Phoenix's writing

If you like unicorns you're AWESOME!!! My name is Phoenix and I love unicorns. I’ve never got to read a unicorn book before. But I will draw one soon because I have more experience now with drawing but I have a workshop that I go to in school and it’s called writing unicorns.

If you ever write about unicorns well you can use your imagination and that’s the fun part!!! For example, unicorns aren’t real. But they can always be in your imagination, lots of people don’t like to use their imagination for things that aren’t real.

Now… DO NOT SHARE WITH ANYONE. And that’s it...

Girls only writing group

My Learning Adventures

          By Keira

This term the Girls only Powerful Writing group have been working on some creative writing to enhance our learning. Some of the things we have learnt are: to use Read Write (on the computer), using different web sites and helping each other ideas, feedback and feedforward.

A creative piece of writing I did was my story called, “ The man in the book”. When I was creating this story the first thing I did was we looked at and talked  about some beautiful illustrations and  we brainstormed together. This helped me find tricky and interesting words to use. Some of the ways we got words  were from the Read Write computer program, thesaurus.com, friends, adults and dictionary.com.

When I started writing I started to use Read write to help me edit and listen to my writing, this has helped me to hear if it makes sense.

When I had finished I got two friends to look at my writing and to read it so they could give me feedback and feedforward.

After I got that feedback and feedforward I used some of  the advice to help me make my story more creative and more interesting. The thing I have found really hard has been working with new and different people that I have not worked with before. The thing that I liked was getting helpful feedforward from my class mates. I am really proud of my writing.

Here is an excerpt of some of my writing:

“ While Raj was walking on a big grassy  hill he found a big humongous shiny blue book….”

How does Nature grow and stay alive?

How does Nature grow and stay Alive.

Hi my name is Isabella Morgan and this term, I have a project about my favourite plants and flowers. If you already know about nature and you like playing outside and you like trees, I will tell you all about nature! some of my friends are in the same project group as me and I am sure they  will love to learn about the lovely nature and flowers also.

Did you know that some flowers don't like the sun too much otherwise they might die and they need to be healthy and clean.

The largest flower in the world is the flower of the Puya Raimondii, which has a flower stalk 35,000 feet tall and  over 8,000 white flowers. Mimosa pudica, or sensitive plant, will actually fold up its leaves when it is touched.

New Zealand nature is amazing but sometimes annoying too. Did you know that some dolphins are dying by getting caught up in nets so please stop killing our dolphins!!make a good choose to not kill plants and trees! I'm writing about my favourite flowers and it is about wild roses!

Week 7 & 8

PROJECTS

Over the past two weeks, students have been working hard on their projects.

Cyber Safety

The Cyber Safety Group have been designing a website to promote safe use of the internet to students at HPPS. They have also been busy writing and rehearsing their plays. They were lucky enough to get a special session with the drama teacher, Kathy, who gave them feedback about how to polish their performance. The plays will be performed next week in the other commons.

Healthy Food

The Healthy Food Group went on a trip to the supermarket to source healthy ingredients for the healthy recipes they have been researching. For some of the recipes they substituted the not so healthy ingredients with healthier ones. The whole common is benefiting from this project as we all got to sample the yummy but healthy food that they made!

Friendship

After surveying other students about the type of conflicts they mostly experience at school, the Friendship Group have filmed some common conflict scenarios along with strategies for dealing with them. They will be screening the episodes in all the commons next week.

Outdoor Space

This group have been designing and painting some large art work that will be displayed in the LC4 outdoor area to brighten up the space. They have also worked on crafting an outdoor concrete pot which they are planning to decorate and use in the space.

Fitness 

The Fitness Group have been very active, organising a running workshop, an upcoming soccer tournament, a rippa rugby round robin and creating infographics to encourage others to become more active.

THE READING CORNER

At the beginning of Term 4, students decided they wanted to make their learning space more colourful and friendly. You will have noticed lots of new displays and art on the walls but some students took this a step further and created an entirely new space. This is our new Reading Corner. This includes a reading hut designed by Tate, a bookshelf built and donated by Jack and some inspiring artwork by Indi, Sydney, Kaylana and some other students.

ALGEBRA

In the final weeks of this term we will be exploring algebra. During this time students will investigate making and describing patterns, finding rules to predict the results of patterns and how relationships are expressed in words and in graphs. They will also look at equations consisting of +, <, and > and solving equations with unknowns.

COMING UP

Wednesday 7 December: LC4 students have been invited to the Hobsonville Point Secondary School to their Market Day. The students will be walking to the secondary school so they need shoes, a hat and some gold coins if they would like to buy anything at the Market.
Tuesday 13th December:  HPPS is inviting all parents to visit the school for a celebration, picnic and visit the learning commons to see what has been taking place in term 4.  For those that worked on the Hobsonville Point History game there is an opportunity to share the video game also. The school newsletter has more information about this.

Week 5 & 6

Physical Education
There has been a great amount of PE taking place for LC4 students recently. We've had a groups of students taking part in workshops with the secondary school, they've been learning skateboarding, badminton, dance and cheerleading. A large group of students have also been involved with gymnastics on Friday afternoons, professional coaches have been visiting to support our students. As a learning common we've also been going out to practise some of the summer small ball skills of catching, striking and throwing. Students are enjoying the chance to get outside:
"My handstands used to go everywhere and I'd fall, now my handstands are good and I'm starting to learn how to do a cartwheel".
"I've been learning how to do things but I'm still struggling to do them when we're not on the mats. But I still love going".
"I've learnt how to play badminton, I thought it was just like tennis but its not".
"Now I know how to throw a ball properly".

Effective Communication Projects
Physical Activity Group:
These students have all chosen to promote greater physical activity at Hobsonville Point Primary and have so far created a survey using Google Forms to investigate the student attitude towards exercise. They're going to use their results to create infographics, including data and their learning from their own personal interest. Outcomes within this group are a lunchtime soccer tournament, rippa rugby workshops, student led run club and another group is looking to excite students with a trip to Clip 'n' Climb.

LC4 Outdoor Space:
This group have set the lofty challenge of creating a more inspirational and relaxing outdoor space. They've been busy writing letters for Mitre 10, newsletters and investigating methods for beautifying the courtyard. They are wanting to create Bottleflies using recycled plastic bottles and are hoping to do some planting, paintwork and possibly even some small construction work.

Healthy Food Project Group

In the last few weeks, the healthy food group have been doing a whole lot of research! We have been reading food labels and finding out what things like sugar, protein and calcium do to our bodies! 

This week we talked about substituting unhealthy ingredients in recipes for healthy ingredients. We hope to be visiting the supermarket next week and then getting into the kitchen to test our substitutions.

Friendship Project Group

We have been flat out writing scripts that demonstrate how kids in our school can solve problems between them and their peers! After lots and lots of filming and then re-filming, we are happy to be editing our film at last! Soon our "first episode" will be complete and then shared with some of the learning commons around the school. In the meantime, we are writing new scripts for our next episode too!

Cyber Safety

The Cyber Safety Project group are exploring how best to promote cyber safety tips effectively to students at Hobsonville Point. The group have started by collecting information about student use of the internet. Did you know that 50% of students spend 1-2 hours a day online?  Over 60% of student play online games with chat. But only half of those know who they are chatting to. Currently the group are researching how to stay online and thinking about ways they could communicate this information. Some of the group were lucky enough to attend a Cyber Safety Conference being held at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

“I thought it was ok at first but now I know you shouldn’t share your age and birthdate”

"It wasn’t just one of the those normal conferences where it is just boring boring information, the kids actually got to be involved in the sessions and it was mostly kids teaching kids”

“They told us that sometimes you might not be popular at school but you can be popular online - and that surprised me”

Mannequin Challenge
Our students have noticed that the Mannequin challenge has been quite popular, we've been using it to extend their ability with drama skills. Here are some samples of what they've been doing.



Upcoming events:
Y6 Bike Safety course in week 7.
IEM emails to be sent soon from Karma.

Week 3 & 4 happenings

Emotion and our senses

Over the past three weeks we have created a ‘sensory’ room in LC4, a space where the visual, audio and olfactory setting has changed every couple of days. This is to encourage students to think about how their environment influences their emotions. What we feel can be influenced by what our senses are taking in and what we hear, see, taste, smell, can provide us with information on how to feel.

Blue room: “Feels like I am in the future”, “calm”, “soothing”

Red room: “Makes me feel crushed”

Coffee: “Reminds of of the time I gave it to my Dad for his birthday”, “mornings”

Thyme: “Feels like summer”

Water sounds: “Relaxing and annoying at the same time”

Digital Citizenship

The immersion in week 3 was around confident and positive engagement with digital technology. We introduced some safety information to help the students get the best out of the internet and stay safe online. We talked about not giving out personal information when we are chatting online, not meeting up with strangers we’ve been in touch with online and not opening emails or files from people we don’t know. We also talked about telling a parent or trusted adult if something is happening online that makes us feel uncomfortable.  

If you want to give yourself an online quiz, check out:

https://budd-e.cybersmart.gov.au/teachers/primary/index.html

Here are some acronyms the students came up with to remember which personal information not to share online:

Passwords

Address

Phone number

Email address

Real name

Hotmail or other email address

Address of your house

Passwords

Phone number

Your full name

Health Kids Challenge

The Healthy Kids Challenge has started! The challenge runs for 5 weeks and in that time students count the number of steps they take each day using their pedometers. We have a team of students adding up the steps each day and calculating the average to record on the Healthy Kids Challenge website. Follow our virtual journey around the world at:

http://www.healthykids.kiwi

Day of the Dead

Several of our students helped to organise a Day of the Dead celebration on the 31st October. They prepared activities to do throughout the day, dressed up and asked everyone to bring a plate for a shared lunch. Thanks Radha, Clarissa, Martina and others.

Celebrating our writing

One of our writing groups has been working to construct a village that represents them, they shared this with the Learning Common on Friday. Some children have recently produced accordion books or story wheels. These are still up in LC4 if you're child was in one of these groups.
 

Week 1 in LC4.5

We've been focussing on our immersion activities a lot this week, specifically working on our well-being through understanding friendship, emotions and relationships.

Friday began with a lot of work exploring feelings, we used freeze frames to show emotions:

Friday afternoon was spent in 3 different art workshops, Nicole explored ink-blowing, Trudy's group worked on Mandala art and Reid's group were inspired by Keith Haring.

Keith Haring inspired art:

"It was great fun because we got messy"
"We got to smudge and use lots of colours"
"I was a bit stressed and this helped me relax" 

 

Ink blowing:
"I still have to do the hair, it was interesting and I want to learn how it [the ink] is used in other applications"
"I want to keep on doing it, it was really enjoyable"
"I want to learn more about indian ink"

Mandala Art:
Mandala patterns are an Indian art form that uses symmetrical patterns that are designed. Today they focussed on radial pattern using paint and rocks. The students listened to a range of music, including Tibetan incantations while they were in their art session, "Be quiet, I want to meditate to this music"
While watching a video, the students thought it would be quite difficult but they all experienced success in the workshop.

Upcoming events in LC4.5:

Healthy Kids Challenge using pedometers

OnBoard Skateboarding Workshops - notice to come home soon.

Suburban Journey Videos

Term 3 complete

It's a little crazy that Term 3 has come and gone! I'm sitting here in LC5 with furniture all around me and it feels much like the beginning of the year. We've got some exciting things coming up in Term 4 and lots to celebrate from Term 3.

Reintroducing Trudy
This year I have been supporting English Language Learners at HPPS but I am also studying primary school teaching part time and will join LC4 in Term 4 to complete my final teaching practicum. In my previous lives I have been an urban planner, researcher, shelter rights advocate, international kindergarten teacher and international aid and development worker. I have lived in Japan, UK, Netherlands, India, Tajikistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and Australia but I am really excited about being back in NZ and beginning this new challenge.

Music Video Immersion
Lisa led LC4 in a music-video immersion activity using GarageBand and iMovie. The children learnt a lot about storyboarding, camera angles and storytelling. Throughout the activity they continued to develop their collaboration skills and reflected each day on the difficulties they'd had as an individual and as a group, this was to help build their resilience.

Daily film-making reflection and evaluation chart

Here is a taster of the music videos the class created, I'll post the rest of the videos to the blog this week.

AIA Healthy Challenge

Our class is participating in the AIA Healthy Kids Challenge next term.  It's a fun virtual adventure around the globe, led by rugby star Cory Jane and NZ Hockey star, Gemma Flynn.  We all create our own little avatars and each child will receive a free pedometer to count steps in the real world that will move our team around the online race track.  As we reach each new destination, we'll see a video of our class of avatars exploring with Cory and Gemma and getting some healthy tips too.

But we need your help!  We'd love you to get involved so you can support and encourage your child to get moving more often and help us get more entries into the draw to win one of twenty $1000 AIA sporting grants for our school and one of 50 Huawei tablets for our classrooms.  Simply join the Parents Class Team and count your steps to help move your team around the same course as the kids and you'll go in the draw to win a Huawei P9 phone too!    Race against other parents teams, get active with your child and have some fun as well.

• If your child is in Reid's tag list click on this link: Healthy Kids parent support
• If your child is in Nicole's tag list click on this link: Healthy Kids Parent Support

Cross Country
On a warm, clear winters day six LC4 students attended the North West Sports Cluster Cross Country at Huapai Domain for year 5 - 8 students. All of our students really enjoyed the experience and are eager to participate again next year.

The course was challenging but it was great to support other children from our school.
"I liked the muddy parts when you went around the corner from the truck, my shoe got stuck in the mud." Apparently the mud was actually refreshing as it was cold and you'd  have to run through the puddles
"I was wearing my mum's running shoes so I didn't fall over"

"Nervous, but really excited" - Jack
"I felt there was no way I could catch up with the people in front of me, I just had to keep going so the person behind me couldn't catch up" - Aart
"I knew I wasn't breathing properly and I wouldn't get a good position"

Our students definitely want to do this again next year and think with more practise they might achieve better results.

Technology update - Borrowbox & Overdrive
The weather for the first few days of the holidays hasn't been great so if you're on the lookout for some reading for your children try the Borrowbox or Overdrive apps. These are apps that you can install onto a device from the Google App Store or iTunes and allow you to borrow electronic books from the Auckland Public Library system, they have a help page if you need assistance. There are a wide range of titles available including audio books that your child can listen to or follow along and traditional electronic books that don't have the accompanying voice over.

Student Reflections

On the last day of Term 3 we asked our students to complete a Google Reflection Form on the term, if your child hasn't completed this it would be great if you could encourage them to do this. It would only take 10 minutes. Use this link to access the form Term 3 Reflection form.

Week 3/4

The last 2 weeks have been very busy for LC4. Projects have occupied a lot of independent time and have been supported by a number of workshops to assist the children with some great learning, we're looking forward to sharing these with you very soon.


We are also preparing for the next immersion and project phase that will be centred on Effective Communication. Our school curriculum team has been meeting to decide which aspects of the NZ Curriculum we will focus on, what learning the students will cover and what skills they will learn. A key feature of this is the creation of Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions, these can be seen on the Learning Journey walls outside LC4, starting next week. This year we will concentrate on the Health aspect of the Health/PE curriculum, with Enduring Understandings like "Actions, attitudes and behaviours impact and change relationships". The documentation and planning supporting can be seen on the Learning Journey wall.

Fitness and PE workshops
This term we have reintroduced fitness workshops to LC3 and LC4. Workshops are student-led to encourage leadership, organisational skills and ensure that a wide variety of workshops are taking place. Our students then opt into a workshop,  these have included dance/jump jam, 3-tag bullrush, circuits, hula hoops and skipping. "I've liked the all-in-tag and skipping workshops, because it made me feel very warm". There are many reasons to why fitness is necessary, for some it is the actual fitness component, others it is a chance to lead or express themselves, and we have students who need the opportunities to remain active throughout the day and it helps everybody to become more focussed.

On Thursday afternoons we have been taking all students out for PE workshops. Most students go with a Learning Advisor for learning ball skills of passing, kicking and shooting. We also have a group of students that have working along Amy to work on planning their own PE workshops. Please make sure your children have appropriate clothing

Trust License System
The Trust License system has been working well to support learning in LC4. Students are making some excellent choices with their learning and we like the way that it is supporting the dispositional goals for our learners. We have had several students move from the Learners to Restricted License and all of our students have been given something specific to work on to help them work towards the next level.

HPSS Celebrations
LC4 has had two opportunities recently to visit the secondary school. These visits have many benefits for our students and are a special feature of Hobsonville Point School (both the primary and secondary). During both visits we attended student-led workshops/celebrations where they demonstrated their learning from their projects. HPSS students had been learning about making their community safer, so workshops focussed on active transport, disaster preparation, fitness, self-defence and many others. Our students generally like these opportunities and student-led learning can be quite powerful for all those involved, the buzz of what is possible for celebrations was evident when we returned and we hope you'll see greater diversity of celebrations as we reach the conclusion of our projects.

The second visit was to support one of the Learning Hubs at HPSS with fundraising that they were working on for a member of their community. LC4 students had the opportunity to participate in Zorb Football! They loved it! For some there was some apprehension and worry before hand, "I felt like I would throw up because of the rolling...I didn't throw up and it was really fun". The smiles and laughs during and after each game spoke volumes.

Conference notes:

We value the communication with home and the support that families provide children for their learning. You should receive regular updates through the conference note system and these will always have a suggestion for how the family can support learning at home. This term you might have received conference notes from either Lisa or Sarah also, who have both been in LC4 running workshops. Please add comments to the document if you have any questions, comments or it could be something that you have noticed at home that you want us to know about. If you haven't been receiving these or are having trouble accessing them please let us know.

Upcoming events:

Project Celebrations, Wednesday 31st, 10am - 11am

Rippa Rugby 3rd tournament

Amazing Race

               The Amazing Race

By Saxon

LC4 students walking around the Hobsonville Point Wharf area
 during the Amazing Race.

On Wednesday the 8th of June 2016 (I am not sure that the date is right), about half the class spent the morning doing the Amazing Race. In the amazing race, you have to do puzzles (but you might have had a time limit, depending on the puzzle). You had to solve it to move on. In the race you went around the park outside HPPS, bomb point, the ferry and HPPS itself.

At the start, you had to answer a quiz to see who will leave first, second and third. The blue team got to go first, then a minute later the yellow team left. Four minutes later the green team left. The yellow team managed to catch up to the blue team and do the challenge first. The challenge was that you had to find the puzzle peices in the Catalina cafe park, then you had to put them together. Then the blue team managed to leave first and the green team caught up to the yellow team. The yellow team left and the beat the blue team, and did the bike challenge. In the bike challenge you had to go down the course and then get to the bomb point gate. The yellow team were still in the lead.

Tome, a teacher at the high school, awards Amazing Race
certificates to students from LC4

Then they had to do a challenge where you had to find 3 bike parts. The bike parts were a reflector, a wire and a seat. The seat and the wire were on the ground. The reflector was high up but within reach if you climbed up. The yellow team were still in the lead but green were 2nd and blue 3rd. Then the next challenge was to ride on a bike with a glass of water, without spilling much of the water. The last challenge was the the juice pong. In juice pong you had to get 3 ping pong balls in the cup. It was the hardest challenge in the Amazing race. Yellow managed to complete it and finished in first place. Green arrived at the pong challenge next. They completed it but did not come to the finish line. Blue arrived and completed it and ran to the finish line. Green thought they had come 2nd but all of blue’s team came to the finish line before them. The scores were, yellow in first place, blue in second place and green in third. Yellow got a special certificate and blue and green got a normal certificate. Then a 2 people out of the 3 teams got another award for being the best performing out of their team.

Overall, everybody had a lot of fun and learnt about safety around cars and active transport.

Wig Wednesday

Wig Wednesday

By Isabelle

On Wednesday the 22nd of June, 5 students ran an event called ‘Wig Wednesday’, Wig Wednesday is an annual event that schools all around Auckland run, Wig Wednesday is a fundraiser for child cancer.

People donated heaps of baking for the bake sale, we couldn’t even fit all of it on the bench at one time! That morning at school we told the whole school that we will be selling the baking before school, at morning tea and lunch. Five minutes later while we were setting up people started flooding in, fortunately we had just the right amount of change from the guess the jelly beans. We were extremely fortunate that we had heaps of baking for before school, morning tea, lunch and we still had heaps of leftovers for the end of the day that we gave them out for free.

There wasn’t many people who took part in the guess the jellybeans competition, there was only about 10 - 15 took people who took a guess, in the small jar there were 227 jellybeans and in  the big jar there was 396 Jellybeans. We raised about $50 - 60 from the guess the jellybeans competition.

We learnt new lessons all throughout the day, "we were stressed and not treating the customers nicely in the morning because we were disorganised" according to Rylee. After this "we gave out jobs to each other like taking orders, giving change and giving out orders", reported Isabelle. Overall, we thought the day ran quite well. At the end of the day we raised $429.50.

LC4 students counting the money from fundraising.