Musical Madness!

Today we went out to the field and created our own reed instruments. To do this, we held a single blade of grass tightly between our thumbs, placed our thumbs to our lips and blew. When we did this, the blade of grass vibrated, causing a note! We even realised that you can change the pitch of the note by changing the position of your lips and air pressure over the blade of grass. We also found that it was easier to create a note with a wider blade of grass.
 It took us a while to grasp the concept. but some of us are getting better with practice! Perhaps we could create an orchestra with our home-made reed instruments!?

Cybersmart

Today we talked about being cybersmart in the holidays. We talked about the importance of having at least one adult who we can go to if we have any issues online. We went away in groups to come up with slogans about this. Here are the ones we came up with:

Film festival is fast approaching!

Where has this term gone!? Next Friday, our film festival movie is due in, and we have been very busy in Room 10 getting our filming done! This is not any Film Festival we are preparing for. This is the 10th annual Manaiakalani Film Festival! Wow!! We would love to tell you what our film is about, but that would ruin the surprise! To keep you guessing, here are some (not very helpful) hints...

Hints: blue screening, camera shots involving lots of Room 10 students!

To find out what our movie is about, you will have to wait until Wednesday 8th November!

Tongan Language Week

Malo e lelei! Last week was Tongan Language week. The children from Rooms 9 and 10 went around the school to share some Tongan phrases. Do you know Tongan? Can you teach some of these phrases to your friends?

Making Compasses - Technology used for navigation

As part of our inquiry into changes in technology over time, we have been looking at navigation. This week, we began to look at the sun and shadows, and how they have been used for many years to tell the time and to understand direction.

We have also been reading about magnetic compasses and how they work. We followed some instructions to create our own working compasses. We checked our compasses out against an actual compass to see if the needles were pointing to north, and they were!

As we continue to read about different technology used for navigation, we will be creating DLOs (of our choice) to share our learning.

Pisirina & Tuluinga - subtracting decimals

This week in maths, Pisirina and Tuluinga have shared some great learning on decimals and place value knowledge. Go to the last slide couple of slides to watch Pisirina's and Tuluinga's explanation of how to add/ subtract decimals.



To see more of Pisirina's learning, check out her blog.
To see more of Tuluinga's learning, check out her blog.

Their next step will be to think about any changes they need to make to their mathematical thinking. Can you give them any suggestions??

Matariki Celebration

Kapa Haka at Assembly

Ngā mihi o Matariki! 

Today, we had a Matariki celebration! What a celebration it was! Every student from the school chose an activity (Craft, Cooking, Dance, Music, Movie-making, Sport). Students were then organised into groups of 20. Each group had students from Year 1 through to Year 8.

In Room 10, students were creating a mural using pastels. After assembly, students planned their art on paper:

They then transferred their designs onto these pieces of card.

Everyone managed to complete their artwork by the end of the day! However there is still have one final step! We need to stick all of the art together, to create the finished product! Watch out for a post about the finished mural, next week!