You guys may know James May from Top Gear but did you ever think he would attempt to make a full scale lego house? This is big enough to walk in, even live in, although I don't think a lego bed would be very comfy! We decided that this came into the Wow! category for achievement. Reuben
One of the Habits of Mind we are focussing on is responding with wonderment and awe. We are looking out for things that make us go "Wow!" Check this out...
This is Alain Robert a French rock and urban building climber. He has climbed many high buildings including the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House and the Cheung Kong Centre. But thats not all - he does it with only a pair of climbing shoes and a smalll bag of chalk! This made me, Emily, go "WOW!"
This week Room 11 has been working on art quite a lot.
Balloon Art
Balloon Art is a fun art idea which Mrs Hosie found on the Internet while searching for an art idea to display in the staffroom. Balloon art makes it look like you are floating into a far away galaxy or in some cases- Shooting through the sky faster than the speed of light. In our balloons we wrote our goals for the term.
Mandala Art
Mandala is a Sanskrit (which is the official language of the state of Uttarakhand, in northern India) word which means circle.
Mandala Art has a spiritual and ritual significance in Hinduism and Buddhism.
Our Mandala Art is made out of lots of patterns or things that are special to us. Some of us still haven`t finished our Mandala Art but as soon as we have all finished our art it will be displayed in the staffroom.
What a great start to the year. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the class of 2013 today and meeting those of you who were able to come into the classroom today. It feels good to be back. Things that made me go 'aah' were: seeing the students sitting at their desks chatting 15 minutes before the bell was due to ring for class; noting that most students were attempting to share their ideas, opinions and answers during discussions (we discussed the concept of people not contributing being 'baggage' that the rest of the class had to carry); appreciating the efforts and creative results of their work; enjoying our 'snowball' fight (yes, in summer!) and learning about the students' likes and dislikes as we tried to guess who had written on each snowball; seeing 6 students voluntarily come into class to complete unfinished work at lunchtime!
We are in the process of setting up our class economy at present. The students will be asking advice as to what to put on their job description and asking you to write a short referee's report for them. Once their applications are completed, I will go through and appoint students to jobs appropriate to their interests and abilities to carry them out. They are very excited about the prospect of earning money and being able to take part in the two auctions (mid and end of year). Once the job vacancies have been filled this blog will be updated by a journalist and photographer. I am sure their posts will be much more interesting than this one! Ka kite ano Teressa
What a great way to end the year: Secret Santa first thing, farewell assembly after morning tea, the Amazing Race and the grand finale, the water fight! There are no photos of the water fight as we do not have a water proof camera, which is a shame as there would have been some funny shots I am sure.
The class had a great time pushing their physical and emotional boundaries as they faced challenges that involved heights and trusting your team to keep you safe.
On the 22nd of October the magazine team went to visit the Wild Tomato editor, Jack Martin, to learn more about creating a magazine that stands out from the crowd.
We were greeted by Jack at the magazine office where we asked questions that we needed to know the answers to if we were to produce a magazine by the end of the year. Jack answered our questions with information to inspire us to write our magazine.
Jack took us through to the magazine's designer, Annabel, so we could learn how to make our magazine's layout eye-catching and appealing to our readers. She answered all our questions and showed examples of her work to give us a clearer idea of what she meant.
We came back to school with inspiring ideas forming in our mind. We can't wait to get started on our articles, photos and page layout ideas.
Jack finds using Google Docs to organise and store information invaluable. We are using Google Apps as our online organiser and place to draft our articles this year.
We are going to try using a new system to work out how our magazine articles and pages will fit together. Annabel showed how she uses a table or spreadsheet to help work out the layout of articles, photos and advertisements.
Wild Tomato covers look great on the wall in the office.
On Tuesday, the 30th of October, Wildfire and the Year 8 band went off to Stoke School to perform in the annual Nelson Rock Fest.
There were 27 bands performing and both Mapua School bands had to go second and third to last! They had to wait the whole day listening to all the other bands. When they finally got up on stage and performed, they were brilliant. The Year 8 Band played Little Wonders and Proud Mary, and Wildfire played Pork and Beans and Love Love Love.
The Rock fest was not a competition but there were prizes to be won if your school's name was pulled out of the hat. Mapua didn't win anything because the man who pulled the names out of the hat dropped the piece of paper with Mapua's name on the ground - they almost won a 50 dollar voucher for music equipment.
Even though they didn't win anything everyone still enjoyed themselves.
Gill has checked the timing for tonight's concert with the organisers and alerted me that the music doesn't start until 7pm. Food is available from 6pm. So if you are planning on eating at home you have another hour up your sleeve before needing to be at the Play House tonight.
Cheers
Mrs H
Our cool keyboard player, Catherine, is at Rock Camp this week at the Playhouse Theatre. She would like to invite the whole class to come along on Friday evening to see her perform in the band with the other participants.
The concert starts at 6pm.
Doors are open from 5.30 and dinner is available.
Sounds like a great way to wind down the holidays team.
The last week of term was packed with a lot of presentations, competitions and celebrations.
On Wednesday Rod Ritchie gave up some of his holiday time to come and work with R10 and 11. Rod, Jamie's dad, is here on holiday and he was only too happy to come and wrap up our narrative unit and inspire our budding author's to write one last piece. The prizes are some of his books from the Warriors series. We will return to those stories after the holidays and polish them for the competition.
On Thursday a team of four students: Stella, Zak, Tait and Cailin, represented us at the annual Motec BP Technology Challenge and came away with first prize - and a fantastic microscope! Well done team.
Friday was the best day. We had non stop performances, presentations and shows as we savoured the different flavours of the Popcorn Programme. Creativity and imagination were to the fore as we watched puppet shows, learnt about building useful things out of recycled wood and other building materials, imagined the new garden boxes overflowing with fruit and vegetables, oohed and aahed over the biographical paintings, listened to the environmental messages brought to us by the video group, watched the creativity groups interpretation of metamorphosis and marvelled at the artistic designs of the wearable arts garments.
Check out the short video clip below for images of our great week. (Unfortunately I don't have photos from the Technology Challenge yet.)
On Thursday the 16 of August, eight maths maniacs took part in a Mathix competition at Mot High.
The challenge was to answer all of the maths questions correctly. To make it even tougher, the rules were that teams were not allowed to get the next question until they had got the
previous one right.
There were two teams: Team A was made up of Seth, Mac, Daniel and Cameron and Team B, made up of Catherine, Kate, Jake and Peter.
The hall was buzzing with mathematicians talking through the problems and trying to get the answers first. It was not a very exciting spectator sport as the audience only had a spreadsheet, which was very hard to read, showing how many questions each team had answered correctly.
The two teams worked very hard and in the end the A team came 5th and the B team came 15th. A pretty good effort. Great team work guys!
On the 12th of September, Cameron Jones went to the AMI inter-school Primary Races.
Cameron was superb! Getting 4th place against people who go to the ski field 24/7 is an amazing achievement! With a time of 36.35 seconds, only a couple of seconds behind the leading racer.
Room 11 is really succeeding at the moment, especially in sport.
Jake and Mac have made it through a long and tiring process to get to the inter-regional Cross Country event to be held in Wellington.
They had to come in the top 5 for Mapua School's Cross Country. Mac came 1st and Jake came 2nd. They then went to the inter-schools, where Jake came 1st, Mac came 2nd, Ben P came 3rd, and Zak R came 4th. Mapua really cleaned up in that race!
Next was the Regional finals, which had all of the schools around the Tasman region competing to get into the Tasman Cross Country Team. The top 10 runners were the chosen ones. Jake came 3rd, and Mac came 4th. So they are going to Wellington on the 26th of September, and racing on the very next day.
It was Ecofest in the weekend and nine girls from our school entered a Funky Fashion competition. They had to design and make a outfit either out of recycled materials or spend a maximum of ten dollars at op shops or second hand stores. Most of them entered recycled fashion but two people entered op shop.
People got really creative and we ended up with a paper diva, a fantastic plastic, a stripy divine, a recycled punk, and a green supreme. We had a really cool dressing room with lights around the mirrors just like movie stars. The show started at 12:30 with Ranzau School going first and then it was our time to shine.
Kate and Emily's dress went first. They had a multicolured plastic skirt and patched up top finished off with jewelery made from recycled materials.
Then it was Analese and Shaylem`s dress. Theirs was made completely out of plastic bags and bottle tops.
Next was Ellie. She had a skirt made out of magazine fans and a top made out of a sarong.
Then it was Taliha's turn . She had a dress and umbrella made out of building paper and buttons to add flair.
Then Sophie came on with her vine protector skirt and black and white plastic bag top.
Taylor May displayed Tahlia's op shop outfit. She was one of the four op-shop entries. She had a red top, flower skirt, black tights and back high heels.
The last design from our school was Stella's. Sylvie was her model. She wore a green checkered skirt and white singlet with a green cardigan with a flower on top.
It was great to hear that Tahlia won the junior section and Ellie, who used to go to Mapua School, won the senior section.
All the girls really liked being able to strut their stuff on the catwalk. Check out our designs and some of the other entries in our video clip.
Cameron came up with the idea of fundraising for camp 2013 ALREADY!
Our camp next year will be in third week of term one, leaving no time for fundraising. Cameron and his keen group of lunch ladies, Mac, Ben, and Zac, cooked up some sausages on Monday and earned $117.40 profit.
The Intermediate and Senior classes started a new programme to promote imaginative and creative thinking in term 3.
Just before the end of term 2, we were asked what our top 3 choices would be. Now, every Friday after morning tea, we go to different classrooms to build or create something that we enjoy. The options are:- Imagining and creating - metamorphosis; interpretation using shadow puppets; painting on canvas; creating movies with environmentally friendly messages; building gardens and beautifying the school; and creating from recycled goodies. Here is a movie that shows the start of the POPCORN programme! Enjoy!
This week Room 11 has been working on art quite a lot.
On Tuesday, the 30th of October, Wildfire and the Year 8 band went off to Stoke School to perform in the annual Nelson Rock Fest.
