Goodbye and good luck

What a busy last week it has been.

We got the chook run finished thanks to Mark Just and his father coming in each week to run the project and letting the kids help. Today the Guardian newspaper came to take photos so look for us in the news.

Yesterday the Manawatu Skating club brought their skates and some enthusiastic and patient helpers so each of the senior classes could try skating. Lots of falling over and laughing ensued (only a couple of bandaids needed...!).

Isn't Fyfe amazing!!

And then it was the end of the term. I have had a wonderful year with the monkeys in Ci7cus. Everyone has made great strides either in their academic learning or in learning how to get on with life. I am very proud of them all, and of what we have achieved together this year. The chicken project will be a lasting indication of their ability to see ideas through to the end. Congratulations kids...,have a wonderful holiday and best of luck next year.

End of year treat at the Lido

What a great day we had today. The kids were fantastic and played together beautifully. The weather held for us and we swam in thress pools and played on the Aquaplay machine. The grown ups caught up and set the world to rights. Thanks to all the parents who gave up their morning. 

Thursday Inquiry group

A mixed group of students from across the senior school have chosen to do science and envrironment for their Thursday Inquiry. We are learning to design our own investigations. Our focus has been on learning about what happens when you mix vinegar and baking soda. We have been trying all sorts of mixtures and then using them to blow up plastic bags and today we had to make fizzy paint.

We have to think about what we know and what we want to know. We have to plan the steps to run the investigation. Then we have to watch what happens and try and decide why it happened. 

A puffed up bag...didn't burst tho!!

E

Chicken project week 7

We are making great progress in the creatuon of the chook run. Yesterday Mark Just came and worked from 9 until 1pm with two groups of students to get half the rails up. Leanne came and helped a group of girls to paint the walls of the chook house . Joy and another group had dobe the roof on Tuesday afternoon.

Fabs reading - Wonders of the world

Click on the right link to have a look at your place in more detail.

Stonehenge                                Statue of Liberty

Easter Island                              Space shuttle

Pyramids                                    Voyager 2

Great wall of China

Colosseum

Pisa

Taj Mahal

Production update

Check out these wonderful photos of the costumes, the dancing....the man with the green glitter on a swing!!

https://docs.google.com/a/russellst.school.nz/presentation/d/11zqz9CxTS-9sGGbHe0cbkTOP65rO-8WpR8FkL1Cnm6E/edit?usp=docslist_api

Ozobot teaches probability

In maths today we worked with the robots again. They can make their own decisions when they come to an intersection so we used them to explore probability and statistics. The children had to then add codes to make the robots do what they were told instead of acting on thier own.

This afternoon the experts from Joy's maths groups taught the rest of the class from Nic's maths class how to solve mazes by putting in the right codes.

Watch the robots in action here:

http://youtu.be/COfk-RjAEwM

Ozobot came to school

Today we started figuring out how to make Ozobots follow a map. These are tiny programmable robots, smaller than a golf ball. They can follow a line and get their instructions from fifferent colour combinations. We made our own maps to tell well-known stories.

Learning styles revisited

Today we revisited our circus learning styles that we explored in term 1. Some of us have changed and have new strengths. We re also looking forward to next year and learning how to be self agentic learners. Our goal is to be self- directed learners by the end of the year. We have all chosen a goal to work towards for the next few weeks which we will blog about to discuss strategy and progress. 

Self - directed learners know what to do and how to do it and focus on managing and directing their thinking and behaviour to this end with little input from adults. 

To practise our skills we did a little science team challenge. We had to blow up these 'windbags' with one breathe (there is a trick to it) and then work with the other trams to build a structure with all the balloon tubes we made!!

Read Theory for reading practise

Here is the link for Read Theory. Have a go at it when you any free moments. it will give you some good practise for answering multi-choice questions and get you ready for the testing we will do later in the term.

                                                                Click here

Wow ! That WOW was wow!

Well the production is done at last and it was certainly worth the wait. The children in Ci7cus were amazing. I know all teachers say that about their class but my guys really were. They were well behaved all day during rehearsal, went where they were supposed to, did what they were asked and showed leadership and care for their little buddies. The dance went off without a hitch...everyone really rocked it put. They were also all jiving away to the band as we were actually wait ing on stage behind the curtain!

The costumes. How amazing were they? I hope the programme insert we did gave the audience some insight into the design of the cotumes. The thought behind the wearable art..the children really had little help in the design of their constumes - their ideas were their own. They did get help with construction at times and last week was a whirlwind of glue gunning, painting, sewing and finishing. I think it was all worth it. 

Congratulations to the whole class for their creativity and enthusiasm. Super job team.

Ora/Life - Production 2015

Here are some great pics of us in action. This gives a nice snap shot of our part of the evening!

Click here for the slideshow

Zero Waste

This week we have Shirley from Zero Waste to work with us on thinking about our waste mangement systems and attitudes at home and at school. Today we worked in groups to discuss various items of what would usually be waste to figure out what we could reuse them for.

Reading -awesomes

Zoey and Rebekah

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/the-princes-in-the-tower/

Jack

http://www.hindustantimes.com/othersports/forgotten-hero-yearns-for-appreciation/article1-606658.aspx

Book Fair costume parade

What a great day. We had fun looking at everyone's costumes and guessing what each character was. Here some photos of us in our finery.

Reading and science and winning!

We will be exploring this at school but the making of videos can also be done at home  so have a look at the rules and see what you can do. We will be doing some exploring at school over the next cople of weeks as well.
Little Kitchen

Dance Practise

14.9.15

Here is our dance so you can have a go at practising at home. Remember to start with the right foot or hand or shoulder first each time.

carving and kapahaka

Each monday some of the class goes to kapahaka and some of Nic's class comes to us while he is taking kapahaka so we are learning about different aspects of maori culture too. For the last few weeks we have been making carvings in pumice of different maori symbols.

We chose one that had meaning to us and then carved it from pumice. Some of the pumice was very soft and some was almost like stones. We used ice block sticks, spoons and sandpaper to make the shapes. Then we mounted them on painted wooden bases like real carvings.

A drone came to school

Today, Rob brought his drone to school to give us  a bird's eye view of the school. It was amazing to see the roof of the main block, how the slide and the fort look from above and how a tree looks like lightning strikes from above.  Watch and see what we saw.

off to a flying start

Last week we had our first workshop preparing us with skills for making our costumes later in the term. We were finding out and exploring different textures we could make with cardboard and paper. Our challenge was to use the techniques we learned to make a monster foot. We had to make sure it had hair, or fur, or scales, or claws, or warts etc etc. colour was not important - it was all about the texture.

super's reading

Moriori website

Bats

Using reading to have fun

This week we have been reading articles that taught us how to do new things. 

The awesomes made a potato and pea curry...looks yummy!!

The supers learned how to sew so they could make elastic button bracelets.

Zyd and the Excellents learned about paper folding.

The fabs made bird seed balls to feed the birds.

So much fun.

maths problems blog post

Maths slideshow

1. Find your own slide.

2. Take a screen shot of it

3. Go to 'show me' and put the screen shot in

4. Write and speak to show how you would show someon
e else how to solve the problem. Remember that the way you solve it is as important as the 'right' answer.

5. Save

6. Link to your blog:

•  Go to Show me site online. Sign up with email and a password (make up a simple one).  Click on your show me. Click on the embed box - the code comes up in a pop-up and copy the embed code which is at the bottom.                                                         Go to your blog. Click on HTML button. Paste in code. Click on Compose button.

 7. Reflect on what maths knowledge you needed to solve the problem.
8. Reflect on what you feel unsure of and want to work on next.

Culture survey

Please take some time to do this survey. Be honest.

https://docs.google.com/a/russellst.school.nz/forms/d/1E_1K4DefaA8KhlZvMqHkSksI36gfu3tY-eBUFW8M2Zc/viewform

Wet pets science trip

Today we visited Wet Pets so we could make some observations of live birds. It was very different trying to watch a live bird running or fluttering around and take notes at the same time. We focused on the way the bird looked and the way it moved. When we were there we also discovered the birds all made different sounds.

Cockateils

Parrot

Pigeons mating

Quail - he ran around very quickly!

Zebra finches - very small and they didn't sit still for long either.

Yellow cockateils

We also got to have a close look at a hen. Joy showed us the different feathers on its body - long, straight and stifff on the wings, small and close on its head, fluffy and soft on its tummy. She even had a sort of fan shapped tail. Her feet looked like reptile legs with claws and scales. She had a liitle feathers on her cheeks and a red comb and wattle.

Tummy

Tail and bottom

Dinosaur feet!

We evn got to see a chick and how fluffy it was. It had proper feathers on its wings and a tiny comb beginning to grow on its head.