We are a Year 6 class from Elm Park School in Pakuranga, Auckland. We are excited to share the happenings of our classroom with you. Check in often and leave us your feedback. We'd love to hear from you!
Room 20 is having a heap of fun tracking Mr Fitz (one of our teachers from last year) while he travels around the world.
Mr Fitz has been travelling through Central America for the last 2 months. In Guatemala, he was lucky enough to be able to visit a local school and send us some photos of what school is like there. Very different from here! The teachers wear uniforms (and pink ones at that!!) and there are bars on the windows. It makes us appreciate our own school so much more.
Sometimes, instead of an update, he will send us clues and we have to figure out where he's been. It has been the coolest way to learn about some amazing countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico and Honduras.
For our homework this week, we decided to share the information that we've found out about these countries. Check out some of our presentations below:
Today we wrapped up our novel study on Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson. We have been focussing on the characters in the story - what are they like, how they have transformed over the course of the story and what was their purpose.
This afternoon we had a play with a new app called WordFoto to share some of our learning. We have created these cool pictures of the characters using the words that describe them.
We have really enjoyed reading this story. We were able to relate to the story and make many connections. Have your read it? We highly recommend it!
Our student teacher, Mrs Paton, has been teaching us about tints and tones using paint. We have created these amazing landscapes.
We started with the 'true' colour in the middle of the page and then gradually added more white as we moved up the page. Once we had reached the top, we then returned to the true colour and worked our way down the page, this time adding black. We learnt that a tiny bit of black goes a long way - you don't need to add much to make the colour darker. Some of the other things we had to consider were:
not making the pencil lines too dark (otherwise you can see them through the paint; and
making sure we mixed enough of each tint or tone.
These artworks look absolutely stunning on the walls of our classroom. Thank you Mrs Paton for teaching us these skills. It has been fun!
As part of our Enterprise Inquiry, we are helping Camp MERC to design the environmental aspect of their programme. To be able to do this, we need to fully understand the message they want to communicate - about how much damage rubbish is doing to marine life.
Last week we were lucky enough to have Ryley Webster from Sustainable Coastlines come and talk to us about issues facing marine animals.
In this photo you can see Ryley talking to us about gyres - the massive rubbish islands that are caused by the rubbish being caught and collected in ocean currents. The white patches on the map that he is showing us are the gyres. What's really surprising is that some of these are in the middle of the ocean - far away from any land. It's very sad.
We talked about what actions we can take on an individual level to make a difference. Some ideas are:
Make sure your own rubbish is disposed of carefully
Try to buy things that are not packaged - the less plastic we use, the less needs to be produced
Don't walk past litter - pick it up! It's everyone's problem, not just the owner of the rubbish
Share the message with other people
We also learned a lot of new vocabulary to explain the problem. Here are some of the words we learned:
Photodegrade
where somehing is broken down by light from the sun
Biodegrade
where something breaks down by natural processes
Nurdles
the tiny plastic beads that are the base product for most plastic items
Bio-accumulate
Sustainable Coastlines are in the process of creating resources about marine conservation that will be distributed to Primary and Intermediate schools around the country. It was great to have Ryley along to support us and we will hopefully get to work with his organisation again as we go through our Inquiry.
Room 20 certainly is a popular class. We have not one, but three different buddy classes that we are currently working with.
Room 5 is a Year 1 class. We have been working with them this term, helping them to publish their writing on the iPads. Check out the post and photos on their class blog explaining what we did.
We have also been working with Room 16 - a Year 4 class. Our two classrooms are the only two in the school who are using Blogger for our e-Portfolios, so we are learning together. We also decided to get together to celebrate Matariki - the Maori New Year. We made flax stars, learnt how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the Boomwhackers (and sing the words in Te Reo!) and set new goals for the New Year. It was a fantastic afternoon. Read all about it here:
Room 16 is also giving us a run for our money at the Class Mathletics trophy. We shared the award for Weeks 4 and 5, and then Room 16 won it outright for Weeks 6 and 7. Look out Room 16! We're on a mission to win it back!!
Our third buddy class this year is another Year 6 class - Room 22. We are working together on our Enterprise Inquiry. Keep checking back for some more information about this which we will post soon.
We are really lucky to be able to work with so many other students in our school. It really does make learning so much more fun!
This term we have been learning about painting skills during Art. We have been focussing on painting in the style of Claude Monet, the famous impressionist artist. Thanks to the fabulous art blog, Mrs Picasso's Classroom, we have been able to create some amazing art using a similar style.
We had to learn a number of different techniques to create these pieces. The first step involved masking off the fence so we could later peel it off and leave a negative outline.
To create the grass, bushes and path we used a sponge to apply the paint. We had to be careful not to use too much paint and to hop the sponge across the page.
The sky was created using the drag technique. We loaded a piece of cardboard with a mixture of dark blue, light blue and white paint and then slowly dragged it across the page, letting the colours mix as it happened.
The wildflowers were created using the wooden end of the brush, while the pond and waterlillies were brushed on. Again, instead of pre-mixing the paint, we picked up a little of each colour and let the colours mix as they were brushed on.
The most exciting part was of course peeling off the masking tape. Unfortunately some of the rolls of tape we had used were a little old so they tore some parts of the paper - but that just created some extra texture on the fence. Bonus!
This was a fabulous art project and we are so proud of the end results. What do you think?
Today is World Oceans Day. This is important to Room 20 because this year, we are working with Room 22 and Camp MERC to educate people about the effect of rubbish on marine life. For our Enterprise Inquiry, we are in the process of designing an activity that could be built into MERC's programme to help visitors appreciate the magnificent marine reserve at their doorstep.
Earlier this year we visited MERC for our Year 6 camp. It was an amazing experience where we all learnt a lot about overcoming challenges and teamwork. While we were there we heard about a place called Midway Island where there are some horrendous things happening as a direct results of humans dropping litter. Watch this video and see for yourself:
Incredible isn't it? We are looking forward to doing what we can to make a difference.
Here is Room 20 signing "Paradise" at the Hook, Line and Sing-a-long Assembly.
On Friday 31 May, schools around New Zealand all participated in a 1-hour singalong. At our school, we had a whole school assembly and sang some of our school favourites. Our choir sang "Hareruia", the famous Hallelujah in Maori and it was absolutely fantastic. We have decided that we will learn this song as a whole school as well.
The assembly finished with "Paradise" - the Youth song for New Zealand Music Month. Room 20 had the huge pleasure of leading the school in the signing version. We have loved learning this song and the extra challenge of the sign language has been lots of fun. Maybe a new challenge might be for us to learn to sign the National Anthem. What do you think?
