Around the World!

This term we have been on a trip around the world! Along the way we have been learning new skills, such as salsa dancing and using chopsticks. We have also been tasting different food from different countries. Check out some of our highlights in this video:

             

Rotuma

This week we got a visit from Rako Pasefika, a dance company from Rotuma. It was amazing to get the chance to learn more about this Pacific country, to hear a little of their language, music and dance.

We had two sessions which were lead by Samuela AKA Skillz. He was an awesome tutor and we learnt so much in such a short time (less than 2 hours!). We really enjoyed the experience and are proud of what we accomplished. Check it out below:

Pizza!

This afternoon Room 4 compared one of Italy's most famous pizza's with the most popular pizza flavour sold in America - pepperoni. We have just completed an inquiry on Europe and now we have started to investigate North America.

We started by watching a video about Italian cuisine and then we did some googling to work out what America's favourite pizza flavour is. We found out a lot about pizza - it is a popular dish worldwide!

We then created the pizzas in both styles. The Italian pizza was a Margherita, which originated from Naples. The story behind is that it was made for Queen Margherita as it shows the colours of the Italian flag. It is made from tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese. We used a little bit of olive oil on the crust to make it nice and crispy.

The pepperoni pizza had tomato sauce (with sugar and herbs like oregano), pepperoni and mozzarella. We didn't put any oil on this pizza, but it was quite greasy due to the ingredients on it.

Some of the comments that the class made were:

Pepperoni is more greasy
The Italian pizza looks better
The Italian pizza has better texture.
Pepperoni pizza is really just meat and cheese
American Pizza is more popular because you can taste the fat and sugar.
The Italian Pizza Is very Flavourful and tasty. You can tell they used fresh ingredients.

Samoan Language Week

"Lalaga le si'osi'omaga mo se lumana'i manuia

Weave an environment for a better future."

This is our theme for Samoan Language Week 2019. In Team 5 we've enjoyed learning words and phrases we can use everyday like saying "tulou". Always excuse yourself if your movements are going to obstruct the view of others.

Check out some highlights from todays assembly.

Fa'afetai ma ia manuia tele le toe vaiaso.

Maths on Scratch!

Check out what Zaeeda got up to in maths this week!

Since this week is tech week we decided to take our maths into coding. We used scratch to show and teach our learning. The first thing we did was learn about different types of transformations, thanks to a video Mrs Stone found on youtube it wasn't a problem to remember these. Then we had to use coding to show different transformations. When we finished coding and testing it we screencastified and then put it on our blogs!
I hope you enjoyed this task. I definitely did, I am super excited about what we will be doing later on. We will be doing something like this for our animation so stay tuned during the ending of this term.

Year 8 Camp

Last week the year eights went to Kauaeranga Valley Christian Camp. The camp was focussed on leadership and helped us to step up and become more confident.

We had a mixture of camp activities like go karts and air rifles, as well as workshops around leadership values. We first practiced 'following the leader' and working as a team, before we learnt about becoming leaders ourselves. We considered the things that we say (first to ourselves, then towards others) and things that we do to lead effectively.

We used the metaphor of the awhi rito - when we are young we are the centre of the awhi rito, with our teachers, families and caregivers looking after us as the outer leaves. As we grow older, take more responsibility and lead we move further away from the centre. 

Throughout the week more and more students stepped up to show their leadership. It was amazing to see everyones confidence grow and we all learnt something new about each other.

Rotten Romans

This week room 4 have been learning about the different continents. We have started with a 'visit' to Rome 4, or ancient Rome. This gave us an example of how architecture, language and people moved around Europe. We learnt some interesting facts like:

• The Romans conquered many countries around the Mediterranean sea.
• The Romans kept dogs as pets
• They used to wash their clothes in urine,
• There are still Roman roads and architecture that we can see today!

We also learnt that Latin developed into the romance languages like French, Spanish and Italian! So we can still see some of the influences of the Romans 2000 years later - we thought this was pretty cool.
As there have been hundreds of wars in Europe, we looked at how different empires had conquered different places throughout history. We looked at how the Roman army were able to invade so many countries - they had a rigorous training scheme and some great formations. Check out our Testudo!