The end of the year and on to new beginnings!

So, it's not only our Year 6 Graduates off to new and exciting adventures - I am also leaving Hay Park School.

I have had the privilege of being a part of this community for many years. Hunter spoke about the importance of Hay Park's community in her graduation speech and I have to agree - he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is the people.

To the Hay Park Community, I'd like to say thank you for allowing me to be part of your lives and to learn along side you all.

To our Hay Park students and especially McCahon Class I would like to encourage you with this whakatauki -

Ko te pae tawhiti whaaia kia tata, ko te pae tata whakamaua kia tina
Seek out distant horizons, and cherish those you attain.

Look for new challenges and be proud of what you achieve - you all have such exciting futures ahead of you!

Hei konā mai,
Kama

Year 6 Graduation - 2015!

Where has Term 4 gone?!
Yesterday we had our Year 6 Graduation celebration - thank you to everyone who helped us have a successful afternoon!

Our learning never stops! Go Evanjaline!

Imagine how thrilled I was when I saw Evanjaline had been posting over the holidays AND making connections with learners in other schools!

Here's her blog post about - Looking Over Our Cyber/Blog World Role Models!

Awesome Evanjaline!

What a great holiday so far, huh? Hey Blogging World, how has your holiday break gone so far? I love it but I do miss school! Since I was missing school, I had a look on some of the class twitter pages and found Mr Hopkins's Twitter page!

I went through some tweets and found a pupil that attends Tamaki Primary as a yr8 student. He currently has 360(!) posts in only 2015! I commented on one of the first three posts (currently) and thanked him for showing me that I can do better in posting in time because my encouraging Teacher, Mrs Kingston, is always telling us that your blog will eventually get boring if you give a long time to keep posting. If you want to know what I am talking about look at: http://tpswillyl.blogspot.co.nz/  His ideas are so incredible as the 'dollarnaire game' he had made! Thanks Willy! 

Mary's Blog Post: PB4L - Being safe in the playground

This is my video created by me ( Mary ).
This video is about how to be safe on the playground.
I uploaded this video on youtube other wise here is the link.
Mary's Video on how to be safe on the play ground.
I hope you have learnt from this video like as they say "treat others as they wanted to be treated".

WAIKOWHAI INTERMEDIATE FUN DAY WINNERS!

That's right! We won Waikowhai Intermediate's Fun Day today - organised and run by the fantastic Waikowhai Student Council.
Unfortunately we could only send six students, but those who went have done us really proud!
Tino pai rawa team!


Here's what they had to say:

HAY PARK SCHOOL WAIKOWHAI INTERMEDIATE FUN DAY WINNERS!

Arnav, Mary, Hati, Lolo, Peter and Nisha have competed in the fun day at Waikowhai Intermediate school. After doing the activities we had a little prize giving, and we have WON!
So our prizes for coming first in this fun day activity were:

• Certificates for encouraging others and participating. 
• $100 for the school (we will meet as a class and decide what to spend it on)!

The activities we participated in were: Crazy dodgeball (Waiwa), Scooter Game (travelwise), Taste Testing Food (Kaiwise) and other activities.

CyberSmart AND PB4L: Protecting Your Privacy Online

Our CyberSmart AND PB4L focus this week has been about being a safe learner online. Our SODA task this morning, with Mrs Wright was to list ways we can protect our privacy while online.
Simeon had some great ideas:

We all shared our ideas on the padlet below - have a look to see what we thought...

Created with Padlet

Our latest collaborative project #learningGEMs

Our latest collaborative project is #learningGEMs

This means we will be adding our ideas about what we are:

• Grateful for…
• Excited by…
• Motivated to…

Arnav started us off today and you can see a screen grab of his slide below. Check back, we'll be blogging and tweeting about #learningGEMs!

Click in the image to see a more detailed view.

Highlights from Week 5: The Viewer - Creating Images and Soundscapes - Damien's Post

Description:
In this week we have been learning about a book called The Viewer - the illustrator is Shaun Tan ,
we are working on one of the scenes which is 'the restless sleep', (spoiler alert!)
...it is the part where he dropped of the old toy thing and when he was shocked of the images. As you see in our photo our actor is lying down in a restless sleep he is feeling a Dark Presence nearby.

This is  Our recorder of our sound effects but it isnt that goo

Highlights from Week 5: The Viewer - Creating Images and Soundscapes - Toma's Post

Hola senioritas and senioras! This week we are reviewing on a book called....
THE VIEWER
This book hooks everyone in and it is created by the mysterious minds of Shaun Tan! Beware..........

Here is the link for the soundscapes all created by me and my buddies voices and the resources around us:

Highlights from Week 5: The Viewer - Creating Images and Soundscapes - Arnav's Post

This week we have been focusing on the viewer (a book) by Shaun Tan So there was phrase that was "he was having a restless sleep", this means that we have seen something that we can not get it out of our head. So Tristan (the boy) had looked at some photos that terrified him, and he thought that it will come true. So we had to act that out. This is me having a restless sleep, I  worked with my friend Shahid to photograph and to edit this photo.

This link is the sound scape!

Please leave a comment below!

The Viewer: Should Tristan look at through the machine again?

Should Tristan look through the viewer again? Here's what we thought...

Created with Padlet

The Viewer: Capturing Restless Sleep

We are using Shaun Tan's 'The Viewer' to support our Writing. Today we captured photos of a 'restless sleep' which Tristan (the main character) has after seeing the images through the viewer he found.
We'll be posting more of our learning here and on our blogs.
Listen to Hati and Johan explain what they were doing in the photo below.

** Photo and audio to follow (the boys are working on it!)

Just Breathe

This morning for our SODA Task we watched this great video about managing anger. We picked out the key message and added our 'take-away'. You can read them on the padlet below.

 

Created with Padlet

We're back from Camp!

Kia ora whanau! We're back from our 3 days @ MERC in Long Bay. We had an amazing time and we have plenty of things to share so stay tuned!

Whakatauki: Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori 2015

Today we learnt about whakatauki (proverbs) and their importance in Te Ao Māori. We found a whakatauki that meant something special to us and added it to this shared resource.
You can visit our individual blogs to see some more of our learning as part of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.

#kidsedchatnz

Welcome to term 3 team!
We're gearing up for the #kidschatnz Twitter chat next Wednesday. The first chat is using picture cues and I can see a lot of us are really thinking about the prompts. If you haven't visited already, the link is here: http://kidsedchatnz.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/t3-w2-photo-chat.html 

So you know...this is a pic of us last term after winning the prize for the rocket that stayed airborne the longest (Go Stardome!)

A few highlights from our last day of term 2!

Teach The Teacher Session 9: Samoan Games!

What a fun way to end 'Teach the Teacher' for Term 2. I learnt a new game and I think the teachers learnt it was important to give clear instructions.
This is a game I think I will use for warm-ups in PE lessons in the future.

Jeanett and Saunoa, I am not sure how to spell the name of the game - can you please add it in the comments section below?
Thanks!

Teach The Teacher Session 8: Hockey Skills!

I had so much fun during yesterday's lessons that I had to invite Mrs. Wright to this lesson too. We learnt a few new tricks and I have realised it is REALLY hard to keep your legs bent, keep and eye on the ball but ALSO to look up so you know where you are going!
We have some fantastic hockey players in our class and they were fantastic teachers too!

Teach The Teacher Session 5: Learning About the Samoan Culture

Great work team! I have got some home learning to do over the holidays - my aim is to learn some basic Samoan phrases that I can use in class!

Teach The Teacher: Session 4 Creating a D&D Character

Thanks for the introduction to D&D Johan! I took some great ideas for story writing! 

Teach The Teacher Session 3: Gaming and Consoles

This session reminded me of a game I used to play a LONG time ago - Age of Empires!
I also learnt a bit more about Minecraft and have asked the boys to help me out with tips, tricks and how to's for my niece who is coming to stay in the holidays.
I am LOVING learning such a cross section of new things!
#bestdayever

Teach The Teacher Session 2: Soccer tricks!

Session 2: Arnav, Shahid and Rita taught 4 tricks - Rainbow Flick, Around the World, Scorpion and Step Over. My next step is to practice at home over the holidays.
I kind of got the hang of the Rainbow Flick, but I have a long way to go!
Thanks for encouraging me everyone!

Teach The Teacher: session 1

Today is teach the teacher day! We'll be blogging about the sessions here. Session 1 was with Evanjaline and Nisha, learning about Samoan culture. I'll include their presentation below. It's going to be fun day!

More fun with Stardome - with winning launch and flight (Evanjaline's blog post)

 Barev bolorin,

 Today we had some of the Stardome team come and help us fly our, mostly, student lead rockets. McCahon class, the class I am in, won the highest flight award which the video above shows. Nisha, Simeon, Arnav and I were the makers or engineers of the rocket. We also designed it and it was so awesome having our class room mates praise us. If you would like to see the actual rocket, comment down below and I will upload some close ups!

Thanks for posting Evanjaline! 
Her original blog post can be found here: Flying Rockets! 

Nisha's blog post about our Quad-Blogging Project

This week we began our first quad-blogging project!

We have teamed up with 3 other schools around New Zealand and this week we are commenting on Room 8 @ Paerata School's class blog.

We've really enjoyed looking at their blog and seeing the learning they do!

Here is Nisha's blog post about what she found interesting on their class blog.

24/6/15 T2 WK 10: My Blog Comment on Room 8 Paerata's School Blog

Today I was looking through Room 8 Paerata's School Blog (because it was for quad blogging in my Class Room) and was looking for a Blog Post I could comment on but then I saw nothing I was interested in. But when I looked again on their Blog I found a Blog Post that hooked me in when I first saw it.

What is Quad Blogging?

Quad Blogging is a new term/concept that has 4 schools blogging in a cycle that helps people view and comment on students blogs.

And here is a snap shot of the Blog Post that had hooked me in:

Also here is a snap shot of my Blog Comment I had posted on their Blog Post:

The Link for the Blog I actually commented on and showing my Blog comment:
http://room8paerata.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/our-first-google-ninja-black-belt.html#comment-form

Stardome Visit and Rocket Launches!

Yesterday our McCahon Engineers were put to the test. A select group were put in charge of the design and construction of our rocket.
Each class had a rocket to build and there was a prize for the rocket that had the best design and the one that stayed in the air the longest - which we won! Our rocket stayed aloft a full .5 seconds than our closest rivals!
So great work Evanjaline, Arnav, Simeon and Nisha - Nisha was also our official photographer - more photos to come.

Badminton Coaching with Danny

First we started with a warm up of shuttles from one side of the room to another working on our footwork. We jogged, sprinted, did the sidewalk and the grape vine. 

Then we came up with some rules about handling the badminton racket. We then got into two lines so that we could collect a badminton racket each. 

When we all had a racket, we learnt how to hold a badminton racket with the forehand grip. 

We then got a shuttle and practised hitting the shuttle with the rackets. Lyle and Sitaleki were very successful with keeping the shuttle up in the air without dropping it. 

After practising our forehand grip, we worked on our backhand grip. It was much trickier controlling the shuttle with this grip but we soon got the hang of it.

We further challenged ourselves by changing between both grips, forehand and backhand. Those of us who were more confident even added some spin to our hits!

Do you know the game "Last Person Standing?" Like its name suggests, the aim of the game is to be the last person standing while keeping the shuttle in the air. When you drop the shuttle, you must sit down until only one person is left. That person is the winner. 

Having practised independently, we then moved into passing between pairs. One person (the passer) would throw the shuttle to their partner, while their partner (receiver) hit it back with their racket. After a few hits, we swapped to ensure that everyone got a turn throwing and hitting the shuttle. 

We held a quick reflection time and recapped our learning about the different types of grips.

McCahon class had a great time at badminton today and we can't wait for our next lesson!

Everyone looked like Cheshire Cat with their crescent moon smiles painted on their faces!

Visit to Stardome!

Last Friday (12th June), Hay Park School had the opportunity to visit Stardome to learn more about Planet Earth and Beyond.  

For the first 45 minutes, McCahon and Flox class watched a screening of the special Matariki show where we learnt a myriad of new facts about the 'Seven Sisters' in the night sky, and the legend of Matariki.

We then went into the art room to create our own rockets out of long cylinders and to get our faces painted!  

We all had a blast and we wished our time there could have been even longer...

Luckily, the main gallery section of Stardome is free so if you have the chance, plan a visit with your family!

Homework Club with Mrs Kingston and Miss Kim

Welcome to Homework Club!

Today we started off by doing a basic facts test to see where our learning gaps were. 

We then created some 'sliders' (a way of practising our basic facts by sliding the slider from left to right, hiding the answer) to practice three of our circled gaps. 

Well done to Shreya for scoring the only 100% in her basic facts test today. Next time, do you think you can beat your original time? :) 

Field of Remembrance

For the past two weeks we have had a Field of Remembrance set up outside the library for ANZAC Day. There were 30 crosses representing thirty people from our local area who lost their lives in WW1 .

Today McCahon and Flox learners had a ceremony to take down the crosses. We sang Te Aroha and listened to the Last Post before removing a cross with a partner. It was a nice way to round off our learning and thinking about ANZAC Day.