Norwood Tractor Visit 14/08/18

On Tuesday afternoon the CEO of Norwood Tractors came to visit YMS, giving us an opportunity to welcome him to our school and say thank you in person to he and the Norwood Tractor staff for their generous sponsorship of our carb break initiative.  Our Kapa Haka group, with the Matua's help, led the school in formally welcoming them the visitors to our school.

The visitors then toured our classrooms and spoke with us about our learning.  This week as part of our Maths Week activities we have been using our maths knowledge to draw up our own plans of what we would like in the new school garden.  Our visitors were very interested in our plans when they were in our class and asked us lots of questions.  Their company is going to be providing some help with getting the new garden area outside the Te Māhuri block underway.  We were glad to be able to share our ideas with them. 

We finished off our lesson by sharing our ideas with each other and looking for the most popular suggestions of what to plant in our new garden.  These ideas have now been shared with the rest of the school as part of our 'student voice' in the design process of the garden.

Term 3 Week 3 - Setting up our Science Experiment

On Friday we completed the next step of our science experiment.  To make growing wheat seeds into an experiment we needed to first think about what we knew about the things plants need to grow healthy and strong.

We worked with our talking buddies and then shared back to the class and made this list of the things we think plants need to grow best:
* Sunshine
* Water
* Soil
* Caring
* Worms

From this list we decided the main thing we could change about how the wheat seeds could be grown in our classroom environment was the soil.  So we will be experimenting to see what type of soil the wheat seedlings will grow best in.

Each group has 2 seedlings growing in sand, 2 seedlings growing in normal garden soil (from the current school garden) and 2 seedlings growing in a potting mix.  We will be looking to see if the type of soil makes a difference to how big and strong the wheat seeds grow.  We put the other pots in a box on top of the cubbies to also see if less light will make a difference to how big and strong our wheat seeds grow.

Link to Experiment Slides

  

Term 3 Week 2 - Sprouting Success!

Our wheat seeds have been so well cared for by TM1 and are obviously in a great place for growing.  We have lots of seeds germinate and some are getting pretty tall.  Please come and visit the class and see for yourself!

Our next step for our experiment is to record some observations about what we have noticed and then plant some of the seedlings up begin our experiment.

Term 3 Week 1 - Science!!

We have all been very excited this week with the first science experiment for our Term 3 Inquiry.  Greta's family have provided us with some wheat seeds so that we can grow wheat in class just like Greta did earlier in the year.  Thank you very much to the Stuart family for helping all our learning!

Our first stage of our experiment was to get the seeds germinating.  We brainstormed and planned what equipment we would need for the experiment on Tuesday afternoon. 

On Friday morning we started the seeds off using egg cartons and cotton wool.  We are in groups for the experiment and are in charge of looking after our own group's seeds (checking if they need water).  Each group has agreed a schedule of who will check the seeds each day and look after them.  

Our seeds are on the two desks near the sink in front of the window.  This side of the class gets the sunshine in the afternoons, so hopefully it will be a great place to grow seeds.  When you visit our class please come and see how they are going for yourself and ask us questions, we are keen to share our learning with you. 

We will keep you updated of how the experiment is going throughout the term.

Writing Term 2 Week 10

This week in writing we finished off the descriptive writing we have been focusing on this term with a fun activity describing items in jars using our senses.  The items in the jars were wool, pebbles, oats, crystals and playdoh.

We made notes on what the items looked like, felt like, smelled like and sounded like as we moved round each station.  We then shared our ideas with the class and wrote descriptions of the different items in the jar.

At the end we tried to guess what the crystals were.  A lot of us thought washing powder, but actually they were radox crystals!

Here are a few of our descriptions:

'The crystals sound like rattling sand' Levi
'It feels like hair [the wool]' Max
'The wool looks like a fluffy cloud' Laura
'The pebbles sounds like...gun shots and fireworks' Seidyn
'The pebbles feel smooth and hard' Renzil
'The Crystals sound like crackling rice bubbles' Alice

T2W6 Corey Baker Visit

On Thursday Corey Baker came to visit YMS to share his Antarctic Dance with Te Māhuri 1 and 2.  Corey used to be a student at YMS when he was younger.  He enjoyed looking around a bit and seeing how the school had changed since he was last here. 

We learned about the dance he created in Antarctica and what it was like to be in such a cold place.  It was amazing just how many layers of clothes Corey needed to wear each day and we really enjoyed the chance to try them on.  Everyone found it funny to learn about why the fur is on the outside of the gloves they wear there!  He talked with us about the message behind us dance - climate change and its impact on the Antarctic.

Corey lead us through some dance activities in the Whare Hui and we got to watch a recording of his dance with him.

Making ourselves into an iceberg

Trying out Corey's Antarctic clothing

Talking about Climate Change

Spellbound watching the dancing

T2W5 Loopy

This week we have been learning a new maths game to practice our addition basic facts.  Loopy is a new maths game to most of us in TM1 that can be used to practice many different sorts of maths skills - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and geometry to name a few.  Please ask us about how the game works.

Once we get a little more familiar with playing this we will start to time our round and add the element of 'beat the clock' to our games.