpose built boxes for various products.

​We found out the glue has long flexible molecules in it called polymers. These polymer molecules slide past each other when it is a liquid.
When the borax in water solution is added to the glue solution, the borax helps link the long polymer molecules to each other so they cannot move and flow as easily.
When enough polymer molecules get hooked together in the right way, the glue solution changes from being very liquidy to a rubbery kind of stuff!

OH MY GOSH - this is such fun!  Slime expert, Trinity, teaches us how to make slime.  What amazingly different effects you can get by adding soap or shaving cream and the borax solution is just incredible as it changes the consistency of the mixture.

Some action shots of Cosmo and Room 4 playing soccer.

Another STEAM activity as we learn about 2d and 3d shapes in Maths.

We had some really cool groups visit the school.  The first was a pair from England and they had their own kids show on TV. After a really hilarious show they took the Year 5 and 6 students for a workshop on movie making and making a television show. It opened our eyes to the jobs in TV and the time it takes to film a 15 second segment for TV. These are the photos of the two guys who took it and us giving it a go.

Week 3 Our first STEAM challenge was to build a maze out of boxes, programme a beebot (cute little robotic bee) and get it through the maze. It was quite challenging coding it accurately for a successful run through of the maze.
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We have enjoyed learning through STEAM lessons. STEAM  integrates two or more curriculum subjects from science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.  STEAM gives us opportunities for creativity, critical thinking and problem solving as we work together. 

We have had a great start to the year with swimming lessons from Westwave, cricket and soccer lessons and fun learning experiences in the class.
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​Welcome to Room 4, Term 1 2018.  Let us tell you about some of the learning, fun and special events we have on.

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2018

​2017

​Check us out!  We are skateboarding!  Learning lots about foot placement, pushing, turning, where to look - it's kinda tricky stuff!

This is the art that we have done throughout the year that is all over our classroom

We are creating fish and creatures from clay, working to make forms, adding texture and details.

Cosmo bringing smiles and some Easter goodies to share.

Our first practice with Ti Rakau - we think we did a pretty good job!

Rooms 3 and 4 wanted to know more about Monarch butterflies, their life cycle and why some years there aren't very many Monarchs around.  We invited Madam Butterfly to visit us.  She answered our questions, dressed Mr Cartwright up as a butterfly, taught us lots of new words (like proboscis and metamorphosis) and showed us different types of butterflies.  We learnt lots of interesting facts about butterflies and had fun.

2016

Fun designing creations with the blocks.

After lots of Olympic Games research we decided to use our research to make board games.  We started from scratch making dice, boards, boxes and question cards.  It's been a lot of fun and now we are up to playing them.  The criteria we used to evaluate the board game process was working together as a team, planning and design, writing clear instructions, identifying and correcting faults, presentation and fun to play.

We enjoyed having Melissa Ingram share with us about her experiences in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.  Our reports will tell you more about her.

Our focus this term is Olympic Games.  The Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words, Citius - Altius - Fortius which means Faster - Higher - Stronger.

Term 2

Term 2 started with a trip to the Stardome Observatory as our concept this term in Matariki and Beyond.  We were amazed at the size of the universe.  Some pictures that have astounded us are;

The art project this term was circle art.  Our learning intention was to create a beautiful picture by observing through a porthole.  We were really pleased with the results.

Waitemata Football Club has helped us improve at our soccer skills by teaching ball skills and games to reinforce these skills.  We have enjoyed this so much and were sad when it ended.  Our reports tell you more about it.

With all the rainy weather we tried writing about how we feel in the rain.  Have a read of our stories.

We are also getting excited about camp and we had a meeting with our parents about it.  We will keep you posted.

Term 1

Welcome to Room 4.  We are a Year 5/6 class and our teachers are Barbara Ayache and Deb Gill.  

Let's tell you about the fun we have had this term.  The focus in Term 1 was 'The Big Book-Off'.'  We had lots of fun activities and challenges with books and reading.  We had visits from authors and illustrators and learnt lots about writing stories.  We had a school-wide read-a-thon to raise money for new library books.

Some of the terms highlights were;

• Ross Kinnaird, illustrator of 'I Need A New Bum' and 'Dr Grundie's Undies', who drew an elephant in a tutu with a crown.  He also drew a rabbicorn which the children thought would be a nice cross between a rabbit and a unicorn.  He was very funny.

• Apirana Taylor told us some wonderful Maori stories and played bone flutes.  He read us a really sad whale story.  Apirana took a writers' workshop which some of us were fortunate enough to attend.

Mark Summerset - who wrote a very funny book called 'Baa Baa Smart Sheep', explained how he had his books published and how his wife did the illustrations.  He livs on Waiheke Island with his wife and son, his books are published world-wide.

​Have  a read of some of our book reviews.

We were lucky enough to have 10 free swimming lessons from the Waterhold and just about all of us improved.  Thank you Waterhold for teaching us skills to save our lives when in the water.

We have created some spectacular art.  First we drew, dyed and highlighted some very colourful arachnids.  We learnt that arachnids are not insects.  Arachnids have two parts to their body and eight legs, and insects have three body parts and six legs.

Our second project was painting a parrot, trying very hard to blend colours.

A trip to the Cascades was a great finish to the term.  We learnt about the traditional use of the forest by Maori and measured the quality of the water in the stream.