Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Super Questions!

We watched this video to help us practise our super questioning skills! Below are two of our BEST questions from Pow Wow Pals. We tried to think of the 'ramifications' of a leap year - that's the 'effects' of what it would mean for things.


1. Why is the world slowing by 0.005 seconds a rotation each year?

2. Why is the day for a leap year the 29th February?

Do you have any answers for our questions? - you can comment below!

Monday, February 27, 2012

Learning Word of the Week - Questioning!


This week we'll be starting our Skill Development (SD Project). We'll be picking a brand new skill to learn for the month of March - something we've not really done before. We'll be putting what we've learnt about self improvement into practise.

This week's learning word is 'Questioning'. We need to ask some questions when we plan, practice, reflect and practice again - things like what, how, who, when and where.

Use this website to learn how to be a better questioner! Tree Octopus

Friday, February 24, 2012

Our Tree is Alive!

Today our Kauri Tree sprouted some real leaves - it must have happened over night while we were asleep! Actually, we made the leaves and finally got some time to put them up. We all think it looks MUCH better than a brown stump in the middle of our room.

We'll be adding glittery leaves to our tree when we achieve our goals this year. I wonder how many 'success leaves' we'll grow?

Our Reflection game

Kauri's word of the week is reflection so we all played a game on reflecting. We got into groups and stood in a line behind cones across from another group. Then each group got a batten and ran it over to the group across from us. We tried to make the best time of getting it over to the other group.

We went from a time of 35 seconds to 9 seconds and it all came down to our reflection on how we beat our time and improved ourselves! The negative stuff (mistakes) is that we were too far away the first time we played it. That is why we got 35 seconds and people where dropping the batten.
The good stuff is that we reflected and we went closer to getting a better time! We had fun playing this game and now we are getting the idea of what Reflection means!

By Hannah F, Sophie S and Brook.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Are you up to the Jibboo Job challenge?


Parent Homework Survey - Results!

There is a very consistent message about our homework survey! Let's make some summary statements in the comments below, Kauri.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Swimming Self Improvement

We thought we'd share some videos and a photo of the progress we're making at swimming. It fits perfectly with our inquiry on 'Self Improvement.'

It's great when we are able to SEE ourselves swimming because it helps us gives ourselves feedback and work on our next steps.


In this picture we are working on swimming underwater using breaststroke arms. Can you see Mac down the far end, waving his arm? He swam the whole width of the pool with ONE breath! Well done, Mac!

Here you can see us working on our backstroke - thumbs up and fingers down. I can see some great straight arms and long legs, too!


We'll be swimming for the rest of this week and into next week, too. Hopefully we'll all see some great progress and be able to reflect on how much we've IMPROVED!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Learning Word of the Week!

GoAnimate.com: Reflection+in+the+Kitchen%21 by markherring


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Statistics Investigations

On Friday we finished publishing our stats investigations in the form of 'infographics'. We decided to use popplet.com which makes very easy posters of words and pictures. Here is one of our posters. You can see their summary statement of their investigation at the bottom right of the infographic.
You can see all or our infographics on our learning blogs - click on the link in our side bar. We'll be reflecting on what we've learnt about statistics investigations, as well as lots of things we discovered about internet connects, logins, static images, research and even working to a deadline!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Active Listening

Here's another chance for you to practice your active listening skills. Watch this story VERY carefully and use your listening skills.

BUT, here's the catch - the PURPOSE for you to watch and listen this story is that you will retell this story in your own words afterwards!





Now rewrite this story with as much detail as you can - the characters, the events as they happen in order, maybe even quoting what the characters say.

As an extra - can you explain what the message or moral of this story is? What did you learn from the story?

Monday, February 13, 2012

Burying our time capsule


Today we put our letters to our future selves and our special objects in the two containers that made up our time capsule. We are looking forward to digging them up on our last day of school in December and reading our letters from the past.


We made sure that we placed the capsule in a spot that had some distinctive features (landmarks) and in a water proof container. We also had a surprise when we were digging the hole. Sophie found an old glass bottle and with some more digging we unearthed a pot lid and some other crockery. (I feel an archeological dig coming up soon!)

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Learning with... Purpose!

These students are explaining what learning targets are. Can we describe what it means to learn with purpose (our word of the week) and what our learning targets are?
This week we will be posting 3 learning targets on our learning blogs. 1 learning target, a writing target and a maths target. Have a read of your classmates targets. Can you suggest things they could do to help them reach them? Is there something you did that helped you?

Our tree is coming to life...and some discus action

On Thursday we started to create the leaves that will adorn our Kauri tree. We decided thatreal life Kauri leaves were too small to make so we went for a more traditional general shape and colour. We learnt how to use a reference to create realistic texture and colour.
Google gave us lots of examples to brainstorm the right colours and textures to use an we got stuck in. In week 3 we'll get the leaves onto the tree so it doesn't look so wintery!

We're also spending some time mastering our technique for the upcoming athletics day. Thanks to all the parents who are able to give their expert advice in the afternoons. Here, Jack and Ben can be seen in front of camera letting rip on the discus.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Athletics Self Improvement

Today we started training for our athletics champs coming up very soon. This fits VERY nicely with our 'Self Improvement' focus for our inquiry this term.

Here's a video of our first session at the high jump. We all came away from the time with Mrs Sinclair with at least one thing we needed to improve to be able to jump higher. What's yours?



Monday, February 6, 2012

Learning Word of the Week!


Here's our first Learning Word of the Week These will be key words that will help us become better learners. What does this week's word have to do with learning? (Hint - it doesn't necessarily relate to PE)

How+to+Build+Stamina+ -- powered by LIVESTRONG.COM

Watch this together and brainstorm how stamina could help us.


What will you build better stamina in?

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Team Kauri Parent Survey

Friday, February 3, 2012

Our first Assembly.

We were the first class to host our school assembly today. We shared some of our 'Letters to me in the future.' Here's Ben W reading a snippet of his letter.


Thanks for a great start to the year, Team. I can just tell we are going to have an awesome year of adventures together!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Photo Finish!


Today marked the start of our PE training for our athletics day coming up later in the term. We've been learning simple body posture and sprinting techniques for our running events.

In such a short time frame we could notice the differences in our sprint times just by standing in the correct starting position. It even created quite a stir as to who came first during one of our Super Teams race (Hannah and Ben pictured right, "Sorry Ben, Hannah took out that race").


Our Time Capsule

What is a time capsule?


Here is a success criteria for our letter we will stash in our capsule - a letter to me in the future!

1. Correct spelling and punctuation
2. Questions, predictions and some likes / dislikes for me now
3. Write in paragraphs
4. Include a photo of your height now.
5. Your best effort with presentation

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Let's get creative.

For our first team work activity this year we formed groups of 6 and made these name tags for our tote trays. We had to assess ourselves at the end for how well we listened, problem solved, compromised and stayed on task
It wasn't easy! Each group had only one camera, some of them were flat (on purpose..hehe) and some groups made a lot of mess. But we like our results.

Our First Class Newsletter!