Term 4 Interest Projects: How Stuff Works

Our inquiry topic/theme has been split in two this term due to student demand for one last IP (Interest Project) for the year. Our class theme, which is science-based and looks at forces and motion, will be condensed to make way for the more student-directed interest inquiries that we have become familiar with this year. 

The theme for this term's interest projects is 'How stuff works', which lends itself well to our forces and motion theme for those who have chosen questions that are connected to learning about the physical world in some way.

The basic guidelines for IPs is the same as we have done before.
We need to:
1. Write up a basic plan that includes our initial driving questions and resources required.
2. Create or continue an IP blog that we update each week about our progress.
3. Share our learning journey at the end of term.

We will have at least one IP workshop each week. This is an entire morning or afternoon that we can spend on our independent inquiries. Many of us have also been finding information at home or using organisation time before school to work on our IPs.

Lots of interesting questions are driving our IPs. It will no doubt be a great learning experience for all of us as we go from novices to teachers when sharing our journeys at the end of term.

Some plan examples from our wall:

Phoebe's initial plan

Athalia's initial plan

This past week we have been making sure that we are taking action with our IPs. Some of us know from experience that time can seem to slip away if you are not thinking carefully about how you use it and reflecting on each IP workshop. Here is what we thought taking action would look like as we begin to get deeper in our projects...

Don't forget to check our interest project blogs to read about how each of us are going!

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind?

The more we have learned about being mindful, and our mental and emotional health this year, the more we have discovered that exercise and healthy choices play a key role in improving our well-being. Taha tinana (physical well-being and health) is one of the four key aspects of Hauora, which we will soon be investigating further.

Last week we asked "How can we improve our level of fitness?" We came up with lots of ideas, many of which included getting our bodies moving and our hearts pumping.

After learning about simple tally charts, we went to the hall and did a beep test. In pairs, we kept a tally of our partner's score, then swapped over and they recorded our results while we did the physical test. Maia set up a station outside the hall where students who had just completed their test could go and immediately test their heart rate.

Later in the day, we again got into our pairs and recorded the number of push-ups and sit-ups we could do in 30 seconds. For each of the tests, we also wrote comments about how our bodies felt afterwards.


























This week we have been discussing what we could do with this data. We have decided that we could do more regular class fitness activities and test ourselves using the same tests as before every few weeks. Then we could look for ways to display the information and see if our fitness improves, as well as noticing how our comments may change. The comments will give us information about how we feel our bodies are responding to ongoing exercise.

Today we used our beep test data to create some simple visual displays to show our results. We have discussed line graphs, and we know that these will be more suitable to use when we have done the beep test a couple more times, then we can track our own performance better. But today we created some simple bar charts using Pages on our iPads.

We entered our personal data into a form in the app, as well as some of our peers' data who we chose to also appear on our own graph. Some of us chose to compare ourselves with a certain group, for example, 'Boys who play rugby league' and 'Year 6 girls' were some of the target groups students chose.

After sharing the results with our peers, we uploaded the displays to our digital portfolios and added descriptions to explain what the charts were. Over the next week we will be using the strategies we learned in term one, when we analysed our school class size data, to find the average, median, mode and range of our beep test results.

We are trying to gain a wide spread of data about our own personal fitness, so as well as all of the data we have collected already, we have begun noting down the number of laps of the field we are completing during each 20 minute session we have for cross-country training. We will use this information to learn how to create line graphs, using them to look for trends, which will hopefully allow us to independently complete this process with our own beep test data over the next two terms.

Matariki: Colour-Symbol-Image

This week our literacy groups have been doing some shared readings around Matariki. After reading and responding verbally to these texts, we have used a non-verbal thinking routine called 'Colour, Symbol, Image' to share our ideas about what Matariki represents.

We shared the display we have created in a video during today's assembly, along with some of the great learning our juniors in P1 have been doing on the iPads. 

How Far Do We Travel To School?

Our Geometry focus this term has involved us learning about Transformation and Position and Orientation.

Over the past two weeks we have been exploring why we have maps, the common features of maps, and how we can use maps effectively. 

Learning activities have had us:

• Describing paths on a map of New Zealand using the basic language of direction (including discussing the Maori translation of place names)
• Describing locations and travel routes using co-ordinates

Today we have been working out distances on a map using simple measurement scales. 

We used Google Maps on our TV and learned about what the scale means. Using string and other items with adjustable lengths, we went about working out the distance we travel to school on the map. This involved some repeated addition (and a few of us were able to use multiplication) to add up the total distance. 

We then checked the accuracy of our estimate by using the 'Get Directions' feature, which gives you the exact distance. Most of us were pretty close!

Kyan used a twist-tie that he adjusted so that it represented 200m on the map

Would the exit we used from Bromley School affect the distance?

We added our distances to a chart which included our mode of travel for interest

Google Maps is a great tool for learning. We are looking forward to engaging in some travel challenges using the app to see what we have learned. 

Our First Kids Cluster Meet

This afternoon we tried something new and exciting. We had an online chat with other Year 5/6 classes from Bromley School, Linwood Ave School and Bamford School. 

We worked in groups to answer four questions for the day, which included:

Q1: What are your favourite things about your school and why?

Q2: Do you think your classroom is like most other Year 5/6  classrooms in New Zealand? What makes it the same and what makes it different?

Q3: What positive skills and attitudes do your class care about most?

Q4: Make a sentence or poem using these 3 words: Teamwork - Attitude - Positive

We used Today's Meet, which we have used as a class and blogged about recently. This was a great way to connect with our neighbours and learn more about them. We loved sharing about our classroom and what is special to us about our school. 

Check out some photos from the other classes involved. We used the hashtag #linwoodkidschat on Twitter.

We wonder if there are things that we could learn from the children from these local schools in the future. Could we collaborate on projects of interest? What other possibilities are there?

Today's Meet - An Introduction

This afternoon we used Today's Meet for the first time. This is a backchannel chat platform designed for classroom teachers and learners. A backchannel is often a conversation that goes on alongside an activity, presentation or discussion.

We used it to get all of our views on a couple of ideas we have been talking about recently in Room 14. These included things like allowing private messaging on USpace, our classroom responsibilities and the prospect of a Genius Hour type initiative.

A teacher can simply set up a chatroom through the Today's Meet website, set a timeframe for the chatroom to be live, and away you go. All the children need to do is follow the page link given to them by the teacher and enter their first name. From there, children are in a secure chatroom where they can write to each other about a given topic. This is similar to how many people use Twitter.

It was great to see how engaged we all were in this new way (for us) of sharing our ideas. We know that we have other means to perform similar tasks, as pointed out by Phoebe in the video below, but this website could really prove to be useful in many situations. It's exciting to add another tool to our Room 14 kit.



Another nice aspect of today was that half of us weren't even in the classroom! It was so hot that many of us with learner licences were sharing our ideas from outside.

The transcript of this first Meet will be printed and displayed on our foyer wall tomorrow if parents are interested in having a read.

What's Up Bromley?

It's fantastic to have such a dedicated and enthusiastic What's Up Bromley? news team this year.

The group itself has been going for two years now and is run by a number of children. This year we have our largest group so far, with ten children, all of whom created CVs and applied for their advertised roles. All of the team are currently from Room 14, as we have learned that it is easiest to have one teacher overseeing the group and for the children to have close communication with each other in one place.

From the reporters and presenters, to the camera operators and editors, all members of the team are showing a great willingness to learn more about their roles and to get their fortnightly shows out to our school community.

This year we have also introduced our What's Up Bromley? blog, which we will be using to advertise our shows, post other articles of interest and to attract student voice from around our school. Take a look and feel free to comment!

We love being able to send a news team out to report on current events, go on field trips and to interview school visitors. The team are learning fast that putting together a news show takes a considerable amount of time and effort, and that communication and planning is key. As we keep hearing so many creative ideas coming out of the group, they will no doubt have a challenging and exciting year ahead of them.

The team watching a BBC tutorial about putting together news stories.

Jack editing footage from our recent syndicate Air Force Museum trip.

Reuben and Jen (filling in for Athalia) filming our first show in the studio.

The team. Maia, Jen, Jack, Athalia, Quaylen, Reuben, Jess, Phoebe, Stella and Kamryn.

Sharing Our Cricket World Cup Learning

We spent this morning sharing the Cricket World Cup projects that we've been working on for two weeks. Each of our literacy groups have had a different focus, which gave us a chance to teach our peers in the wider class about what we've been learning.

The cricket itself has been a great vehicle for us to develop a range of skills that will be useful for future inquiries. Some of these included…

• General research and the sorting of information we locate
• Independently using venn diagrams and other graphic organisers to display findings
• Deciding on the best type of graphs for purpose and creating these to share survey information
• All aspects of the video production process (including writing, filming and editing)
• Having input into project success criteria ("What will good look like for me?")
• Orally presenting our learning and responding to audience feedback

It's also been interesting to see many Room 14 children out with bat and ball in the playground this week. Matthew, Kyan and Izyah were courageous facing Mr Kinley today at lunchtime, whose right-arm off-spin could best be described as 'old school'.

Check out some photos from this morning.

2015 Cricket World Cup

The buzz of the 2015 Cricket World Cup has reached our classroom. We have a large number of children who have been watching the games so far and are eagerly looking forward to their trip to the upcoming Scotland vs England game at Hagley Oval.

Beginning with our literacy programme, the CWC has been the theme of much of our learning this week. A new addition to Ultranet, the Virtual Classroom, has been a useful resource for hosting the projects that each of our literacy groups have been working on. These have been adapted from a CWC educational resource package put together by New Zealand Cricket, which integrates a wide range of curriculum areas into the overall theme. Our focus areas have included - hosting an event of this size, the global spread of cricket, roles in a team, and the past, present and future of the game.

All of us have been making wise decisions around organising ourselves, including our workspaces, our resources and our time - Each of which were seen as important during our recent learning environment investigations. 

We have also begun a PE unit on cricket, which we started on Monday. In a couple of weeks, we will be using the skills and understandings we have developed to play some adapted games of cricket, which the children will help to design.

We listened to the commentary of the NZ vs Scotland game while eating morning tea today. Jack B directed us to ESPN's Cricinfo website, which has loads of data on all of the international teams and players. Some children were trying to work out who the best players are and others were adamant that they already know who they are. With statistics also being a focus for us this term, a number of students will be conducting statistical investigations using this website, looking to find evidence for their 'best player' claims.


Come on Black Caps.

Sharing Home Learning - Term Three

It was great to see the enthusiasm shown while we shared our home learning from this term. As with the previous two terms, we have had options to undertake many open-ended projects off-site. Our session this morning was our best so far, with children showing a lot of confidence in their own work, as well as support and encouragement of others.

Cycle Animations

As part of our inquiry theme this term (Environment and Sustainability), we have been making animations of the explanations we have written.

We chose lots of different cycles, from food chains and life cycles, to the journey consumer products take. This involved us generating questions, creating success criteria, conducting research and organising our new learning into explanations (also designing and painting backgrounds/habitats, creating sculptures and learning to use animation software!).

This was a big process that tested our self management and organisation skills. We are happy with our results. Some of these are shown in the video below, which we played in assembly this week. The others can be viewed in our USpace galleries.

Whose Planet Is This?

Thanks to our research into some important environmental issues, we have developed valuable knowledge about the causes and effects of these. One effect that disturbed many of us was human impact on animal species through deforestation, pollution and overpopulation.

We had class discussions about whether we have the right to disturb animal habitats in order to improve our own. We discovered that many animals we know have been here for hundreds and thousands of years longer than people. Do we have more rights than all other species?

One question we are asking is  - 'Whose planet is this?' 

We thought we would create some posters for others to think about. Check out our USpace pages for more, or you may find some posted around our school.

Where Can Technology Take Us?

See our USpace galleries for a look at the inquiry projects we have been working on about our environment and sustainability. Our learning has had many of us asking some big questions about the world we live in.

Watch this video and respond to the questions below…



When we learned about Christchurch in the past, we discovered that the central city had traffic conductors at intersections. We know that we don't have traffic conductors now because traffic lights have been invented.

Think about how technology can change our lives. 

1. What new skills do you think people might need in the future?

2. We have been learning about many environmental issues through our inquiry projects. Do you think that technology could solve some of these issues? How?

iMovie Advertising Project - with Mandy

Today we were lucky to have Mandy from e-Time working with us. We spent most of the day creating advertisements using iMovie on the iPads. It was great to see so many of us taking risks, collaborating ideas, showing confidence and developing new skills.

Our brief was to 'sell' either a paper clip or an insert that comes with an iPad box. Both are relatively boring items at face value, but after watching some real commercials and making the link to the fact that simple products often have interesting ways of marketing through stories, comedy, the use of music and colour, we thought of some cool ways of advertising our own products.

Today sets us up well for future inquiry, as we can all now confidently use iMovie as a presentation tool. Some of us have opened up new opportunities for ourselves, which is very exciting. 

Check out some of our advertisements over the next week as they are uploaded to our USpace galleries. 

Thanks again to Mandy for her time, expertise and enthusiasm. 

Teamwork - Creating a great learning environment

The video we made about Teamwork for our syndicate

assembly today. Well done to Ellee and Alex for writing

the scenes and to all of the actors. We hope that the rest 

of our syndicate saw that teamwork is an important part of 

a great learning environment. 

Looking Back to Look Forward - Our Own Projects

Over the last two weeks, we have been inquiring about our own driving question of "How has __________ changed over time". We each chose something that we were interested in finding out more about and created a plan for our project. First, we thought about where we would find our information, what questions we would ask and how we would like to present our learning. Then we worked independently to learn about our topic and put together a presentation that we could use to teach others about our new area of expertise.

Here is Shan's first attempt at using Explain Everything. She has found some interesting
information about Christchurch (now and then):

Caleb is now becoming an expert at using Explain Everything. He loves comics, so he
decided to do a little more research to add to his existing knowledge about Superman 
to explain a little about him and his history. A great effort that he did independently. 


Shania has found some great information about Netball:

Inquiry Checkpoint

Think back to all we have learned about Christchurch, from early Maori settlers until today. What is something you have learned that has stuck with you? Something you didn't know before that opened your mind to our city's past. Share your thoughts.

Created with Padlet

Looking Back to Look Forward - Ancient Greece Part 2

We now have some great presentations on display in our classroom. Almost all of our Greek choice board projects were completed individually and a lot of responsibility was shown in creating quality products to share. From Greek gods and heroes, to inventions, government and daily life, our Greek wall contains a lot of interesting information about an influential civilisation of the past.

Despite taking a little longer than expected, the Wonder Women have nearly finished their model Greek village.

This photo also shows our collection of general questions we have generated about the past. We will try to answer all of these this term!

Looking Back to Look Forward - Ancient Greece

We have spent first two weeks of this term looking at what life was like for people in Ancient Greece. This has involved a lot of questioning and self-directed research. Many of us have made links between life in Ancient Greece and our own society in the present, as well as identifying some big differences in the way we live and the reasons why this is the case.

This week each of our literacy groups have had different projects to work on. They have all done a great job using the new knowledge they have learned from their guided group sessions, as well as their own independent research, to make interesting presentations to share. 

The goal for The Flashes group was to make a presentation using Explain Everything (which is an iPad app). They could choose a Greek invention to explain, or choose something else about Ancient Greece that interested them. Caleb and Connor wanted to explain the Battle of Troy. See how they did below. 

Film Study - The World's Fastest Inidan

"All my life I've wanted to do something big... something bigger and better than all the other jokers".

As part of our 'My voice is powerful' theme, we have finished watching The World's Fastest Indian, looking at the qualities that Burt Munro possessed - showing a 'do it yourself' kiwi attitude, determination and having the courage to pursue his dreams.

We are undertaking a webquest consisting of 5 tasks:
1. A video review.
2. A description of Burt, his shed or his bike travelling at top speed.
3. An online quiz.
4. A group literacy task.
5. Sharing our learning.

The Iron Men have decided to recreate Burt's final ride in the film. They have created a storyboard and are making a replica of Burt's 1920 Indian Scout before using iMovie for their production.

Kaiya and Brandon began painting the shell today. We are looking forward to seeing the finished product.