Does it float?

Next week at school, the middle and senior syndicate are having a raft race. The challenge is for each class to create a raft using recyclable materials, they are not allowed to be materials that can easily break in the water as we are having our raft race in our school pool and are not allowed to block up the filters in the pool.

What we learnt that the engineering process teaches us how to make a good design and to make improvements it if it doesn't work, we also had to plan and reflect on what we've made.

This is the second raft that Room 2 has created the first one we made could float but it could not hold a person.       

via GIPHY

What do you think?

In the comments, make a prediction - do you think this raft can float on water?

Class of the week!!! Class of the week!!!

via GIPHY

We are proud to announce that we were chosen as class of the week by Nga Rau Rangatira. The reasons that we were chosen was our singing during taumata, the way we sat in taumata.

This week we have the job of looking out for the class of the week, we are looking for the class who shows respect in taumata, who sings our waiata proudly and who lines up ready to learn.

Our final assembly for the year.

Hello, my name is Oshen I am writing Room 2's blog post for the week. Today was our final assembly for the year. Above our assembly slide. We started our assembly with the national anthem.  For the first item, we sang the song "we will rock you" by Queen. 

For our second item, we shared a story that we created as a class. It was called Polygon Street.
We had to create a drawing of a person and a mansion using only polygons. Here is the the slide from our learning - it includes some videos we found on Youtube that explain what polygons are.


When we had finished creating our polygon mansion and polygon pal, we made a story about it and read it to the school. Ngarui and I created a Gif about Polygon street for our assembly slide. Here is our story below:
 

For our 3rd item, our boys in our class did a dance called the Zorba.

They were pretty awesome performing in front of the whole school. If you want to see a video of them doing the Zorba - check out their blog posts on their individual blog pages.   

After that, all the girls in our class did a play. We found the play in one of our school journals and the play was about some people in Rome. It was really fun but I got a bit nervous.

 

Finally, all the girls and boys made a Christmas Carol video about the 12 days of Christmas. 

We had to create animations using stop motion or google slides.  We also used audacity to record the singing and the sound effects that went with the pictures. See for yourself.

Room 2's class movie for 2018 - Part 2

We are happy to announce that our class movie "Project Island Song" was selected along with Room 16's class movie to screen at the Kaikohekohe Networks movie night.  Whaea Sally asked Koda and Ngarui if they could come along to the event at Paihia School, their job was to introduce the film to everyone.  

Room 2's Class Movie for 2018

In Room 2 we have been movie making.  Each class at Kawakawa Primary School creates up to 2 movies to present to our school. The school has a movie viewing day where we see all of the movies that have been created.  After viewing the movies, each student chooses their top 3 movie choices.  The 3 movies that have the most votes are then shown at the Kaikohekohe Movie night.

We decided to create 2 movies based around our trip to Urapukapuka island for Project Island Song.  Our first movie was made with Kizoa, it shows what we did and what we learnt during our trip.

Our second movie was a music video about Project Island Song.  We composed the lyrics ourselves, created the music ourselves using Audacity and Garageband.  We then used a green screen to record our dancing and singing.

Boat building challenge - Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome back to school!  Here in Room 2, we have kick-started our final term with a boat building S.T.E.M challenge.

Throughout the year, our school has been focusing on "Awa (River)" - in term one we looked at the water cycle, in term two we looked at water conservation and what makes a healthy awa, in term three we learnt about the history of our own awa 'Taumarere', and for this term we are going to look at creating something that can float on our awa.

The challenge: To build a boat that will allow our "explorers" to sail across the ocean without sinking.

First we had to do a lot of brainstorming together in small groups.  We were only given certain materials to use for the challenge.  Furthermore, we had to buy the material using our class dojo points that we have been collecting throughout the year. 




Our groups have successfully built a boat each, and some of us have been able to test our boats on water.  Our next step is to test our boat with our explorer as well.

Watch this space...

Nga kiriata kiriahua mo te wiki o Te Reo Maori

Nau mai haere mai ki Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori.  In Room 2 we have been creating our own Maori Selfie videos.  For some of us, we have just worked on saying our pepeha and our whakapapa with confidence, for others we have been extending our reo by saying what we like and our goals.
First we wrote what we wanted to say in Maori, some of us used Maori dictionary for kupu (words) we did not know, but most of us asked Whaea Sally to help us.

Finally, we recorded our own selfie movie.  We recorded our kiriata in a variety of ways, some used green screen, some used screencastify and others just recorded using our chromebook camera.

Kia kaha ki te korero Maori, ahakoa he iti -give speaking Maori a go, no matter how little.

Bye bye Cross Country - Hello Fun Run

This year our school have decided to change up how we do our cross country event.  Instead, we had a fun run and it was smiles all around at the UK Rugby grounds.

We dressed up in our house colours and rode the train to our venue.  We received a lot of waves from the locals and a lot of beeps from the passing cars.

Our cross country track was the same however we had some fun run stations that we could choose to do as well.  There was a cargo net, some tires, pool noodles and Whaea Narelle finished off our race by throwing coloured powder at us.

We were given points for participation, dressing in our house colours, and received a whopping 500 points if our family member ran with us.

Making inferences with riddles - Who am I?

Room 2 has been looking at making inferences by creating our own 'who am I?' riddles. 
We learnt that inferences are made by looking for clues in a text and using our schema (our own background knowledge) to help us understand.  

Here are some of our own inference poems that we will share at our upcoming assembly this Thursday.
Can you solve our riddle?

To matou mihi

In Room 2, we have been extending our mihi by learning new tauparapara.  A tauparapara is usually an opening to a mihi, such as a proverb or wise saying.  Below are Kyla and Koda practising their mihi using two of the new tauparapara we have been learning (underneath each video is the tauparapara and its translation).  

Whakarongo ake au                       I listen

ki te tangi a te manu                     To the cry of the bird                                     

Tui, tui, tuituia                             "Bind  together"

Tuia i runga                                  Bind from above

Tuia i raro                                     Bind from below

Tuia i waho                                  Bind from without

Tuia i roto                                    Bind from within

Tui i te here tangata                     Bind with the bonds of mankind

Ka rongo te po                            May there be peace by night

Ka rongo te ao                             Peace by day

Ka ao, ka ao, ka Awatea              The day has broken

Tihei Mauriora!                           Behold there is life!

Korihi te manu                            The bird sings

Takiri mai te ata                          The morning has dawned 

Ka ao, ka ao, ka Awatea              The day has broken

Tihei Mauriora!                           Behold there is life!                            


We will continue practising our new tauparapara and saying our mihi confidently before it is our turn to take morning taumata for the school.  We are also learning how to extend our mihi tautoko - this is a mihi that acknowledges those who have taken the morning taumata - by acknowledging the teachers and students of the school as well.

Mauriora!    

Class of the week!! Class of the week!!

We are proud to announce that we are the class of the week this week.  Thank you Whaea Toni for gifting us the trophy this week - you are a legend.

The class of the week is usually given for showing our school values - Respect, Responsibilty and Resilience.  Next week it will be our job to look out for the next class who we think shows these values. 

Meet the creatures of the Awa

This is a Toebiter stream insect and it lives in the rivers here in Aotearoa.  Research and find 3 important or interesting facts about this creature and share it in the comments.

Introducing ourselves to our Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Schools

This term we have been signed up for the Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Programme so we thought it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves to the other schools.  On each of the slides is a little summary about us, our hobbies and some of our favourite things.
We are looking forward to sharing our learning with other schools and seeing what other schools do.

Our Matariki Wall

As we wind down at the end of a very busy term in Room 2, we have been trying to complete our Matariki wall, we created our own Matariki stars and we made some Diamante poems as well.  Our school had a Matariki event where we participated in different events for 2 days - the events were gardening, kowhaiwhai patterns, Drama  and art, kiorahi, kite making, and retelling Matariki legends.  Whaea Sally can't wait to get more photos of our Matariki activities to put on our wall.

Hiwi the Kiwi and looking after the moana.

We had a very special guest at Kawakawa Primary school this afternoon. Not only did the "Minstrel" and his lovely wife come to sing and dance with the tamariki, but they also came to share some very valuable lessons about looking after the moana, it's creatures and ourselves.

Herbert was able to answer one of the Minstrel's questions, and he received a sticker for a prize.




One thing we really liked about the Minstrel was the way he could turn someone's name into a rhyme, and of course his very funny humour.  This was his last tour so we will miss the Minstrel and hope that he and his wife enjoy their retirement.

Project Energise - Too much sugar.

Matua Bodean came in to show our tamariki how much sugar is in our drinks that are sold in the shops, the children were amazed at the amount of sugar that was in each drink.  They guessed which drink had the most and which had the least, they knew instantly that water was the drink with the least amount of sugar but did not know which drink had the most.  We are hoping to do an experiment where we can see how much sugar is left in the drink.

Our Awesome Assembly

Today, Room 2 ran the school assembly, this was an opportunity for them to showcase their work, their talents and practise their public speaking. The assembly only runs for an hour and the students prepare to show at least 4 items to the school. It was really tricky deciding who was going to show what in our assembly- we decided to showcase our Art, share our animations, perform a skit, share our writing and do a couple of dances -

Our Principal Ms Ross said that she really liked what we shared and how much we looked like we were enjoying our assembly. Whaea Sally was very proud of us as well. Below is the assembly slide that we showed the school.

Crowns up in Kawakawa

This morning there was buzz of excitement at Kawakawa primary school, The royal family Varsity crew came to perform for us. Room 2 really enjoyed their performance and decided that we wanted to dance in our own upcoming assembly.  We are really excited to go to the royal families disco tonight at the school hall as well.

Whaea KC and Kiorahi

We were very lucky to have Whaea KC come from the Ngati Hine health trust to teach us the game of Kiorahi today.  A lot of us already knew how to play but we still went over the rules of

the game.  We played right through morning tea as well.  Thank you Whaea KC for your time, we can't wait to see you next time.

Cleaning up our Community

On Thursday the whole school gathered together with a mission to clean up our Awa and the surrounding town.  The Junior syndicate cleaned the school and the streets that go from our school to town, the middle syndicate cleaned the parks around town and the senior syndicate jumped in the water and cleaned out our river.

This event ties into our topic for the term "water conservation" and we could not believe all the rubbish we had found.  Check out our slide with some pictures of the day.

The Water Cycle

This term our topic is Water conservation and we thought the best place to start with water conservation is to find out where water comes from.  Did you know that majority of Earth's water is salt water?  Room 2 has been learning about the water cycle and the three phases which are: evaporation, condensation and precipitation.  We made our very own water cycle in a bag and we have been watching the water cycle in action.

A call from the sea

Welcome back to Term 2! We hope you all had a great holiday, we sure did.  

Room 2 kicked started off the term with a video call from scientists on a ship called the Joides Resolution (you can check out their website here).  The Joides Resolution is a deep-sea drilling ship that has been out in what is called the Hikurangi subduction zone, 1km away from Gisborne.

Here is a picture of some of us talking with one of the ship's scientists - Aliki.  She was showing us some of the fossils that they study on the ship, she also showed us the Drill string, the labs and the lifeboats.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see outside on the deck because the weather had been pretty rough and it was very slippery outside.

This term we will be conducting some of our own experiments just like the scientists on the Joides Resolution.

Get Writing NZ 2018

Room 2 has been busy writing poems.  This was all thanks to School Kit who organised this awesome event around New Zealand.  Our class was buddied up with another class in New Zealand, we sent a poster with interesting information such as how many children were in our families, who could roll their tongue or waggle their ears and some of our favourite words we like the sound of.  We also had to write on postcards, we wrote poems about ourselves using metaphors and we decided to share our class treaty and some other rules on the extra postcards.



Today we received a parcel from St Mary's Catholic School in Rotorua, here is a timelapse of us putting together postcards sent by the wonderful students of Room 2.  Before we put together the postcards, we were reading the poems on the other side.  Their poems were interesting and some were very funny, their names were very cool (Kaia from our class smiled when she saw that they have a Kaia as well).  We are going to visit their class blog on Monday and leave them a thank you note for the wonderful taonga they have sent us.

SBOI Interschool Swmming

Today was the SBOI interschool swimming competitions and 4 students from Room 2 went to represent our school in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke.  All of our Kawakawa students placed well in the competition and made us all very proud.  Tylah has been selected to compete in the Northland Swimming sports, have fun Tylah!

 Well done to Kyla, Shayden, Ngarui and Tylah for your amazing effort in swimming.

The Jumpshot for 2018

via GIPHY

Every year Whaea Sally has been taking "jump shots" of Room 2 for our blog page and this year we were allowed to jump from the side of the pool.
Whaea Sally asked us to climb up and jump off a few times so she could take the best shot, but we weren't complaining about that.

Have you had a jump shot before? If you have - where was it?

Our first assembly for 2018

Today Room 2 had their first assembly for 2018 so it was a very busy week for us.  We continued with our regular programme and dedicated our afternoons for assembly practice.   We had to practice our Ti Rakau, the Duffy song with the actions and we also had to practise speaking in the microphone properly.  We also decided to put together a video about using your WITS when someone is bothering you.  Whaea Sally taught us about WITS earlier this year and Elgregoe, the magician came to school to teach it as well.

Here is our video about using your WITS, we hope you enjoy.

Starting the year as Class of the Week!!

Welcome to Room 2 2018

We are 3 weeks into the school and we were very excited to find out that we were chosen as class of the week.  Room 5 & 6 chose us because we:

• we displaying the 3 R's in assembly.
• sitting quietly during taumata.

We are very lucky to have a free lunch time swim and we cannot wait because it is very hot up here in the far north.  We also have the hard choice of choosing the class of the week for week 4.