REACH GREAT WALK CHALLENGE

During Term 1 the REACH group have been completing a DOC national challenge. The challenge was for us to choose one of NZ"s great walks to research. We had to walk the distance of at least half the walk using our local tracks and then submit a presentation showing our learning. This was a perfect inquiry for us as it tied in so well with the Senior school and their inquiry of "Our Backyard!". Also we were going to camp at Bethany Park and going to already be walking 12km of the Abel Tasman! This was a great way to start us off and with our walks to and from Kaiteriteri we had clocked up 19km by the end of camp. We then met up on Sunday mornings to complete the rest of our 33km. We walked up the Centre of NZ, The Maitai River and up the Grampians - to the very top!!! It was great to get out walking and there was talk of us continuing it, we had so much fun! As all this was happening we got busy researching the Abel Tasman and finding out all it has to offer! But how would we present our findings? We had talked about the idea of a picture book and then viewed an ABC book written by the curators of Te Papa, we really liked the idea and thought it would work well with our challenge - and so it began... Many days of working through the alphabet in rhyme! ensuring we were showing our learning and making links between the Abel Tasman and our local walks!! Yes it was a challenge! On top of that we learnt how to create QR codes to make links to websites showing video clips to give more information to our readers. It was lots of fun! We needed photos for our book and had yet another challenge to overcome - we had some photos we had taken (thanks Beni) but we also needed extra photos and knew we could not just use any old photo from the internet for a book - this would be using someone else's property! We found out that we would need to use 'Public Domain' photos. These are photos that people have taken and are happy for other people to use. Phew, all in about 5 weeks we completed our picture book - it will be in the school library and we are super proud of it. Do have a read - but you will need plenty of time, there is lots to learn especially if you want to explore all the QR codes have to offer.

REACH 2015 - This year we are up and running again with our REACH blog - we have lots of wonderful learning to share! Term 1 - This term we have a DOC Challenge group. Made up of mainly Year 6 students we are busy completing a national challenge. We must research one of New Zealand's great walks, walk at least half the distance using our local tracks and then submit a presentation! Very busy indeed. The Year 6's walked from Marahau to Ancourage on camp which was a total of 12km, along with walking to and from Kaiteriteri we clocked up a total of 19km just on camp. We are now meeting on Sundays to complete the rest of our walk - because we have chosen the Abel Tasman track we need to walk a total of 30km altogether. Keep checking in on this post for further updates about how we are going and what we are learning along the way!

NMIT Inspire Day

What an amazing day out we all had at NMIT INSPIRE. 18 students from Enner Glynn had the opportunity to spend a day at NMIT. The students moved around various workshops learning about chemistry, the human brain, rockets, planes of the future, funky artworks, volcanoes and much much more. The students had to find their way around the campus, moving from block to block. From turning a 10c coin from silver to gold to using dry ice to make fizzy drinks the children had a wonderful time. I made lots of new friends and will keep in touch with a couple of them. (Jack) The best workshop for me was Funky Art - we painted a fridge by collageing everyone's ideas. We also learnt to use indian ink. Each side of the fridge had a different theme, the top was lollies and food, one side was nature, one buildings and the front patterns. (Sophie) (Lucy) I learnt that x-rays are bad for you because of the radiation, we even got to go into radiology. (Jack) I learnt how to do paper chromatography - this can be used to solve crimes. (Celia) I thought it would be hard to find the rooms but once we were there with our maps it was easy.(Beni) In the human brain we learnt all about the brain, I learnt that the front of my brain is for good manners and personality. We also got to touch a rats brain which was much smoother than a human brain. (Lucy/Alex) I enjoyed doing the lunchtime quiz. (Charlotte)

Suter Visit

The REACH group attended a 3 week programme at the Suter Art Gallery. During these sessions the children viewed artwork about culture and identity. The children then had to think about their own culture and identity and make links with symbols. After much thinking and planning the children had the chance to adorn a car with symbols that represented themselves. They all looked amazing, showing how unique we all are.

On Friday Paul Omondi came to the library to teach the Reach group how to make plastic bag balls. Plastic bag balls require around about 50 plastic balls and a bit of string to make one strong and firm ball. Once the ball is completed, the string will form a spiderweb shape around the plastic bags. At Paul's school they had one soccer ball which was only used once a year in the soccer season. Paul also taught us a traditional song they would sing while making a plastic bag ball to make time go faster. Ceara also talked to us about the orphanage that she spent time in. Ceara has already fundraised to buy 3 goats for this orphanage and this is where our goat will go. The goats milk is full nutrition and gives the children calcium. She also taught us a hand game that we all had a go at.

Maasai bracelets!

The Reach group have been micro-financing, we are going to make some bracelets and anklets. Micro-financing is when lots of families give a little bit of money and one family uses it to buy something that will keep making money and when you have enough money you pay back each family and with the rest of the money you can buy extra things! We are going to be selling our bead creations at school so if you would like any come down to the school! We will keep updating our blog as we make different Kenyan art and craft.

PURPLE CAKE DAY

We started off Purple Cake Day with the REACH students painting symbols of hope and purple cake day on children's faces. We had parents bring in over 400 cupcakes for the year 6 students to decorate. Wow! They looked scrumptious. Thanks to all the parents for bringing in so many decorations for us to use! Everyone dressed up in purple and gathered at the top court to dance and celebrate how lucky we are. Then it was off to Te Manawa to enjoy our cupcakes! YUM! Alice and Jack then went to Countdown Stoke to sell the remaining cupcakes. Lots of people were very generous and donated money without wanting a cake. All up we raised the grand total of $991 for children in Kenya. Good Job.

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????????????????????

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!

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. :)

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.

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!!

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.