Celebrations around the world: Chanukah

Find out about this Jewish holiday/celebration here: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/default_cdo/jewish/Hanukkah.htm

Fundercoaster

Have a quick read of this blogpost and then follow the links at the bottom to play the fundercoaster!

Yellow Group Reading

Hi Yellow group!

Here is the link to the video about Irene Besse...she's a pretty amazing lady!

Think about how this video connects to the article you read yesterday.

Purple Group Reading

WALT make connections between different texts on the same topic

Today you have two texts; one is an article in the Journal (in your box) called Motocross. The other is a Kiwi Kids News article about another Motocross rider and her epic fail.

Kiwi Kids News article: http://kiwikidsnews.co.nz/early-celebration-leads-to-crash/
The video of her fail (the video links in the article don't work): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czLStmuLI38

First swim of the season!!

Woohoo!!!

The myth of the eggshells

Yesterday we tested the last story that we had heard about snails. We heard that snails won't cross a border of eggshells so we set up a test.

As you can see the snails don't care about eggshells, they will crawl over them with no problems!

We call this myth BUSTED!

Ice ice baby!!

We had so much fun ice skating on Friday! As well as being a heap of fun it was a very good illustration of a quote that we have focused on recently "A ship in the harbour is safe, but that's not what a ship is for". We found that in order to improve we had to be willing to take a risk!

Busting snail myths!

We heard some stories about how to keep snails out of the garden...
And we set out to test these stories...are they myths or are they plausible?

"We heard that snails won't crawl over salt."
This was our setup...



We wanted to see whether the snails would cross the circle of salt to get to the cabbage.

It turns out they won't go near the salt...they avoided it. We say this myth is PLAUSIBLE!


"We heard that snails won't crawl over coffee grounds."
So we tried the same setup as the salt but this time we used coffee grounds...



It turns out they are very happy to crawl across coffee grounds! We say this myth is BUSTED!


"We heard the snails are attracted to beer."
In our test we gave them a choice of cabbage or beer...



It turns out they were attracted to the beer but they wouldn't get right in. We are calling this myth PLAUSIBLE!

Snails everywhere!!

Last term we learned a lot about pests and we thought of lots of ways to keep them out of our class garden. We have lots of cool ideas to show you in Week 5!

We have some stories that we have heard about snails and we want to be Myth Busters and test those ideas. We watched the real Myth Busters testing their idea about elephants and mice and we have designed our own experiments to test our stories about snails.

You can watch the Myth Busters here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oA77tVNKtc

Today we observed the snails very closely and made drawings of them:

Hamilton Cricket visiting

Today we were super lucky to have a visit from Francisco (from Hamilton Cricket). He taught us how to catch with our hands like a nest and we played a cool game of cricket-baseball!

Thinking about flag design

Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tENhOnfD82M

What are the 5 principles of good design?

Explain briefly (summarise) what each of these principles means.

What does it mean when it says that good flag design is 'reductive'?

Why does a flag design need to be simple?

Why do you think flags are always primary colours?

Here's another useful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab9DaiiQfyw

Thinking about flag design

Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tENhOnfD82M

What are the 5 principles of good design?

Explain briefly (summarise) what each of these principles means.

What does it mean when it says that good flag design is 'reductive'?

Why does a flag design need to be simple?

Why do you think flags are always primary colours?

Celery and pink dye

We thought that the plant would suck the dye up through its veins in 5 minutes.

It took ten minutes and then when we cut it we saw the dye in the veins...

So now we know that the veins do carry stuff round the plant 

Garden Quiz

Here's a fun quiz to test your gardening knowledge:

http://www.yates.co.nz/kids-gardening/fun-and-games/garden-greenie-quiz

It's Mid-Autumn Festival in China

 Xhang Lao Shi shared some of the ways they celebrate Mid Autumn Festival in China. She told us the story of Chang-E and she shared moon cake with us!!

Finding out about what plants need to grow

Check out this interactive game:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/gamesactivities/plantsgrow.html

1. List the things that a plant absolutely HAS to have to grow.
2. Summarise what you have learned in your book. Use the heading 'How Plants Grow'

Useful links for animal reports

Looking for more information about how to keep your chosen pest out of the school garden? Try these links...

Slugs and snails

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNjPKwjvLhk

http://www.organiclesson.com/how-to-get-rid-of-slugs-in-gardens/

Birds

http://visihow.com/Keep_Birds_Out_of_Your_Garden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HrVOYj7Zz0

Green Group

Good morning team!

I found this very interesting website that gives you a different perspective on hedgehogs in the garden...

/http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/animal-pests-a-z/hedgehogs/

1. Read the webpage
2. Complete a second synthesis egg
3. Write a paragraph that explains how your ideas about hedgehogs have changed. Use sequencing vocab like 'firstly, secondly, then, later, after that'

Links for recipe reading

Here is the link you need to the Nerdy Nummies video...find out how to make a giant  'Five Nights at Freddies' themed cupcake. Use the information in the video to write out the recipe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDpUB88QmnM


And here is the link to bite.co.nz that you will need to use to search for recipes that use your 'star' ingredient for the MasterChef Silverdale competition

http://www.bite.co.nz/

Derek Redmond; the Olympian who never gave up

This is a very inspirational story...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjkBPthoYVg

Week 2, Group 2 Reading links

1. Write today's date and WALT into your Reading Activity book
2. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLsG2GrrmA
3. Watch it again and write the name of each 'Habit' into your Reading Activity book. Write them down the page and leave a line in between each one.
4. Next to each one write what you think it means

After you've worked with Mrs Inglis...

• Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IySCpyy297A

• Add to your notes about what each 'habit' means as you get more info from this video

Olympics 2016

Questions about the history of the Olympics

http://www.knowitall.org/content/history-olympics-ancient-and-modern

https://www.olympic.org/ancient-olympic-games/history

http://www.penn.museum/sites/olympics/olympicorigins.shtml


Questions about the point of the Olympics

https://www.reference.com/sports-active-lifestyle/purpose-modern-olympic-games-aae486f34a25253

https://www.reference.com/sports-active-lifestyle/purpose-olympic-games-42539e7709604dd5

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/first-olympics1.htm


Questions about which sports get included and who decides

Page 9 of this pdf: https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Documents/Document-Set-Teachers-The-Main-Olympic-Topics/The-Modern-Olympic-Games.pdf

http://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/sport-selection.htm

http://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/255/how-does-a-sport-become-an-olympic-sport


Questions about who participates in the Olympics

https://www.rio2016.com/en/athletes

New Zealand Olympic team: http://www.olympic.org.nz/games/rio-2016/

http://registration.olympic.org/en/faq/detail/id/41

=======================

The main Rio 2016 website: https://www.olympic.org/olympic-games


An amazing resource to learn all sorts of cool stuff about the Olympics...

https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Documents/Document-Set-Teachers-The-Main-Olympic-Topics/The-Modern-Olympic-Games.pdf

Link for group 3

Here is the link to find out more about the Maungatautari sanctuary: http://www.maungatrust.org/

Red Sock Day!

When your class is named for Sir Peter Blake you kind of have to get into the buzz of Red Sock Day! Here is Room 11 celebrating the awesomeness of Sir Peter Blake and feeling lucky :)

More amazing New Zealanders

Sir Peter Jackson

Biography

Slightly out of date list of things he has done here.

A student named Slater interviews Sir Peter Jackson here.

Lydia Ko

Stuff has a list of 10 things you should know about her

A biography of Lydia Ko

More info in her own words

Sir Edmund Hillary

Timeline

More info about what he did

another useful site

information about Everest

Lorde

A list of things to know about Lorde

A profile of Lorde from The Herald

Something interesting Lorde did recently

Maori Language Week - Te Wiki o the reo Maori

Group 1 & 2:

http://kiwikidsnews.co.nz/maori-language-week/

Group 3 & 4:

http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/81773787/Supermarkets-celebrate-Maori-Language-Week

中文 Survey

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Zhang老师 has asked that we please follow the link below and fill out the survey for her.

Remember to read the instructions carefully, answer ALL of the questions and don't forget to click on SUBMIT when you are done.

谢谢你们！

Click here for the survey

Topic driven reading

This week we are doing challenges in Reading, the challenge is to remember and understand as much as we can about our topic. We had a choice of four topics and we chose the one that was most interesting to us. Later in the week we are working to wards creating something new based on our topic.

We have done lots of reading and discussing...

Learning about Matariki

Lots of groups have been doing lots oflearning  about Matariki this week. Group 2 have been reading several different articles about Matariki and synthesizing the information into a group brainstorm. The boys raced the girls to learn the most and it was a draw!

Group 4 have been watching a video  about weaving and have used that information to make a kete for their Matariki feast...they had to do lots of problem solving!

Sharing our reports in assembly

This morning some of us had the opportunity to share the introductions of our reports with the whole school in assembly!

Snacks and ladders with Renee from Project Energise

We had lots of fun with Renee from Project Energise this morning. She was teaching us about healthy food choices especially snacks...we played a giant game of snacks and ladders!

A new face in Room 11

We are very happy to have the awesome Muss Thompson (Natalie) in room 11 for the rest of the term. She has been teaching us some cool maths games. This one is called 'I have, who has?'

Sir Peter Blake's legacy

Find out more about Sir Peter Blake's legacy here: http://www.sirpeterblaketrust.org

Soccer skills taster

Today we were super lucky to have a session with the guys from Olympic Soccer Training...

Writing a review

This is a great article about how to write a review (or an evaluation) of something.

Visitors from Zirka Circus at today's assembly!

What an amazing performance!

Making Anzac biscuits

Group 1 and 2 have been reading about Anzac biscuits. Today they got to make them!

Learning numbers in Chinese

Today we are working in groups to guess the prices of things...we have to say the price in Chinese!

Time to hatch

It is time for the butterflies to hatch. One has hatched already and Maybe more have a couple more days to go. I think 4 are ready to go and two are still on the way.

- Hanna