Diwali

Nessa and Karthiga - celebrating the festival of lights

In pursuit of all things green and shiny ...

Amazing leprechaun trap by Jacob.  Wowsers!

The purpose of this collaborative learning task was to help the children to see how by combining the individual strengths of the individuals in a team great outcomes can be achieved.

All the groups have worked on scripts, detailing their interactions with a wily leprechaun, and designed their own menus, offering Gaelic fare, in order to charm the leprechaun out of his gold.
The kids have also designed traps, researched the history of leprechauns, and created a spreadsheet showing how they would spend the pot of gold should they secure it.

All of these activities were designed to promote critical and creative thinking skills.   Those children who excel at maths worked out the capacity of the pot and then worked out how many gold coins it was likely to contain.  They researched the weight of an average gold coin and then worked out the current value of gold in order to calculate how much money they would have to spend.

The menus are beautifully crafted.  The creative children experimented with a variety of fonts and formatting when finishing the carefully researched dietary needs of an Irish faerie.  The history of the leprechaun has been presented in Google Slides and the traps were designed in Google Draw but constructed using hard materials.

Because of the range of activities, and the varying skills required for successful task completion, there was something for every type of learner.



Jared, Karthiga and Samuel presenting their leprechaun script. The audience loved it and it was laughter all round.  Well done guys.

The Cat's Tail

Don't worry peeps, it's a pun not an error!

Cats in the city... that was never the intention when I was told to pick a theme/artist for our Visual Arts week... in fact, I very earnestly wrote down that we would study Piet Mondrian (Abstract) and then later on changed my focus to art inspired by James Rizzi (who does colourful cityscapes).  Mrs Fowler, however, had other ideas.  

              In a serendipitous moment, and because she was in rascal mode, she changed my theme to Cats (when I had Mondrian) and then later to Cats in the City (when I had decided on Rizzi).  I did change it back (numerous times, believe me!) but, in the end I accepted that I could no longer prevail against her determined effort.

          I relented and I'm pleased I did!

          In poetry (Term 1) we spent a lot of time exploring juxtaposition - that's the placing of unlike things together to provide contrast - and so this project provided the perfect platform to revisit those ideas but in a visual art context. 

            The juxtaposition is happening in multiple ways:  in the city that is monochrome, while the cat pops in colour, but also in the subject: the city is a symbol of man containing, controlling and altering the environment, while cats, although domesticated, can never been contained despite ongoing human effort.  (For arguments against cats see Gareth Morgan! :-))

           The kids are pretty stoked with their efforts, and I reckon they deserve to be.  Guess this just adds to the mounting evidence that Room 2 really is the very best class at Sunnyhills School.

By Fiona
The colourful motifs were borrowed from the artwork of  Heather Galler

By Karthiga

By Jasmine

The moment of truth ....

Such focus and task commitment, Jacob

Karthiga - sweet taste of success after finding her inner design engineer

Jasmine's wallet has a clear cover for an iPhone.  Her attention to detail is evident in the card pockets

Nadia proudly displays her prototype and the final product

Brayden's nifty catch idea worked a treat!

Joseph holds a prototype and  his wallet.  Well done, Joseph!

Wallets - our designers are hard at work!

The wallets have to house at least three plastic cards

Rulers and scissors a must.  Those without creative and critical thinking need not apply

Joseph shares a prototype.  Happy, he's ready to move on

Skylar and Cailan - the road to success is paved with 'nearly theres'

Nadia works alongside her plan and prototype.  She's nearly there!

Which 5 items should Room 2 take to a deserted island?

There were 4 points of position set up around the room (at north, south, east and west).  The four positions were Agree, Disagree, Maybe agree and Maybe disagree. Mrs Wallace explained the rules of the debate (not debate in the purist sense of the word), and the kids moved to that position that reflected their point of view.  The kids changed position as their views were shifted as a consequence of compelling arguments.

   

Jacob asserted that water purifying tablets were a must.

Jake refuted the claim, explaining that water could be boiled, but the class sided with Jacob.

Cailan was certain that a fishing net was an essential item; eating is essential in your bid to stay alive he explained.  Nadia agreed that a fishing net was important but also felt that it didn't deserve a top five position.  In the end, the fishing net didn't make the grade. 

A steel bucket was an absolute must.  As Jake pointed out, it has multiple uses; like carrying things, boiling water, cooking food and, that fact upped its value.  Who could argue with such strong reasoning? The whole class agreed.

Samuel wanted to bring medical bandages, but Ruby pointed out that there were natural alternatives for bandages, and that many plants also had additional medicinal purposes. The bandages didn't make the cut. (The cut. Get it?)

Karthiga wanted to see insect repellent take the final place on the top five list. Brayden didn't believe that insect repellent deserved such a high ranking.  He argued that Bear Grylls didn't use it, instead preferring to opt for long sleeves and tramping pants.  Fiona retorted that you were likely to end up with heat stroke if you wore that in the tropics.   Kees added that mosquitoes were mostly likely to feast on you at night, and that the smoke from the fire (you'd started using your steel and flint) would keep them away.  The kids who didn't believe insect repellent was essential put up a strong fight, but in the end it was decided by the majority that repellent had to be there.  

Top debaters in Room 2?

Jacob, Fiona and Jake - all passionate, logical and articulate.

Well done!

Items in our Top 5 (as decided by members of Room 2)

Machete

Metal bucket

Flint and steel

Water purifying tablets

Insect repellent

Just Sayin'

You guys rock!

Who am I?

I am considered the greatest poet of all time.  I was born a long time ago (well before anyone even conceived of the idea of a camera), in a place called Stratford-upon-Avon.  I wrote the plays Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and King Lear.  They call me The Bard because, seriously, I am that good at writing.  Just sayin'.

If you think you know who I am, please email your answers through to Mrs Wallace by Monday morning.

By the way, we are going to be working on writing good poetry this term.  We will learn about tone and tension.  We will also practise using simile and metaphor effectively.

Here is a poem I wrote to help people understand about poetry and poets.

About the Poet

she had an artist's mind

but not an artist's hand,

and as a consequence,

it's true,

she often
wrote

but never drew.

(Yes, the lower case 's' is on purpose!)  (Yes, I know it's not that good, but it only took a couple of minutes!)