Listen Up!

This week we had some visitors from Kings College come to speak to us about protecting our hearing.
The girls presented some fantastic experiments to help us really understand how easily we can damage our ears.

We even got to test a decibel meter to see how loud our class is when we are working.  Thankfully we have learnt that as long as we use normal talking voices and not raised voices, we stay in the safe zone. That's great motivation for keeping the noise level down!

If you are exposed to noise that may be over the safe limit of 85dB, there are three actions you can take.  They are:

The Kings' College students ran this workshop as part of a community service program that runs at their school.  They did an amazing job of presenting - like professionals.  Thanks girls - we learnt heaps!

Making Sandwiches You Can't Eat!

Our Buddy Class, Room 5, is learning about healthy eating for their Inquiry topic.  They have been doing some writing about how to make a healthy sandwich.

We decided that for our Buddy Class visit last week, we would help them publish their writing by animating a sandwich.  We used Keynote to do this for a couple of reasons - we wanted to learn how to use the build function to make our future slideshows more interesting, and Keynote also lets you record a voiceover for the slideshow (something Google Presentation won't!)  Keynote also has the Instant Alpha tool that lets you remove the background from images.  That was especially useful for this task.

Check out one of our animations of "How to make a Healthy Sandwich".

We still have to play with getting the timings right but it's not bad for a first attempt is it?  We are planning on using our new skills to share some of our own learning soon.  Keep an eye out!

Statistics with Google Forms and Spreadsheets

To kick off this term in Maths, we have been exploring the Statistical Inquiry Cycle.  We began by finding out where we had all travelled over the holidays.  We gathered the data using post-it notes and then grouped them into the categories: Overseas, Within NZ, Within Auckland.

We discussed how arranging the post-its into lines and forming a bar graph of sorts made it so much easier to quickly make meaning of the information.

We then learnt how to graph using Google Spreadsheet.  Fun!  See our example graph below:



Then it was our turn to have a go for ourselves.  We had to each develop a question to investigate.  We worked in small groups to create a Google form to survey our classmates.  Once the data was collected, we again sorted the data into meaningful categories so that we could play with the many options for graphing that Google Spreadsheet offers.

Look in our individual blogs to see our questions and the resulting graphs.  It was a really cool way to learn about graphing and statistics.

In the News...

Have a look at who was in the local newspaper this week!  Click here to read the article in the Eastern Courier about our Facetime with England. Looking good boys!

Marshmallow Maths

For the last week of the term we decided to have some fun with our Maths and do an investigation into Volume, Mass and Temperature.  What did we use to investigate these concepts?...

Marshmallows!! 

Maths has never been so tasty.  Check out some of our learning below:

We finished off our investigations with some hard-earned hot chocolate.
Who said Maths wasn't fun???

FaceTime with our Namesake School

This morning, Room 20 and Room 16 hosted a FaceTime conversation with students from Elm Park Primary School in Essex, England.

Our two schools made contact for the first time last year after discovering we share the same name.  The students from Essex held a sleepover specifically so they could chat with us (there is a 13 hour time difference!) and learn a little bit about how kids on the other side of the world live.

We had a fabulous time talking with our new friends.  They were interested to know what the weather was like and whether NZ was a great place to live.  We performed a Haka for them (they were so impressed!) and sang Paradise as well.

We also found that we had many similarities.  The English girls enjoy singing the "Cups" song from the movie "Pitch Perfect" - also one of our favourites!  Even our school logos are similar - made up of people in a circle holding hands.  Check it out:

Elm Park, Essex                         Elm Park, Pakuranga

Our FaceTime meeting will hopefully be appearing in local newspapers soon.  A reporter from the Eastern Courier came along to see what was happening and is planning an article about us in the near future.  Keep an eye out!

We are keen to catch up with our fellow Elm Park-ers soon.  In Term 3 we are planning to hold our own sleepover so we can connect again.  We can't wait!

Celebrating Māori Language Week

This year's theme for Māori Language Week was Māori Place Names.  Room 20 investigated some of our cities Māori names and their meanings.  See what we have learnt: