Term 2 Fun

Hi, it's Miriam and today I am going to tell you about what we have been doing this term. This terms topic is retro tech. We have been doing lots of thing to do with olden day technology. We have also been learning about Matariki. My maths group has been doing this thing called Auckland Island.

For retro tech we have been to 3 different museums to learn about olden day technology and try to figure out what our object is. The first museum trip that we went on is the trip where we went to the Local Museum and the Electrical Museum. The cool thing about the trip was that at the Local Museum we learnt about olden tech and at the Electric Museum we learnt about new technology. I enjoyed comparing the olden day stuff with stuff that is in the present. I liked learning how technology has changed over the years. The second trip that we went on was to the East Coast Museum of Technology. We had borrowed most of the retro tech items from the Museum and were very excited to go there. At the Museum it had all different types of retro tech dating back to the 1700. I liked how we got to see olden day computers, phones, water pumps, wheelchairs, scanning machines and much more stuff that people would of used back in the day.

For maths we have been doing this thing called Auckland Island. Auckland Island is where we have to answer a series of questions and then create a way to display it around the class. After each question we answered we had to complete a challenge about the question. Some questions were easy and others were really hard. There were road tips and maths tips. Road tips were where our teacher will give us clues about the history or some information on the topic. Maths tips are when the teacher gives us some maths equations that will help us solve the question. All of the questions that we are given have something to do with Auckland Island. All of the
 people in my maths group are year 6 including me. The Auckland Islands task was made for year 8,9,10 and 11 students. We only found this out at the end of the task. That explained why it was quite tricky. I chose to display my working in a Google My Maps.

This week we have focusing on Matariki. We had to do at least 4 activities that relate to Matariki and then on Friday we have to bring in a dish for shared morning tea. I completed a digital breakout, a feather for a cloak, a book about Matariki, a poem about Matariki and a dish for shared morning tea. I learnt a lot about Matariki and the stars. I learnt what the star names mean and that there are 500 hundred stars in the cluster but you can only see 7 of them. I like that we do the Matariki Makarena.

Winter Solstice

Hi it's Miriam today I am going to share with you some learning that we did at school around the shortest day of the year (the winter solstice) and the longest day of the year (the summer solstice.) In school we have been learning about some prehistoric landmarks that have a lot to do with the Winter Solstice.

 For our quick writes this week we have to write and information report on Stonehenge and create a Google my maps about Stonehenge, Newgrange and Maeshowe. Stonehenge is a prehistoric landmark in Salisbury, England. It was a burial ground as well as a place where you went if you wanted to be healed. Newgrange is in Ireland. It is much older than Stonehenge. It was built around 3,200 BC. Maeshowe is a passage grave in Scotland. It was built around 3,800 BC.

I found out that to build some of these great landmarks people had to build rafts to carry their supplies down fivers and then carry them across land by oxen or horses. This is my information report about Stonehenge:

Here is my link to my Google My Maps.


Blog you later.

Fa'afaite i te Ao Maohi

Hi it's Miriam, Today I am going to show you a video that Rosie and I made for our reading presentation. The task we got given for reading was: we got assigned a boat to research about and then do a screencastify of only photos and talk about what we found out about our boat. The boat that me and Rosie got assigned is the Faafaite i te Ao Maohi. It is one of the boats that will be taking part in the Tui 250 boat sail in October.

My teacher for reading is Koka Ngaire and she provided information about each boat on a google slide. The information that she provided for our boat was useful but we had to translate some of it into english so we could understand it. We learnt how the Polynesian settlers traveled to NZ. Also we got to go out on one of the Waka that is in gisborne at the moment. Well the other people in my reading group did, I had to go to Fast 5 Netball Tournament. Our boat has a Samoan name so me and Rosie had a hard time pronouncing the name so we might not be saying it correctly.

Here is the video that me and Rosie made hpe you enjoy:

Blog you later!

The Magnificent Snomanatron

Hi it's Miriam again, today I am going to tell you about the Snowmanatron. In my writing group we were looking and different pieces of explanation text and deciding what year we thought each piece was written based on the text. Then we had to read each one aloud in our group and Koka Terri (my teacher for writing) would tell us what year that piece of writing was and why it was that year.

The next week we looked at a Wallace and Gromit episode about the Snowmanatron. The Snowmanatron is a vehicle like a snow plow that scoops up snow and produces a snow man. We watched through the video a couple times and then we got asked to draw a labeled diagram of the Snowmanatron. Once I had finished drawing the diagram I began to write down what each lever and bolt was on the Snowmanatron and what it was used for. I have to admit that my drawing wasn't the best drawing ever and my diagram wasn't the best diagram ever but I was pretty proud of my self.

Then we got into writing. First we wrote steps on what to do and how to make it work. Then we brainstormed what we would say in our explanation text. I took a long time to do my brainstorm and diagram because I wanted to make sure that everything as accurate as possible for my explanation writing on the Snowmanatron. We only just started writing our explanation text so all of my writing group are only on our introduction. I want to make this writing the best I have done.

Here is my labeled diagram of the Snowmanatron:

Increible Electric Village

Hi it's Miriam again and today I am going to tell you about our trip to Electric Village.
Now when I say our trip I mean the Moana Learning Hub. We went there on Thursday the 9th May for a field trip.

The reason we went to Electric Village was because we were learning about Retro Tech or Olden day Technology. Now you are probably wondering why we went to a place like Electric Village where you learn about new technology, if we were on a trip to learn about old technology. Well we also went to the local Museum and there we learnt about old technology. For me going to both of the museums was very interesting because I got to see how the technology changed over the years.

At Electric Village we learnt how electricity was made. There are many different ways that you can make electricity and there are many different sources that you can make it out of. Here are some different things you can make electricity with:

Solar Panels
Dams
Smoke Stacks
Wind Turbines
Steam
Generators

How to Blog on your Blog

Hi it's Miriam again and today I am going to teach you how to make a quality blog post. A quality blog post is a post that tells someone about your learning, has a catchy title, makes sense, has capital letters, full stops and has paragraphs.

So to make your blog awesome you have to:

- Have a catchy title
- Make your writing clear and easy to read
- Make sure that it is interesting to keep your reader interested
- Have all the information that your reader will need
- Add extra information that is related to what you are writing about
- Check your spelling to make sure there are no typos
- Make sure you have punctuation in the appropriate places
- Have a buddy check your writing before you post
- Have 1-2 paragraphs explaining your learning
- Explain what you found hard and what you thought was easy
- Add labels to your blog post
- Have a digital interest added onto your post
- Construct Your post so that it is interesting to look at
- And last of all preview your post to see what it would look like on your blog.

I hope you enjoy my example of a quality blog post. I circled the description that of each criteria that best describes my blog post.





Blog you later!

Super 6 Sentince Stories

Hi it's Miriam here and I am going to share with you my six sentence story I created for writing.

 So basically what a six sentence story is a story with only six sentence s in it. In those six sentences you need to describe the character, say what it's problem is and then write how he solved it. Sounds simple right but it actually is quite hard. So this is my six sentence story:

Once upon a time, there live a strong and brave young man. He lived on a street in the outskirts of a remote town in New Zealand. He was a teacher at a school near the beach and at lunch time on nice days he was allowed to go surfing. But one day the school shortened there lunchtime to 10min and he wasn't able to go surfing. He was worried because if he did not go for a surf each day then he would turn into a big ugly crab! One day he came up with an idea, he programmed the lunch bell to ring at 1:50 instead of 1:10, so he was able to go for a surf again at lunch time and he lived happily ever after.

Here is a picture of the grid that we used to write outcry six sentence stories: