Sculpture Coming to Enner Glynn

The Art group has been designing a sculpture for the school. We have been talking to our artist, and drawing pictures to be made out of steel for it. We have LOTS of design ideas, mostly kids playing sports or music. Our ideas are all based around the school learning lenses - being, uniting, understanding, growing and belonging! We have been looking at library books for some simple ideas for designs. It is really fun helping to design a sculpture for the school. We have had lots of great ideas but now we've chosen one and are working on it. We can't wait until it is finished!

Samantha

Scenario Number Three

Here's a riddle for you -
It has no shape, colour or smell, and when pure, no taste either. We see right through it and often hardly notice it.
What is it?


In F.P.S (Future Problem Solving) we have started a whole new problem. Our new problem is the future worldwide water crisis, we researched a bit and learnt some amazing facts. Did you know that about 10 million people die every year from diseases carried in rancid (dirty) drinking water. If you put all the world's water into a bucket only 1 teaspoon would be drinkable. The amount of water we use to make something is called 'embedded' water, here are some examples:
* 1 T-shirt = 4000 L of water
* Pair of leather = 8000 L
* Slice Bread = 40 L
* Car = 400,000 L
* Sheet of Paper = 1O L

Two-thirds of people live in areas of the world that have only a quarter of the world's rain.

To have fun with our research we are in teams, each team has created a country and we will have skirmishes each week to earn
a percentage of the global water!

We will keep posting interesting facts as we learn them!

Depletion of Ocean Species

Today the REACH FPS group celebrated posting off their second workbook. This was the depletion of ocean species scenario.
It was a scenario about the how our oceans are becoming overfished and looked at a future fishing scenario. Imagine a hotel on the sea where you pay a lot of money to stay but are guaranteed to catch a fish - not just any fish but a genetically altered fish!!!
A closer look at this raised some concern! - We had to think of 10 challenges, some of ours were-
The sonic stunners (a new method of fishing) may not stun just the fish targeted. This may be a problem because they might threaten sea creatures that man hasn't even found yet, this may unbalance the food chain and further deplete the oceanic species. Because Ikanui is a recreational facility it doesn't address the real problem of commercial fishing methods such as bottom trawling
long-lining ect. this is a problem as Ikanui may actually be supporting the commercial fishing methods to feed their fish bycatch
(unwanted fish) which is a byproduct of these methods.
ect. ect. we worked hard and when we finally achieved our goal (today) we got another bowl of popcorn! YUMMY! we are proud of what we have accomplished and a small group of us wish to go further and educate the general public. By the FPS group ;)

HOW YOU CAN HELP OUR NZ BIRDS

We are worried that our New Zealand Native birds are under threat, they are under threat because:
*there are lots of rats and mice.
*stoats that kill for the sake of killing.
*possums eat the leaves,buds,flowers and even bark of native trees, this mens less food for native birds.
*cats come out at night and hunt the native birds.

We need to help before it's too late!!
How you can help:
*keep your cat in at night.
*put a bell on your cats collar.
*help make traps.
*make bird feeders and put them in your garden.
*help with bird monitoring- you can go on the Waimarama Sancturary website to find out more about this.
*tell people about this problem - the more people that are informed the better!

Lets keep our birds safe!!

by Aimee

Brook Sanctuary Field Trip

On Monday the 13th June the REACH Inquiry groups 1 and 2 drove to the Waimarama Brook Sanctuary. We wanted to find out more about our native birds, the situation they are in and what is being done here in Nelson to help them. Rick the project manager talked to us about the pests here in Nelson. Possums, stoats, weasels, ferrel cats, rats and mice are eating our native birds and their eggs, last year alone 26 million native birds were killed in NZ by these pests. Stoats which were bought over from Europe are not a pest there because they have natural predators to keep their numbers down, however in NZ the stoat really does not have any predators. They were bought to NZ to try to decrease the number of rabbits and hares as they were a problem for farmers. Rick showed us how the different traps work, the problem with trapping though is that the volunteers have to keep setting them and that they are only set over 200 of the 715 hectare sanctuary. Eggs are used as bait, the eggs are kindly donated by Ewings poultry as the stoats will only eat fresh eggs. The traps must work in a way that will mean the pest dies instantly. Sometimes Picks peanut butter is used on traps, this is also donated by Picks. You can help by supporting these two local companies by buying Picks peanut butter and Ewings eggs. Poisons can also be used but the native birds can also eat it.
Rick then took us to see a sample section of the pest proof fence they are planning on putting up. The fence is a better option because
*this is the only way the pests can be completely removed.
*it will enclose the whole 715 hectares of the sanctuary.
*Poisons will not need to be used.
We all went for a 45minute walk, looked for traps and listened to the birds. We were lucky enough to see a falcon soaring above us, fantails, pigeons, tui and bellbirds.
We also saw a frozen opossum, they are frozen once trapped so that their fur can be used for clothing.
We had a great morning, learnt lots and now have many ideas of how we can help. Next week we will blog our ideas of what we are going to do to help and how you can help to.!!!

Waimarama Sanctuary

Hi everybody next week Inquiry groups 1 and 2 are going to the Waimarama Sanctuary. We've been doing lots of research and we found out that there are over 250 species of recorded plants and the trust has over 600 members. Some species that are there are the NZ falcon, yellow crown parakeets, wekas and robins. Their goal is to build a pest proof fence to keep invasive species out. The fence will cost 4 million, it will be made of stainless steel and will be 14km long. The holes in the fence can be no bigger than the width of a pencil and it must be dug deep so no pests can tunnel under. They have already raised 1.8 million.
Some of the pests are stoats, weasels, cats, mice, rats, possums, goats, pigs and deer. We are looking forward to learning lots more on our visit next week. Check back for an update and photos!

FPS:Depletion of Oceanic Species

Depletion of Oceanic Species
Stepping stone challenge
FPS have just started a stepping stone challenge. A stepping stone challenge is a non-competitive but marked assessment challenge. We have a scenario in which we research, think,and discuss. Then we find problems and solutions about our scenario. This time our scenario is about the Depletion of Oceanic species. We all had a lot to say about our topic and had a BIG discussion about our thoughts, opinions and any facts that we knew. After talking we went on a website called GreenPeace and searched the website for useful, helpful or any interesting information. These are some things that we found out. Only about 2% of known marine life live in the deep oceans. Most of the other 98% live in the shallow seas. 5-7% of people can help make a difference. Two thirds of the earth is ocean, 80% of living species live in the ocean. Next we shared our thoughts and facts about what we found out and how we feel now. We learn't about bottom trawling, overfishing and by- catch. Also that it is not that they are fishing, but how they are fishing. Also commercial fishing methods are the ones that are damaging the marine life and the recreational fisherman are not doing as much harm. Many of us have decided to try and join GreenPeace and we are taking this very seriously. Mrs CraneField showed us a clip about bottom trawling, and everyone had mixed emotions we were sad, angry and majorly wanted to do something to help. We are thinking of ways to make people aware of the dangers our oceans are in, these include education sessions, blogs, posters, and more. Frayja says " we are all much more aware of how badly our oceans need us and how badly we need to help, after all it was human beings that got oceans into this mess, and we are determined to get the oceans out of it". Freya says that " she badly want's to join GreenPeace and help make a difference!". Ben's mum is coming to speak to us and will be a very helpful resource as she was once on the whale wars boat. FPS is a group of 12 people trying to make a difference! Individuals with passion and energy to get involved is what is needed!!!

By Frayja and Mitchell

Term 2 Update

Welome to reach's blog
Last term we read a scenario on a boy called Robert. He lived in 2040 and there was something called synthetic nutrition (SN) that made you healthy and allows you to live for another 150 more years. But he had to take only the synthetic nutrition for the rest of his life instead of food. We had to think of problems this would cause and then choose the top ten. We then had to select one underlining problem, which was: that if most people chose to take SN this could result in a decrease in natural food as well a problem of over population. If he chose to eat a healthier diet he could also live longer. We were all pleased to get our first booklet off in the post and celebrated with popcorn!!
This term, we have another scenario about the depletion of ocean species. We have begun to research it, here are a few facts about it so far. Bottom trawlers ( big boats with nets behind them that run along the bottom of the sea floor and trap coral and fish) destroy coral reefs, and each year they destroy 150 times the size of deforestation( forests being chopped down to nothing) . We have seen some videos and we really want to do something to help our ocean species that are overfished.

Please help us to stop over fishing and depletion of oceanic species.
Watch this space and each week we will try to add a way that you can help this problem.

You can help by - Eating less fish and if you must eat fish - find out if it is sustainable, this means it stock is not at risk.
Bluefin tuna is one fish we should not eat if we want them to remain in our oceans as they so overfished.

by Ben and Samantha from F.P.S.

FPS 2011

Welcome to REACH 2011 - once again we are looking forward to a year of fun and learning.
This year we have a group of Year 5 and 6 students participating in a programme called Future Problem Solving. The students will be working together as a team to solve problems of the future - the students work through a set of problem solving steps that will help them in the future with problems they are likely to face.
This terms topic is "Healthy Living", we have begun our problem solving by researching what 'Healthy living' means to us. The students have been quick to discover that Healthy Living is not just about the food we eat, but also other factors such as stress, exercise, sleep, wellness to name a few. We then have a future scenario that must be well understood to continue. In our scenario Robert is a 13 year old Boy, it is set in 2040 and in a time where medical technology means we can increase our life span by consuming synthetic nutrition! Our first challenge is to identify a number of challenges or problems Robert will face. We will keep you posted!