Drama

We have been creating freeze-frames in drama recently. This is where you think of a scenario and act it out by being still like statues. We talked about different problems that might happen at school in the playground and created our freeze-frames to show these. See if you can guess what is happening in each one...

After we had shown our freeze-frames, we talked about what we could do to help out in these situations.

Pasifika Mamas

We had the privilege of a visit to the Corban Estate Art Centre where we learned about different aspects of cultures from the Pacific Islands.

First, we were welcomed by Aunty Tu who took us through some greetings from different island nations, including 'Aloha' (Hawaii), 'Bula' (Fiji), 'Talofa lava' (Samoa), 'Malo e lelei' (Tonga) and 'Kia orana' (Cook Islands). 

Then Mama Mata and Aunty Jacinda taught us how to make a lei using the simple repeated pattern of flower-straw-flower-straw.

Next we learned some drumming techniques from Aunty Tu and her son, Fox. We used skin drums and log drums.

Finally we all learned a dance (boys and girls had different parts to learn and practise before we performed it al together).  

It was such a wonderful experience...thanks to the Pasifika Mamas!!!

The Big Reveal

We had our unveiling of our friendship garden and fenceline of cultural people this afternoon. 

We have been busy adding to the friendship garden. It already had a seat and, earlier in the year we planted a kowhai tree in remembrance of the incident in Christchurch. Since then the middle school have been decorating rocks to border the area and bark, plants and pavers have been added. 

We presented our school song to the public for the first time, then had the oldest and youngest students cut a ribbon surrounding the area to officially open it.

After that we unveiled the cultural people that each class had been busy painting last term. Each person represents a culture in our school. 

Nora and Noah unveiled our boy from Burma, 

and Savanna and Nijel unveiled our girl from Samoa

They all look AMAZING along the fence!

Science Experiments

We became scientists today and conducted and investigation. We each used droppers (or pipettes) to drop water onto a 10 cent coin to see how many drops we could make before the water overflowed over the edge of the coin. We were testing the water tension (how much it stuck together). We were amazed to see that we could get over 40 drops on some of the coins!

Futsal

This term our PE focus has been Futsal. Futsal is similar football (soccer) played on a hard court, smaller than a regular pitch, and mainly indoors. It features similarities to five-a-side football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper.

We have been learning and practising the basic skills needed to play the game from our Futsal coach, Kingsley. Here are students from Haumia involved in some of these skills.

What is a Scientist?

As part of our inquiry this term we have been wondering what a scientist is. In groups, we used dictionaries and searched on Google to investigate. Then together as a class, we shared our findings, combined some of these ideas and came up with our own definition. 

Our definition of SCIENTIST is: someone who investigates, researches, guesses (hypothesises), experiments with, observes and describes things around them.