Space Visit...

We all hopped on a bus and travelled into Wellington to the Space Place which can be found in the Carter Observatory.  

We sat in big, red comfy chairs in a cool cinema and watched an awesome video that played up in the ceiling!  

We started at the Sun and flew through our Solar System.  We learned that not all moons are the same, which planets could have life on them and other facts.  

After the video the ceiling lit up with stars.  We learned how to find the Southern Cross, the Scorpion and a few more.  Our favourite was the Pleiades (Matariki stars) because soon it will be the Māori New Year!

We learnt more about the 8 planets that orbit our sun (which is a humungous star!).  

After the two sessions with our guides, we were able to look at, and play with the exhibitions.  Everyone loved being able to touch and play with everything.

Reference:  http://www.museumswellington.org.nz/space-place/

Solar System Inquiry...

In Room 10 we are beginning our inquiry around Earth and the Solar System.  

During our inquiry we will find answers to student generated questions and carry out some fun experiments.  

Along the way we will cover the points listed below, and any other student driven inquiry that is not listed here:

• To know that the Earth is part of the Solar System

• To know that the Earth takes 365 days and 8 hours to orbit The Sun

• To understand that The Earth revolves around its own axis once every day (24 HOURS) and how this gives us day and night

• To know that the Solar System includes The Earth, The Sun and nine planets
• To know the average distances between the planets

• To know that The Sun is the most important part of the Solar system because it keeps the planets in their orbits

• To know how the height of The Sun in the sky varies with the seasons

• To understand how and why the moon appears to change shape

• To know the different moon phases

• To know that The Earths moon takes 27.5 days to orbit The Earth

Place Value Practice...

In Room 10 we are practising and consolidating our knowledge of 'Place Value'.    

We can expand a number, for example:  

542 is the same as 500 + 40 + 2  =  542

500 = 5 groups of 100

40 = 4 groups of 10

2 = two ones

This knowledge is really important because. it helps us understand the meaning of a number.  If people just used numbers randomly, no one would know which numbers people meant.  You need place value to understand the order of numbers as well.

Below this picture you will find links to cool 'Place Value' games.

We support each other with our learning, developing our ability to collaborate with others and share our knowledge.

Here are some links to practice 'place value'
with your child:

Place Value Hockey:    

http://www.abcya.com/place_value_hockey.htm

Online Place Value Games:  

http://www.education.com/games/place-value/?gclid=CP6xwODb9swCFQsIvAodLv4Eyw&gclsrc=aw.ds

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/place_value_games.html

Memphis Reading

Memphis will read you the blurb from the book 'The Bad Book' written by Andy Griffiths.

Create, Play & Share... Kahoot!

Create, play and share fun learning games for any subject, for all ages, for free!
In Room 10 we are always looking for ways to practice and share our skills. Today we learned about Kahoot and used this to challenge each other with our 7x Table.... you should have heard them!  It was great fun, and we will use it for other subjects as well.  

Below this picture you can learn more about Kahoot and why it is such a great tool to help students of any age create, play and share what they know.

Create:

Create a fun learning game in minutes (we call these ‘kahoots’), made from a series of multiple choice questions. Add videos, images and diagrams to your questions to amplify engagement!

Play:

Kahoots are best played in a group setting, like a classroom. Players answer on their own devices, while games are displayed on a shared screen to unite the lesson – creating a ‘campfire moment’ – encouraging players to look up

Share:

Social learning promotes discussion and pedagogical impact… whether players are in the same room or on the other side of the globe! After a game, encourage players to create and share their own kahoots to deepen understanding, mastery and purpose.

Reference:  Text retrieved from https://getkahoot.com/how-it-works

@GetKahoot

Matatia Reading

Matatia will read the blurb on the back of a book called Esio Trot by Roald Dahl.

Room 10 Cross Country 2016!

This Thursday Room 10 students competed in the Middle/Senior School cross country.  

Here are are a selection of action shots taken of Room 10 during the cross country event:

                       We had 7 of our students make it into the 
               inter-school cross county to be held later in the year.

Maori Learning

Coming soon

Matariki - Student Collaboration!

During their first week back at school we hooked into our prior knowledge about Matariki, and then combined this with some new knowledge by each group reading a different journal about Matariki.  

The students wanted to share their knowledge with their buddy class in Hong Kong.  They decided to use Google Slides after collaborating on a Google Doc to share their understandings during their reading sessions.

Groups of students working on the same Google Slide after collaborating on Google Docs.

Below is a series of slideshows from the students.   You will notice that the slideshows are not perfect, but provide an important snapshot of where their learning is at this moment in time.

During this process, students had to problem solve how to take a screen shot of their art and then embed into a Google slide.  With their teachers help, students were able to make connections to key words that would help them find the answers.  One search was worded:  'Screenshot with Chromebook'

Then we needed to problem solve how we were going to embed the Google Slide into a blog post.  With some detective work, we found you could publish the Google Slide to the web and copy a code that we then embedded into the blog post.  We had to change to HTML format to put in the code so it would work.

We also learnt how to reduce the size of our Google Slides so they would fit on the blog page.  All in all, a whole lot of reading, writing, art, ICT skills were developed this week and we are very proud of our efforts.

As always, we love your positive feedback, so please leave a comment below.

Maths Challenge - Plotting Coordinates!

Today in Room 10 Group 3 we were learning about how to plot coordinates on a grid and join these to make a 2D shape. 

After some discussion, instruction and a little practise the team decided two of the boys would go head to head, to see who could complete the challenge first.... 

At the end of the challenge they realised they hadn't read the part that asked them to make the shape symmetrical.   Once they realised this, one team was able to quickly turn their shape into several triangles.

Watch the video below to see how it rolled out.

The team on the right at the last minute was able to make their shape symmetrical.

May The Fourth Be WIth You....

On May the 4th this week our school had a dress up with a Star Wars theme.

Here are three of our girls looking suitably attired!

Princess Leia, Padmé Amidala & a Jedi!

Thank You NZ Opera For Bringing Us The Elixer Of Love Opera!

Today we were lucky enough to watch an opera called "Fish 'n' Chips" by New Zealand Opera.  To watch the actors singing see our video at the bottom of our post.

We loved the opera so much we wrote thank you letters.... here are a few......

Maria @ Rangikura

Turua @ Rangikura

Malcolm @ Rangikura

Visit our student blogs to see more thank you notes from students in Room 10.

Blog contributors to this post were:

Maria @ Rangikura

Turua @ Rangikura

Malcolm @ Rangikura

Video taken by:  Izzy @ Rangikura