This week we have been busy working on a special mission - to create parachutes for our K9 Special Force Squad (00Woof and 00Wag, pictured below) to carry out a not-so-secret air drop from the tower of the playground. The agent has to be able to drop as slowly as possible, with a soft landing (due to short legs). This means we have been trying to use what we learned last week about air pressure and this week about drag and streamlining as we design and build our parachutes.
Thursday morning was the day of the air-drop as the wind conditions were perfect (as in, there was no wind). The air-drops took place with all parachutes taking between 1.22 seconds and 1.88 seconds. Most parachutes tended to fall straight down though a couple of designs did drift a little.
Monday: we are trying to catch up on our inquiry by combining it with our reading and writing for a few days.
Today we explored the physical phenomena of electricity - in our g3 groups we used Brain Box electronic kits to try and create some different items - an earthquake detector, a quiz board, or upstairs-downstairs light switches.
We learnt about circuits, currents, conductivity and batteries.
The video shows a group that were successful with their quiz game board:
Thursday: today we began to investigate air pressure - Mrs Coyle filled a glass of water, placed cardboard overtop and turned it all upside down. Then she took her hand away and the water stayed in the glass!!! Daniel B was able to tell us this was because the air pressure was holding the card in place and stopping the water from falling - AMAZING!
We also took strips of paper and blew on them to see how the moving air (low pressure) means that the still air (high pressure) pushes against the paper to lift it up or push two pieces together.
We also made paper wings that demonstrate this air pressure effect and then tried out some parachutes.
Friday: the travelling Art Roadshow was here at school - a massive truck art gallery! See the video to watch us having a look around...
An exciting time this week as yesterday we were finally able to go to our new library and issue books to take home! Mrs Tumataroa has done a fantastic job of getting it all ready for us and there were a tonne of new books for us to choose from. We spotted immediate favourites that we wanted to read straight away and some of us are eagerly waiting for our classmates to return the books they had so that we can then read them!
We have been gathering our information about our adopted country - we will be dressing up in a couple of weeks and bringing some food to represent our country at a RWC celebration lunch. We will make posters about our country as well.
The Student Council competition for Edendale Junior Master Chef 2011 is beginning on Monday - Daniel B and William will be competing from our room, we wish them all the best (and are all available for any taste testing they need done!)
Last Friday some of us worked on personal responses to "Our Beautiful World" - the poem of the week; check out this video of three girls who created their own song to teach junior children that we should not pollute the world - today they performed their act to all four junior rooms and received a lot of positive feedback!
Today the 2011 Rugby World Cup begins and we are excited to have this happening in our country.
This week we all adopted different teams that will be competing in the cup: we are in pairs and are gathering information about our team countries. We are enjoying finding out about the language, food, music, culture and places of interest of our countries. We will be following our teams' progress closely! In a couple of weeks we will have a dress-up day in our class to celebrate and present our adopted country.
Our native american indian weaving is coming along nicely - with our weaving we are telling the story of how the fly saved the river! Watch out for photos of our finished weaving on our personal blogs next week!
On Monday some Menzies College Year 13 students came to spend the afternoon with us - we split into 3 groups and played cooperative games. It was a lot of fun.
We practised some more dribbling and passing with our miniball session on Tuesday.
This week we finished and published our Summer Memory recounts. We have written about swimming, boating, beach visits, and more! We used a lot of awesome details to support our main ideas and the stories are really interesting to read. Look for these on our personal blogs too!
We were very excited to have the official opening of our new Thomas Brydone Learning Centre on Tuesday. The TBLC is an extra-large classroom where we can have school celebrations, jump jam, visiting performers and special events.
The library is on shelves at the back of the room and we can't wait to be able to get our hands on all the new books Mrs T has got waiting there for us!
Mrs Johansen and Hayden tell us about Thomas Brydone
Mr McKenzie welcomes everyone
Lanney from Room 5 Kereru gives the karakia
Board chairperson Mrs Heads, MP Eric Roy, Minister of Education Anne Tolley, Mrs Jo and Hayden
The room also has two small teaching spaces for small group work, and the back corner has a special e-learning room for videoing and animation - this week Kieran, Josh R and Tom have been learning how to use the animation software so they can be the experts who teach the rest of us what to do when it is our turn.
For the opening we had the Minister of Education, Mrs Anne Tolley, and MP Eric Roy, here for the official opening as well as many other special guests who had been involved with the building. We sang our school song and Mrs Johansen talked about who Thomas Brydone was. We wish to thank Mr McKenzie for all his hard work over the past few years to get this new building here for us to use! It looks awesome!
We first used the building last week at the LMV Speech Contest - well done to Josh J for being the runner-up in the Year Six section! All of the speeches were great and we had a lot of fun listening to them.
On Monday we were in the new Centre for a first aid lesson with Jo from St John's. We learnt how to put people in the recovery position and also how to help them if they are choking. We practised wrapping bandages on sprained ankles too.
Two teams went to Waianiwa on Tuesday for the BP Technology Challenge - Madi F, Anton, Gabby, Kim, William, Renee S and Madi S, and Jordan had built two wind-powered racers, practised building a flagpole and then also had to build a catapault for a pingpong ball. Unfortunately neither team was placed, though one team won drink bottles for their enthusiasm and teamwork. It was a great experience for all involved and thank you to Mrs Knapp and Mrs Schreurs for taking the cars.
Today we are celebrating Dad's Day - we have got a lot of dads, grandads and uncles in the school to join us for jump jam and games. In Room Six some of us have shown our dads what we get up to on the internet and we are playing board games as it is too wet to go outside. Thanks to all the dads who were able to drop by and visit.
