Week 2 Term 2

Week 1 Term 1

Phoenix's writing

If you like unicorns you're AWESOME!!! My name is Phoenix and I love unicorns. I’ve never got to read a unicorn book before. But I will draw one soon because I have more experience now with drawing but I have a workshop that I go to in school and it’s called writing unicorns.

If you ever write about unicorns well you can use your imagination and that’s the fun part!!! For example, unicorns aren’t real. But they can always be in your imagination, lots of people don’t like to use their imagination for things that aren’t real.

Now… DO NOT SHARE WITH ANYONE. And that’s it...

Girls only writing group

My Learning Adventures

          By Keira

This term the Girls only Powerful Writing group have been working on some creative writing to enhance our learning. Some of the things we have learnt are: to use Read Write (on the computer), using different web sites and helping each other ideas, feedback and feedforward.

A creative piece of writing I did was my story called, “ The man in the book”. When I was creating this story the first thing I did was we looked at and talked  about some beautiful illustrations and  we brainstormed together. This helped me find tricky and interesting words to use. Some of the ways we got words  were from the Read Write computer program, thesaurus.com, friends, adults and dictionary.com.

When I started writing I started to use Read write to help me edit and listen to my writing, this has helped me to hear if it makes sense.

When I had finished I got two friends to look at my writing and to read it so they could give me feedback and feedforward.

After I got that feedback and feedforward I used some of  the advice to help me make my story more creative and more interesting. The thing I have found really hard has been working with new and different people that I have not worked with before. The thing that I liked was getting helpful feedforward from my class mates. I am really proud of my writing.

Here is an excerpt of some of my writing:

“ While Raj was walking on a big grassy  hill he found a big humongous shiny blue book….”

How does Nature grow and stay alive?

How does Nature grow and stay Alive.

Hi my name is Isabella Morgan and this term, I have a project about my favourite plants and flowers. If you already know about nature and you like playing outside and you like trees, I will tell you all about nature! some of my friends are in the same project group as me and I am sure they  will love to learn about the lovely nature and flowers also.

Did you know that some flowers don't like the sun too much otherwise they might die and they need to be healthy and clean.

The largest flower in the world is the flower of the Puya Raimondii, which has a flower stalk 35,000 feet tall and  over 8,000 white flowers. Mimosa pudica, or sensitive plant, will actually fold up its leaves when it is touched.

New Zealand nature is amazing but sometimes annoying too. Did you know that some dolphins are dying by getting caught up in nets so please stop killing our dolphins!!make a good choose to not kill plants and trees! I'm writing about my favourite flowers and it is about wild roses!

Week 7 & 8

PROJECTS

Over the past two weeks, students have been working hard on their projects.

Cyber Safety

The Cyber Safety Group have been designing a website to promote safe use of the internet to students at HPPS. They have also been busy writing and rehearsing their plays. They were lucky enough to get a special session with the drama teacher, Kathy, who gave them feedback about how to polish their performance. The plays will be performed next week in the other commons.

Healthy Food

The Healthy Food Group went on a trip to the supermarket to source healthy ingredients for the healthy recipes they have been researching. For some of the recipes they substituted the not so healthy ingredients with healthier ones. The whole common is benefiting from this project as we all got to sample the yummy but healthy food that they made!

Friendship

After surveying other students about the type of conflicts they mostly experience at school, the Friendship Group have filmed some common conflict scenarios along with strategies for dealing with them. They will be screening the episodes in all the commons next week.

Outdoor Space

This group have been designing and painting some large art work that will be displayed in the LC4 outdoor area to brighten up the space. They have also worked on crafting an outdoor concrete pot which they are planning to decorate and use in the space.

Fitness 

The Fitness Group have been very active, organising a running workshop, an upcoming soccer tournament, a rippa rugby round robin and creating infographics to encourage others to become more active.

THE READING CORNER

At the beginning of Term 4, students decided they wanted to make their learning space more colourful and friendly. You will have noticed lots of new displays and art on the walls but some students took this a step further and created an entirely new space. This is our new Reading Corner. This includes a reading hut designed by Tate, a bookshelf built and donated by Jack and some inspiring artwork by Indi, Sydney, Kaylana and some other students.

ALGEBRA

In the final weeks of this term we will be exploring algebra. During this time students will investigate making and describing patterns, finding rules to predict the results of patterns and how relationships are expressed in words and in graphs. They will also look at equations consisting of +, <, and > and solving equations with unknowns.

COMING UP

Wednesday 7 December: LC4 students have been invited to the Hobsonville Point Secondary School to their Market Day. The students will be walking to the secondary school so they need shoes, a hat and some gold coins if they would like to buy anything at the Market.
Tuesday 13th December:  HPPS is inviting all parents to visit the school for a celebration, picnic and visit the learning commons to see what has been taking place in term 4.  For those that worked on the Hobsonville Point History game there is an opportunity to share the video game also. The school newsletter has more information about this.

Week 5 & 6

Physical Education
There has been a great amount of PE taking place for LC4 students recently. We've had a groups of students taking part in workshops with the secondary school, they've been learning skateboarding, badminton, dance and cheerleading. A large group of students have also been involved with gymnastics on Friday afternoons, professional coaches have been visiting to support our students. As a learning common we've also been going out to practise some of the summer small ball skills of catching, striking and throwing. Students are enjoying the chance to get outside:
"My handstands used to go everywhere and I'd fall, now my handstands are good and I'm starting to learn how to do a cartwheel".
"I've been learning how to do things but I'm still struggling to do them when we're not on the mats. But I still love going".
"I've learnt how to play badminton, I thought it was just like tennis but its not".
"Now I know how to throw a ball properly".

Effective Communication Projects
Physical Activity Group:
These students have all chosen to promote greater physical activity at Hobsonville Point Primary and have so far created a survey using Google Forms to investigate the student attitude towards exercise. They're going to use their results to create infographics, including data and their learning from their own personal interest. Outcomes within this group are a lunchtime soccer tournament, rippa rugby workshops, student led run club and another group is looking to excite students with a trip to Clip 'n' Climb.

LC4 Outdoor Space:
This group have set the lofty challenge of creating a more inspirational and relaxing outdoor space. They've been busy writing letters for Mitre 10, newsletters and investigating methods for beautifying the courtyard. They are wanting to create Bottleflies using recycled plastic bottles and are hoping to do some planting, paintwork and possibly even some small construction work.

Healthy Food Project Group

In the last few weeks, the healthy food group have been doing a whole lot of research! We have been reading food labels and finding out what things like sugar, protein and calcium do to our bodies! 

This week we talked about substituting unhealthy ingredients in recipes for healthy ingredients. We hope to be visiting the supermarket next week and then getting into the kitchen to test our substitutions.

Friendship Project Group

We have been flat out writing scripts that demonstrate how kids in our school can solve problems between them and their peers! After lots and lots of filming and then re-filming, we are happy to be editing our film at last! Soon our "first episode" will be complete and then shared with some of the learning commons around the school. In the meantime, we are writing new scripts for our next episode too!

Cyber Safety

The Cyber Safety Project group are exploring how best to promote cyber safety tips effectively to students at Hobsonville Point. The group have started by collecting information about student use of the internet. Did you know that 50% of students spend 1-2 hours a day online?  Over 60% of student play online games with chat. But only half of those know who they are chatting to. Currently the group are researching how to stay online and thinking about ways they could communicate this information. Some of the group were lucky enough to attend a Cyber Safety Conference being held at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

“I thought it was ok at first but now I know you shouldn’t share your age and birthdate”

"It wasn’t just one of the those normal conferences where it is just boring boring information, the kids actually got to be involved in the sessions and it was mostly kids teaching kids”

“They told us that sometimes you might not be popular at school but you can be popular online - and that surprised me”

Mannequin Challenge
Our students have noticed that the Mannequin challenge has been quite popular, we've been using it to extend their ability with drama skills. Here are some samples of what they've been doing.



Upcoming events:
Y6 Bike Safety course in week 7.
IEM emails to be sent soon from Karma.