Taste Poetry

This week room 4 literacy have been focussing on using effective vocabulary in our writing. After writing a poem about an object last week, we are writing taste poems about food - being able to experience the subject in this way has helped us heaps with our ideas!

To force us to use precise vocabulary our poems were very short; they only had four lines and each line either contained 3 or 5 words! For example:

Palms are sweating

apprehensive about the impending sourness

warhead in mouth

sourness dissolves and sweetness ensues 

Watch this video to see us recite some of our poems:

                      

Write your own story

We had a wonderful moment of success in Room 4 Literacy this morning as we completed our Get NZ Writing activities and put our post cards together. It had been quite a journey - the highs of writing our poem, the low of thinking we had misplaced some of the postcards and the high of finding them again and making the shared artwork!


These activities have really stretched us to consider the vocabulary we used. We needed to pick words precisely as we only had a few lines for our poetry (see an example below)

Each postcard had a picture on the back and when we put them all together it spelled out a message.

The power of words

Today in Room 4 Literacy we have been discussing the power of our words. We considered that words are the buiding blocks of language; we cannot write a thing without them! We know that we can make our writing more effective when we use our words precisely.

Then we made a word wall of our favourite words - we called them juicy or sticky words, because we like the way they look, sound and the meaning behind them.

After making a class poster that was filled with different sticky words (cheers school kit for this!), we were given objects and we had to think of words that went with them.

What words could you think of that relate to this tiny ship in a bottle?

What words could you think of that relate to this compass?

Kia Kaha

Today we had an assembly to honour those who lost their lives last Friday. We flew our flag at half mast and sang a longer version of the national anthem. We really enjoyed the second English verse of this anthem, as its message was very relevant to the event:

 Men of every creed and race,

Gather here before Thy face,

Asking Thee to bless this place,

God defend our free land.

From dissension, envy, hate,

And corruption guard our state,

Make our country good and great,

God defend New Zealand.

In our home class in the afternoon we discussed what we wanted to as a class. We decided to make a wall full of our hopes, thoughts and prayers out of post it notes. Everyone in the class created at least one and we will continue to add to it (this will improve the shape of our heart).

Our thoughts are with our Islamic community, the people of Christchurch (especially our friends at Yaldhurst Model School) and our country.  Kia Kaha New Zealand.

Colour Poems

This week Room 4 literacy have been focusing and learning about poems and how to write them. We are learning to use effective vocabulary. Here is Hilary's colour poem. She had to think of some items of different colours and use interesting vocabulary to make it more effective. She then cut out each line and arranged them to ensure they sounded great and had good rhythm.

Colours , A beautiful glowing cheerful rainbow.

Blue, a glistering gleaming sapphire as bright as heaven.

blue , the bright luminous sky.

Pink , a girls gleaming shiny glossy lip gloss.

Red , Ruby's as red and roses and roses as scarlet as blood.

Orange , a fiery blazing glow to fire.

Polyfest 2019

Yesterday team 5 got the chance to visit a cultural festival called Polyfest. For those who do not know what Polyfest is, it is an iconic cultural festival held every year (for 44 years!) in Manukau Sports Bowl Auckland, New Zealand. Every secondary school in the area get the chance to compete which is what the event is famous for, although it also features a range of food stalls and activities. The competition allows different people to embrace their cultures through traditional dances from Hindi (bollywood) dances to even the Tongan tau'olunga!

Polyfest hold a schools day on the Wednesday (the first day of the event) where schools are invited to come in and explore the activities, before the main crowds arrive. The companies and organisations at the stands put on a range of activities especially for this day. We visited a range of stalls, from the Fire Brigade to radio stations to AUT. Each stand had a different activity for us to participate in.

While most of the main stages were closed on this day, we managed to sneak in to see some of the Kapa Haka performances on the Māori stage, which was amazing! We were so impressed with the enthusiasm and talent of the students who performed. You could really tell that they were loving the experience! 

Some of our favourite stands were from Elections (who taught us about voting and what the mayor and prime minister do), AUT who told us about uni and taught us a dance and Vaimatina who came all the way from Hawaii to teach us to Hula!

We also met heaps of people who taught us more about careers. We met some people from different Universities and courses who taught us about all the scholarships that are available in a range of areas from teaching to welding! We also learnt about some specific careers like the Navy (which is more about disaster relief and peace keeping than many of us realised) and being a radio host. 

Overall the trip really helped us to learn more about our inquiry topic: Ko wai au?  Ko wai tātou?  Ko wai rātou?  As we have been looking at our past (our culture and journey to Glen Innes), our present (our interests and identities) and our future (our careers). There was something to support our understanding of each of those foci throughout the day. What a wonderful experience!

Ratio with Raro

WALT: Identify the relationship between numbers.

This week, Room 4 maths have been learning about Ratio. We realised how often we need to calculate ratio in the real world and that it is particularly important for us to know when we cook. We decided to investigate this in our DMIC problem involving raro.

Question 1 ~ Mrs Stone bought 80g packets of Raro. Each packet creates 5 200ml serving. How many packets should Mrs Stone buy to serve the whole class?

 We figured out she needed to buy 7 packets, because 7 x 5 = 35. She would have three servings left over, but you can't buy less than a whole packet!

Question 2 ~ If 80g of Raro makes 5 servings, what is the ratio of raro to water for one serving?

80g : 1000ml

16 : 200ml 

16 was the answer we found to solve this problem. The packet said that each serving required 200ml of water. We knew that 200 x 5 is 1000 and that 5 x 16 is 80.

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After getting through each problem we got to test out the ratio by making 5 cups of raro. We used all the knowledge that we learnt to make sure everyone had an even amount of the ingredients like water and we knew how much powder to put in each cup.

Welcome to Team 5!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a student in Team 5? Check out this video to learn more about us!

Ko wai au?

This term we have been looking at our identities and answering the question Ko Wai Au? The students used Hyperstudio to create visual mihi. These represented aspects of their identities, like their culture, interests, families and faith. Can you guess who these visual mihi belong to?