Thursday, August 16, 2012

Year 4 REACH Group

We have begun our Year 4 Reach Group. We have been learning about the ancient and the modern olympics. As we do this we are also learning to use different graphic organisers and thinking tools. As we talked about the Olympics we began to talk about Continents so we decided to learn a bit more about them and made a Wordle. Next we worked in pairs on differnt PMI's - One was 'Anyone found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs should be banned from all competitive sport for life' We had to think about all points of view. This was especially interesting as soon after our own Olympic Athlete Valerie Adams got Silver because of this actually happening when the gold medal winner was tested positive for drugs. Today we compared the Ancient Olympics with the Modern Olympics and completed a Venn Diagram to show the similarities and differences. I wonder what we'll learn about next week????????????????????

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Suter Art Gallery Extension Programme

Wow! What amazing sessions we have had with Esther at the Suter Gallery. 15 Year 4,5 and 6 students were selected to attend three art sessions. We began by viewing a great exhibition created using photographs and a printer. The artworks are unusual as they often show two or more objects or landscapes that just don't seem to go together. Such as a train tunnel on mars?? After discussing and taking a close look at these, the students began by learning about layering. They worked with partners to use a layering collage technique similar to the artworks. Next session was back in the same exhibition taking a very close look at how the printer had shaded the different areas. The students learnt about using lines in different directions to create shading. The session ended with the students taking a small part of their collage artwork and working with fine tipped black pens to carefully show the detail using the shading technique. Great learning team - you all did so well and from your reaction I think we'll be seeing some of these techniques used back at school and at home. Well Done!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Coral is cool

The F.P.S group is working on a coral scenario. It is very interesting! We have to protect natural coral from artificial coral. Our scenario is about the Great Barrier Reef. We had to think up ten challenges and then an UP(underlying problem) Now we are working on ten solutions. FPS is about getting a really big problem and breaking it down into a smaller problem so it can be solved. Well the man is making artificial coral which might affect the natural coral. We have been figuring out solutions to help the natural coral to grow and survive.FACTS. Tiny plants called algae grow inside coral and also give them their colour. If all the algae's die then that is called coral bleaching. Coral is a animal.An estimated 25 percent of coral has already disappeared. Coral is valued because of its medical values. Hurricanes are good for coral because they cool the seas down.
By Emily, Chloe and Julia. :)

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Designing a New Playground

In 2012 the inquiry group from Enner Glynn School have been designing a new playground to replace the adventure playground. So far we have had heaps of awesome ideas but unfortunately we can't use them all. We had to set criteria for our new play space This criteria was *It has to suit 5-11 year olds. *It has to be challenging but safe. *It has to be fun. *It has to enhance the environment. *It has to fit a budget. We learnt how to use bubble.us to mind map our ideas. We also used google sketch up to come up with some design ideas. Our designer came to talk to our REACH group. We shared ideas about the types of activities children at Enner Glynn like to do at lunchtime. He took our ideas to help him design our playground. Next week we will meet with him again and get to see what he has come up with! Unfortunately our designer was unavailable for next week but instead he kindly handed us his proposed plan. When we first took a look at the playground sketch we all thought it was really cool because it had a number of the ideas that we all came up with on the plan like a climbing wall and the stepping stones but when we looked more closely at the playground plan we saw that it didn't include some of our other ideas like monkey bars and a fruit/veg patch like the one that we have up by the top field.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Purple Cake Day





Purple Cake Day was a huge success!! In total we raised a whopping $1043!
Everyone looked fantastic in their purple. Some students made a wearable art
and got to display their costume in a special parade. After that we all danced to some groovy songs, everyone got really into the dancing. The Seniors iced the cupcakes and I can tell you they looked amazing! At morning tea everyone enjoyed
munching on their cupcakes.

By James

We had many cupcakes left over so three of the students helped to sell the
cakes outside Nelson New World! We sold most of them and learnt some valuable lessons in the process! One of the most important lessons being 'don't judge
a book by the cover'. Most people were great, unfortunately some a little rude! We decided it didn't take much to stop and say 'no thank you!' - a much better response
than just walking right past. Many people were very generous and were happy to give a donation without a cupcake. It was also interesting how many people hadn't heard of 'purple cake day', once we had told them a little about how it came to be they were more than happy to buy a cupcake - Good on you Nelson!!

All in all it was a lot of fun and all for a very good cause - a big thank you
to everyone that pitched in to help out!!