Back to the Blogging.

 Hi parents, I hope you are looking forward to the holidays like we are and staying safe out there.

We haven't done a lot of blogging in our class over the past weeks, but it looks like the issues that we have had with the student's blogs are almost over.   They will be back in a slightly different format next term, (hopefully).

I have included for you a snapshot of a day in the life of a Kererū Student.  Our weeks are remarkably busy, and with things like Cactus, which take us out of our class for almost an hour at a time, fitting everything in is often a major task.  Have a look at just one day in Kererū class.

You would have seen this week the first letter about Camp. 

I have included here a link to a first Intentions Google Form to fill out.  This will be a wee bit easier than pages of spaces to fill in.  

Click here

The End is Near.

 

It has been a long year and a long break between posts.  I apologize for that.  Even our student class blogs have been few and far between.  We were told that the fine print in the Blogger T.O.S stated our students needed to be older to use it.   We have since been allowed back in and gone back to our old weekly routine of 'trying' to write our blogs.

The lockdowns have been forgotten but not the lack of parents in the gate.  Hopefully, in 2022 we manage to solve that problem. 

The production has been a huge wack of time out of our week and couple that in with Kapa Haka, sailing and other necessary tasks,  the end of the year seems like a dream.

We have been doing a little Minecraft this week and it does seem like the biggest possible carrot to get students focused.   Get your children to show you the layout of the Minecraft Monthly Challenges.   The first one we had a go at was the Island Challenge.

The students had to build something on a desert island and then write out explaining their decisions and reasons behind their choices and why they built what they built.  They also had to explain the environmental impact of what they had built in their islands.  Some did this really well and some had trouble seperating the creating from the writing.  We will continue to try this next year.

I will miss this year's Year 6's greatly and wish them all the best for 2022.

Remembering the Anzacs.

 As term 1 draws to a close Kererū has been looking at and studying the Anzac campaign at Gallipoli.  This was the most awesome unit of work to do and one that has really made the children recognise what Anzac day is all about.   This is a difficult concept for children of any age, especially with the Gallipoli landings taking place over a hundred years ago.

The discussions and short children friendly clips we watched explained the Anzac campaign in very easy language.   I was so pleased with the respectful and responsible way that the year 5s and 6s have totally engaged in this project.  The students learnt about the horrific conditions and a little about New Zealand's effort with the Australians.  We then got into writing mode and put ourselves in the position of an Anzac soldier or nurse and wrote a letter home to family.   The hundreds of lines that are now up on our wall are a true testament to the students understanding.   Try asking them a question about Anzac day now and let us know how it goes.

Kererū 2021 Hits the Ground Running.

 It has been a busy start to our year and even in 11 days we seem to have accomplished so much.  

I always think that there is so much responsibility for our year 5s and 6s to think about.  Sports and P.E. Council, Senior Student Council,  Gate Duty,  Peer Mediators, Librarians just to name a few.  I am really impressed with how this class has jelled together so well.  We have people away for appointments and arranged days off and our wonderful group of students are covering for each other and offering to do duties without anyone having to remind them.  This really is a sign of maturity.

Our writing is off with a hiss and a roar with our Learn, Create, Share philosophy really being tested with our task of creating Ebooks.  We are getting inspiration from the Pobble365 site and creating our stories first.  We are then being reminded this week that when we finish a story that is not the end of the writing process.  We are practicing 'Recrafting.'    Recrafting is going back through our stories and improving them, and being more descriptive in order to paint pictures in peoples minds to make the stories better.

When we are finished the stories we will turn them into ebooks that can be shared.  We will evaluate our efforts hopefully after that.

Looking forward to starting our Rocket Challenge soon and our 1,2,3 Tech Challenge.  Ask your kids what these are.

Rocket Lab, We know how you feel.

 Our Rocket Challenge has grown into a total class focus that we can't seem to shake.   Having Belinda's bottle go almost 800mts,  (its like a fishing story,  the distance grows every day),  over Mr Martin's fence and into his tree was fantastic.  Thank you also to Mr M for getting his ladder out too.   

We decided to attach a tiny camera onto the side of the Rocket and launch it again.   First Launch,  not great,  the angle of our launcher was too low.  The second launch was much better,  almost straight up.  BUT,  it did a 180 turn and headed up into the tailings behind school.   Mr A went for a walk after school from both all angles and found the bush was too thick to access.  We thought our rocket might be lost forever. 

Mrs King knew a wonderful man by the name of Mr Hustwick who had an amazing Drone.  He send that up and took high definition video of the area our rocket went into.   We spend the next hour spotting bears, bodies,  yetis and cranes in the high definition videos.   See if you can spot any of those, or our bottle.  Good Luck

 Our Rocket Challenge still has time to go but Wednesday the 26th is the day we achieved one of our Goals.  We Blasted a rocket across the school grounds and out of the School Property.  Belinda was the successful engineer who achieved our biggest goal yet.  We had managed to cross the netball court,   cross our classroom,  cross the school field and finally cross into a neighbouring property.  Check out our video.

Because we still have time to go, we will get a group of our best engineers together to spend a bit of time looking at our designs and talking with some experts. We know that we had to add weight to our rockets nose and that we have to consider how much water to add. Our water to weight ratio seems to have an affect on how far our rockets travel. The more water we add the heavier our rockets are. We are also considering takeoff angle and pressure as well. It seems our Laucher has a pressure release valve on it that lets pressure out at 120psi. 

  Next Steps. 

Safety - Have our safety officer make sure that our area is safe and that all observers are back at a safe distance. 

Launch Control - We want to make maximum use of the pressure we have. We want to launch just before reaching 120psi. 

 Payload Specialist - We want to do further testing on how much water is the perfect amount.

 Communications Specialist - We have located a very very small camera that we will fit to our rocket to video it's path. Fitting this so it safely makes the complete flight without being damaged will be important.

Learn, Create Share, Share more.

It is clearly evident that in my first year at Kaniere School I am loving the Learn, Create and Share philosophy. It is also clear that I haven't quite got the "Share" part right yet. I need to do this more. So here goes. 

 Our Egg Challenge last week got us thinking that we need to go above and beyond all the other classes. Kererū is no ordinary class, we are the best and we need to think like that. The challenge was to see how high you could bounce an egg. We did the research and put our egg in the bath of vinegar for a week and did what everyone else was doing. Then some bright spark said, "what is a real egg?" I could see how our focus on Critical Thinking was turning us into creative thinkers. The idea being that was a 'Rubber Egg' a real egg? Was an easter egg a real egg? We decided that a rubber egg was a real egg as it was real, it was just rubber egg real.