Exploring Maori Place Names

This week for Maori Language week, we created multiple DLO's, to teach others different information about Maori. Haylee, Taheesha and I worked collaboratively to complete this activity. In our DLO, we included different places in New Zealand, with the meaning and what we found interesting. A place around New Zealand I found the most interesting, was Waitanga, meaning weeping water or noisy. I really enjoyed doing this activity.

Taupanga | Maori Language Week

Since this week is Maori Language week, Haylee, Taheesha and I created an interactive app where you can learn some basic words in Maori as it is a challenge that was set. In our app we’ve included some time words, greetings, days of the week and months of the year in Maori, we’ve also included a small quiz at the end where you can test your knowledge on Maori. We’ve enjoyed learning some words in Maori and enjoyed creating this app for others to learn the language.

Treaty Of Waitangi Collaborative Summary

LI: To identify key words in a text and use these words to collaboratively summarise the events in the text. This week for reading, we created a collaborative summary about the Treaty of Waitangi. First we read a story about the history of the Treaty of Waitangi and made some notes for our summary. We then answered the learning conversations and created our own questions for our group. Something I found interesting was how over 500 Maori cheifs had signed the treaty.

Kiwi Can Reflection

LI: To include and engage others by being sensitive to their feelings.  This week was our first session of Kiwi Can with Mrs Mac and Ms. Grace. The theme for this term was positive relationships, fairness, and Fair play. We started with an energiser, called Change Places. For this activity, Ms Grace called out some things that we might like and if we liked it, we would change places with a different person. After we did our energiser, we talked about words related to empathy, which were courtesy, common sense, and consideration.  Some examples to show courtesy with words are having manners, being kind, and being polite. Some other examples to show courtesy without words are hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language. To show common sense, you make wise choices and trust your instincts. Some ways to show consideration is thinking about others and how people may feel. Lastly, we talked about some ways to show empathy which are, being kind, supportive and being considerate. After that, we did an activity, where we acted out the positive or negative ways of showing empathy. In our group our play was about someone crying because she was bullied, so we decided to cheer her up.

Explanation | Plastic Pollution

Why plastic pollution is a problem for our coastlines?

Did you know, each year over 1 million marine mammals are suffering due to the plastic we are wasting? This is not okay! These marine mammals have been suffering from plastic, whether they mistake plastic for food, or even get captured in it, which makes them not able to digest. Plastic has a large effect towards our marine mammals. Plastic is a large, serious issue in our environment! Would you like it if your favourite beach was filled with plastic?

According to ecotricity, scientists have estimated that about 8 million tonnes of plastic have ended up in our oceans every year. The number of plastic waste ending up in oceans could decrease up to a higher number, unless we do something about it! The majority of plastic that lies on the ground ends up in drains, which then leads to our oceans, lakes and rivers. There are New Zealanders out there who have access to facilities for plastic, but why aren’t we doing any better for our environment?

Did you know that plastic takes about 1,000 years just to biodegrade! Plastic doesn’t actually fully degrade, it only disintegrates into smaller particles. About 252,000 tons of plastic are also headed into our landfills every year. A project “Love Your Coast” is one of the projects that are acting now to help have a healthier and cleaner future. Love Your Coast has organised groups of people from around New Zealand to help clean up our oceans and beaches, so our next few generations could be better.

We should act now, so we could have a cleaner future and environment. You could save the lives of marine mammals, by picking up at least a few pieces of rubbish!

Giovanni, Sione, Sakina, RJ, Afa, Karlos, Jayden

LI: To collaboratively structure and write an explanation. This week for writing, we wrote explanations to practise, for our assessments next week. In groups we wrote an explanation about why plastic pollution is a problem for our coastlines and marine mammals. We researched information to add to our explanations, to make it more detailed. Something that I found interesting was that plastic takes 1,000 years to biodegrade and how 252,000 tons of plastic are on landfills every year. 

Thinking Teams | Maths Questions

Today in maths, we worked in our thinking teams to find the answer to maths questions. In the photo you will see my group, "Less, Same, More", working out the number value of our group name. To do this we used addition strategies and our place value knowledge. In the second activity we worked as a group to put the population numbers in order, from the highest to lowest. To do this we used our place value knowledge.

National Current Events

This week as a group, we explored the national current events. In my group were Pouvi, Afa, Makaili and Haylee. Not only did we explore the current events, but we also learnt the different types of current events. Together we read articles about national news and which articles matched the best with each type of current events. On a google map, we plotted the locations of where the current event stories took place, with a short explanation of the article/story.

Athletics Day

Last week, was athletics day. For athletics we did fun activities to verse against each team in our year or class group. We were each in different colour groups. The colour group were green, blue, red and yellow. I was in green, with Victoria, Chavda, Alex, Matthew and Karlos. The activities we did was the egg and spoon race, rob the nest, rock paper scissors, long jump, discus, shotput, frisbee and, bean bag race and the sponge game.  After we did the activities we did sprints to see who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd. We could wear mufti in our team colour or anything else. For me it was really fun playing all these activities. All the activities were really fun, especially the sponge game and rob the nest.

Waltzing Matilda

This week in reading we explored a famous Australian ballad poem called Waltzing Matilda, by a famous poet, Banjo Paterson. This poem was about a swagman who stole a sheep, but the police came to catch him. Instead of going to jail, the swagman jumped in the waterhole. To learn and understand more about the poem, we wrote a summary and the main idea of Waltzing Matilda. For the main ideas there were 3 reasons to back up the main idea. There were some old words in the poem, which were: waltzing (walking on foot), matilda (swag bag), swagman (seasonal worker), jumbuck (sheep), and billabong (waterhole).

Translations Of The Solar System In Maori

This week in inquiry, with Ms. Anderson, in partners, we created a DLO showing the translations of the solar system in Maori. My partner was Farzana. In our DLO we included attributed images of the planets, interesting facts and the translations in Maori. After we created the DLO we started to record it. Farzana and I struggled to say the Maori names and recorded a few times because we were struggling, but we finally finished it.

Space Tuarangi|Prior Knowledge

This week we moved to a new teacher for our Space inquiry. This time we were with Ms. Anderson. We were using our prior knowledge about spce. Prior knowledge is when you use your information you already know about. In groups of LS1 and LS2 we wrote our prior knowledge about space. I was with Farzana and Xavier. After we recorded our prior knowledge, we watched a video about space. The video helped us build on our prior knowledge.