Thepipbuzz

Our Level 3 writers were inspired by James K Baxter's poem 'This Town' recently.   We learnt about James K Baxter and how he was inspired by his surroundings and people around him. We were looking at writing recounts in a different kind of way.  For this exercise, we borrowed the structure of the poem to create our own memory poem of somewhere that is extra special to us.    It was fun trying to create a memory of our special place without saying exactly where it was.  We enjoying sharing our poems with the rest of our group.  Have a read here yourself.

Wow - we have been busy beavers today in Moana Learning Hub! Our school Craft Fair is coming up next Saturday 17 November and today we had a Make & Do Day to get our craft items ready. We have made: airdry clay christmas ornaments and jewellery dishes, christmas card packs, baking in a jar, little poi and jewellery (necklaces and bracelets).  We had 2 awesome mums (thanks Dayna and Kari) come in to help us. We are really proud of our efforts and look forward to selling our wares next weekend.  Perhaps you could come along to our craft fair too!

Wow - our Cafe Day was today and it was brilliant!!! We had to postpone it from during Term 3 when our topic was 'Actions Speak Louder than Words'... but in the end it ended up fitting in perfectly with this term's topic of 'Culture Club'. Everyone in Moana Learning Hub was involved.... our whanau baked delicious food, we decided what entertainment we should have (especially to showcase all our talents) and invited guests - namely our elders. We had the first 3 weeks of term to practice and get ready... we had ukelele playing, singing, dance, gymnastics, jump jam and finished with a haka.  We had a full hall of guests and everyone had a very, very enjoyable time! We did such a good job that we were even able to sit down together at the end and indulge in some of the baked goodness that was left over! Many thanks to everyone who helped us: before, during and after!! Here is a video with just a snippet of the awesome entertainment enjoyed through the morning.... We al...

Our Huia reading group was given an interesting question from Koka Ngaire... is Graffiti Art or Vandalism? We read a couple of L4 texts and looked at a video about the history of graffiti and we had to form our opinion from these and our prior knowledge. We all came to the conclusion that it depends.  It depends where it is and what the message is...  WHAT DO YOU THINK?  We would love to hear your feedback in the comments. Koka Ngaire took some photos of real life graffiti and street art in Melbourne - we had lots of discussion about those! Have a read through a couple of examples of our presentations.... from Kaya, Carys, Daniel B and Obe

In the Fantails reading group, we read an article called 'Earth Paints' as part of our Culture Club topic this term and learned about aboriginal painting and how they made their paint from the earth... We followed the instructions that the kids in the article set out... we went off to find several different dirt colours from around our school.  We found yellow, green, dark brown, light brown and a bluey colour. We were looking at bossy verbs and following instructions.  We had to grind, rub, crush, sieve, mix, stir... we turned our dirt into a paint like paste.  It was exciting to get our fingers into the 'paste' and create our own paintings like the ones in the article.

In Early Level 4 Maths Strand - we have been learning about co-ordinates and position.  We used ourselves as co-ordinate points to understand positive and negative points in a grid... then we got to play Battleships on a 4 way grid to challenge ourselves. We ruled up a grid for ourselves and one to find our buddies ships.  We hid our grids from each other and attempted to use our new co-ordinate learning. We all said that we had to remember to use the horizontal line first... "go along the hallway, then up or down the stairs".  This helped most of us to get a hit on at least one battleship!!

We have had an awesome student teacher with us in Moana 3 for the past 7 weeks... and we have learnt lots with her.  Below are just some of the learning activities we have had fun doing with her. We wish her well in her future teaching career and we know she will do well! Ka pai Koka Pip - thank you for everything you did for us while you were here!!

We have had a great term of learning with our "Actions Speak Louder than Words" topic. In MLH, we had 10 projects in 10 weeks!  Everything from hospital boxes, to the school vege garden and back to rectifying the school outdoor chess board! Everyone had to work as a team - listening and clearly communicating ideas.  Each group had a planner to fill in and work from - marking in key dates.  It has been really exciting this last week to see all of the projects coming to fruition. Have a read through our slides to see what each group has been up to for Term 3!

Congratulations to our Nui speech finalists!   The finals were held this morning and they were all to a very high standard.  Koka Claire (who is a trained Speech and Drama teacher) was the judge and commented on the content and delivery of each speech. The winners were Isabel (Year 5) and Chloe (Year 6).  A big shout out to all of our Moana Learning Hub students who participated!

Today in Koka Ngaire's Early Level 3 maths workshop we were helping each other out with improper & proper fractions and mixed numbers. We had previously figured out that we had to use multiplication and division to change these fractions.  Bjorn had worked these out and shared them with us, sort of like a 3 step process.  He made them really simple and was great at explaining them to us.  Natalie had been away for a week - so we all helped her to be successful and this made it cement in our brains too! Koka Ngaire gets excited when she sees us automatically helping each other to learn!  We told her she could go and have a coffee because we were so in to our maths learning today!  

We have just had our class speech competition to see who would make it through to the Nui semi-finals and then the finals next week. The topic for this year's speeches was 'Actions Speak Louder than Words' to go alongside our actions and learning from across this term.  It was a great speech topic and we had a variety of speeches given - from saving the bees, to flagging the bag, to Te Reo Maori, to generally putting our actions first. The standard of speeches was really high and everyone single Moana student should be really proud of getting quality speeches written in the timeframe, practising and then presenting to a big audience with confidence, clarity and humour. We congratulate these learners who are through to the semi-finals: Year 5s: Kya, Henry, Nellie, Izzy and Sophie  Year 6s: Obe, Kaya, Chloe, Daniel P and Charlie K Getting ready for semi-finals!

Kia ora cyber whanau, In Moana Learning Hub this term, we have been looking at a different Whakatauki each week. Whakatauki are Maori proverbs with underlying messages of wisdom.  Kia pai to ra / po 

Today one of our groups of young mathematicians collaborated in solving a problem so that Marama knew how much money she needed to save before going on her big OE. What was and always is incredible to see, is the variety of strategies that we all use and can explain to others so, like all good mathematicians, we can double-check our answers. After we solved the problem, we explained our methods to each other and pointed out where some of us made mistakes.  Post problem discussion: "It's OK to make mistakes, because we can learn lessons from them." "I didn't get that. Can someone explain how they solved it?" "What did I do wrong?" "That was easy.... I just solved it in my head." "Can I use a calculator?"

Today Nui syndicate had a visit from the Capital-E 'Story Studio Live' team!  It was very interesting and exciting.  We learnt how sound is added into TV and movies... there are people that make the sound to put back into the film when it is finished and they use all sorts of normal, everyday items to make these sounds. Some of us were recorded and used later on in the play they presented... watch the video below to see some clips on how hardly any costumes were used - but that it was all about the sound ! What do you think of the dance warm-up moves at the beginning of the clip?!    :-)

In Moana 3, we created some marvellous metaphor writing about our Dad's for Father's Day.  We had learnt about metaphor's previously so we knew the difference between a metaphor and a simile: a metaphor tells it like it is and a simile uses 'like' or 'as'. When we had completed our writing, we then designed wonderful portrait's of our Dad's... the effect was truly stunning and there were some very happy dad's out there on Father's Day! Just some of the wonderful portraits Here are our metaphor's about our Dad's - using Sheena Cameron's lesson ideas.  They brought a warm fuzzy feeling to Koka Ngaire as she was reading them!!

Koka Pip took Moana 2 for PE this afternoon.  There was a focus on teamwork, co-operation and communication because sometimes we forget these important things during sports games! The Blinded had to trust the rest of their team to head them in the correct direction! There was lots of talk and information going on in each team... after each 'run' there was a change in what steps were used.  Some of the suggestions we used were: sidesteps, jumping and then we tried leap frog!  It was a lot of fun for all...  Thanks Koka Pip!

Right across from the Okitu Store is where!! Once or twice each week, we have been heading to the track to practice for our upcoming school cross country race.  Today we went with the whole school.  The conditions for running were great - cloudy and cool. Everyone is improving in their stamina and distance... Koka Ngaire was very impressed that nearly everybody still had a smile on their faces, by the time we reached her for the second time, at one of the end points!

It's always great when you grasp a new strategy - especially in maths! Today Koka Ngaire sat on the floor while Felix took us through his understanding of our new strategy to add fractions that have uncommon denominators . He followed all the steps to success and could clearly explain what he was doing... a great example of sharing with others, cements your own learning ! Ka pai Felix! 

Koka Jodie with our book Sophie sharing how it was created. Last term, Koka Ngaire's Level 3 writers learnt about alliteration.  We decided to show off our learning by creating a book for the New Entrant class at school. We had to take a letter of the alphabet out of a hat, think of an animal that started with that letter and a name, then create alliteration to go towards our 'ABC Animal Alliteration Book". Reading through our book on the big screen Today, the hard work of constructing was all done and we went to gift our book to Room 9.  Sophie shared with the little kids what we had to do and then we read through it together. Room 9 giving us the thumbs up! Koka Janna and Koka Jodie said that our book will help the little kids with their sound and letter work.  Room 9 LOVED the book and were very pleased to receive it.... we now have a lot of other junior classes who want a copy!   Koka Ngaire might be a bit busy getting that done!!!

As part of our Early Level 4 maths group, we have been learning about Transformations (Geometry/Position): Translate = slide it, Reflect = flip it, Rotate = turn it.   This work has led nicely into some marvellous work on tessellations and learning about different kids of shapes. We learnt that tessellations are shapes locked together with no overlapping... and that it is harder than it looks to complete! There has been LOTS of thinking, practicing, making changes, counting and discussion.  We have had to visualise how the shapes would fit together and have been identifying and explaining the transformations we have been using. We are pretty proud of our efforts - what do you think?