Week 9

What an amazing week 9 we have had! This is our last full week of the year and it has been filled with trips and fun activities.

On Monday, Room 4 Maths completed their business studies project by creating their products, selling them and identifying their profit. We wanted to donate this money and so we decided to give it to the school office, so that it could pay for some students to attend our school trips.

On Tuesday it was year 8 graduation, which was followed by a trip to the Panmure Lagoon on Wednesday. Below is a picture of Leonidas getting ready to go down the hydroslide!

On Thursday we headed to Pt England beach to do a clean up and we played on the playground before we went back to school. We needed to clean up so that it would be safe and ready for our school picnic on Friday.

We also were lucky enough to watch Room 9's plays in the hall and some of our students had the opportunity to perform a play in response.

Then we topped it all off with our school picnic. It was a beautiful full day at the beach on Friday - check out Hilary singing karaoke!

We can't believe it is almost the end of the year! We have had a fantastic 2019. We hope you have too!

Room 4 2019

As the year draws to a close, it is always good to reflect back on the times that we have had together as a class. For our final Pt England News video this year, Mrs Stone made a video to celebrate the good times that we have had. We hope you enjoy watching our highlights!

       

Who Dunnit? by Caleb and Hinerangi

In room 4, we have been investigating crime! Somebody was trying to steal something, and while they were leaving, they cut themselves while jumping through a window. We found some of their bloody clothing, and we started our work on the crime. Using CCTV footage, we narrowed it down to four people.  We still haven't found out what they stole, if anything, as there were so many priceless artefacts in the building. Then we started our detective work!

First off, we put some water on the bloody cloth. Then, we put that on the slide, and then put the slide under a microscope. On the first magnification (4x), we could see a pattern of red and a hairy substance. Then, when we tried the second (10x), we saw what we saw on the second scope, but bigger. On the third one (100x) we could see tiny blood cells. This confirmed that it was blood on the cloth.

Scientists at work

We then discovered that the blood was type A+. We also tested the victim, but found that their blood was O, so the blood definitely belonged to the criminal.

Putting anti RH into the blood to see if it will react

Next we took blood from our four suspects. We were looking to see which one of them was A+. To test the blood we put it in three punnets. In each punnet, we put three drops of anti-RH, anti-A and anti-B in three drops of the blood. If the blood reacted (agglutinated or got cloudy) we knew what it contained. For example, type A blood would react with anti-A.



Here are our results:

Suspect 1: AB + 
Suspect 2: B
Suspect 3: A+
Suspect 4: 0 -


Therefore, Suspect 3 is the robber!

Rainbows End!

On Wednesday 20th November, the year sevens were fortunate enough to visit Rainbows End. This is a trip that we hold every year, to celebrate the end of year seven, before we come back as the leaders of the school.

We spend the entire day there; we get into small groups with a parent helper and then get to explore the park with them. Here is a promo of the trip, we hope it will prepare next years year sevens for the amazing event!

Fair Trade by Marika

WALT: Analyse and interpret statistical data

This week we played a trade game. First we got into groups of four to six people . We each got 10 pieces of paper saying that they were either gold, coffee, lumber, electronics or oil. We each had different amounts of these resources. Mrs Stone wrote how valuable these items were on the board. The groups that had lots of oil were wealthy, but one group had lots of coffee which meant that they were less wealthy, because it was worth the least. In my group, we had trouble trading with people and in the end we decided not to trade at all. And we won! We won because we had lot of oil, lumber and gold, which we valuable items. We also had enough electronics and coffee for our country.

The group that were the poorest had the most had the least valuable items, but they were able to make some trades and in the ended the didn't lose. The group that lost made bad trade decisions, despite having good resources. They decided to trade all of their oil and electronics for coffee, which was a poor decision.

Overall I enjoyed the game because it used lots of thinking, literacy and statistics. Here is the work I did after we played!

                       

Love the Difference

This year, Room 4 have been discussing the topics such as acceptance and diversity, as part of School Kits 'Not Part of My World' kit.  We believe the world would be a better place if we could embrace the things that make us unique and accept them in others. So we decided to make this the theme of our movie.

Watch our movie below and then read the explanation

    

Whats really going on here? *spoilers*
 Jacob (the new boy) is worried about whether he will be accepted in his new school. There is something about him that makes him appear different, which we have represented through face paint. The face paint is just a symbol, it could represent culture or gender or any other quality that make us different from one another. The boy's classmates later paint their faces, which represents them embracing the things that make them unique and they celebrate the diversity in their classroom.
We got the idea from this short film as we thought it had a really lovely message and it was funny!

Museum Trip

Today Team 5 were fortunate enough to travel to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. This would not have been possible if it wasn't for support from our sponsor KPMG. Not only did they cover the cost of the trip and shout us a delicious morning tea, but over 30 of their staff volunteered to be our helpers on the trip itself!

Our fantastic volunteer Hamish sharing his expertise

We were able to split up into small groups of three or four and travel around the museum and winter gardens with our assigned volunteers. This was a fantastic opportunity for us and we found so many interesting artefacts to discuss throughout the day! See what some of our learners had to say about the day:

Makayla 

" I was in a group together with Amelia and Naomi, when we got to the museum we found out that we will be with a KPMG volunteer for the day. Me and my group were with a kind woman named Alex. She was very polite and fun to be around during the time we were with her.

She came all around the museum with us and spent a whole day with us. She took photos of us, looked after us and laughed with us. I along with my group were very happy to have her as our volunteer, we felt very comfortable with her and had many fun. My favorite part of the day was 'The Winter Garden'. I found it very beautiful and exotic, I liked all the different flowers and plants. Overall I had a really great day with my friends and Alex."

Josh

" My highlight of the trip was watching the video of the volcano (Rangitoto) erupt in Auckland. My team watched it in a 'house' and once the volcano exploded the house was shaking, it moved side to side fast as! There were heaps of equipment and instruction to survive natural disasters at the museum. "