Manawatu Digi Awards

The Digi Awards season has come around again and we've been out and about in the school grounds learning how we can take some interesting and 'artistic' photos.

There are 7 categories that students can enter this year:

• Photos
• Photo Essay (5 photos)
• Short film
• Animation
• Documentary
• Graphic design
• Other

Don't forget to check out the Manawatu Digi Awards Facebook page to get some inspiration for your own work and to check out the standard of the past winners work.  

Here's some useful suggestions to help us take some interesting photos at school.  

Don't forget it you want to do some digital work at home, you can share it with the class email address where we can add it to your file.  The work must be your own.  If you didn't make it or create it, you can't use it. 

Mrs Mullinger Teaches Geometry

Mrs Mullinger challenged Room 4 were to make some 3D shapes using paper nets.  However, a few very clever children found that they could model some 3D shapes using pipe cleaners.  I was working in the office but Mrs Mullinger was so impressed that she sent Caitlyn over to show me.  

Ruahine Speech Competition

Before we know it Speeches will be upon us.  Speeches will be about a country of your choice and more information will be handed out in class.  The posters below show when these are due and out line what will make for a successful speech.   Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Investigating in Science

We have been working on some science experiments that help us to be able to extend our experiences and personal explanations of the natural world through exploration, play, asking questions and discussing simple models.

Here's what we did. 

We had 7 different 'bus stop' activities set up to build and create sounds and musical instruments out of everyday materials.  Some of the materials we had to work with were, glass bottles, water, sticks, buckets, pots, wooden spoons, rice, plastic bottles, paper clips, dice, rubber bands, cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, balloons, straws - JUST TO NAME A FEW THINGS!

While students were experimenting with different materials, they were to predict, plan, what they would have to do to make sounds change or to produce different sounds.  Then after they made their 'instrument' they were to observe and infer the reasons for the different sounds.   


WALT: Explore every day experiences of physical phenomena in sound
Success Criteria:

• we can work in small groups to experience different ideas.

• we can seek and describe simple patterns in sound. 

• we can build and create simple instruments that make sounds or a range of sounds. 

• we can explain how the sounds change when we alter the instruments. 

It sure did get noisy!

Learning to Summarise

We've all read an article on Kiwikidsnews about Animal Rights in Switzerland.

We are all learning to summarise to help us with our researching skills.

WALT: Summarise using key words. 

SC: We can look for important key words in the text to help us summarise

We can summarise the main ideas in the text in our own words

First we looked out for the key words or topic words.  We wrote them on the whiteboard and then used those to make 3 summary sentences.  We talked about needing to include some of the 'Ws', who, where, when and why?

This is what it looks like:

We had some discussion about how we can turn our key words back into sentences to summarise the main article; and this is what we came up with.

In Switzerland, in 2008, the government made it illegal to own only one goldfish.  They think it is cruel; fish need companions because they live in schools.  These laws protect animal rights, including cats, parrots and other pets.  

Take a look at the article here and see how you think we did? 

http://kiwikidsnews.co.nz/owning-just-1-pet-goldfish-illegal-switzerland/

Science - Communicating in Science

We have been working on making observations, describing and comparing them in our learning about how to communicate our scientific thinking.  We are developing knowledge of the vocabulary and symbol systems and conventions and how these are used to communicate ideas and knowledge.

This is what we did:

We placed some water in a tray with some food colouring.
We placed a candle the tray with coloured water.
Miss K said she was going to put a jar over the candle
We then poised a question.

Question:
What will happen to the candle and water?

Most people thought the candle will go out.

Miss K. had written our WALT and Success Criteria on the whiteboard.

WALT:observe, describe and compare physical and chemical properties of common materials and changes that occur when materials are heated or cooled. SC: we can observe and describe what happens to the candle and water we can poise a theory/hypothesis as to why this happens. We can understand a simple formula for a change in chemical state.

Then Miss K. lit the candle.  It went out and as it did the water also rose up the jar!

Then we tried it again to be sure that the same thing would happen.  

Then we did it again with different sized jars and a bottle.  

The same thing happened.  Here's a photo showing what happened.  

We got to have a turn placing the jar over the candle and watching the candle go out and water rise up.

We talked about the chemical names or formula (Scientific Symbol Systems) for candles, water, oxygen and smoke.  Miss K. showed us what it looks like on the whiteboard.

To try and understand why the water was sucked into the jar, we had to understand two different processes:  

1) Burning, two oxygen molecules result in one carbon dioxide molecule and two water molecules.  Not only did the oxygen run out (we knew this would happen), but the water replaced that and more!  So why did the water go in the jar after the candle went out? 

It was hard to understand but, it made sense when Miss K. said, 

"Let's look at the maths".

If we only look at the numbers and not the science names for the chemicals, 2 of (2+4) does not equal 2+2.  But that's what the equation tells us.  So water replaced the missing or burnt gas, the air space in the glass decreased.  It had to be replaced by something. So the water moved up into the glass! 

2) The other reason was that the air warmed up when the candle was burning, but when it went out, the air cooled, which means it takes up less space, so there was even more space (less 'air') in the jar, so the water continues to rise after the flame goes out.

Crazy amount of science from one little experiment!!


 We then had a very quick chat (because we were running out of time) about how we can use this scientific thinking and communication in our every day life.  So much to think about!!