Matariki Story - The Seven Sisters

How Our Money is Made

A further 'note' (ha ha) on our money discussion - have you ever wondered how money is made? Or what happens to the old notes? Watch the following clip to find out!

Our New Money! - Homework Task

We had a look today at the new dollar notes. Mrs Jackson found a great website that explained all the different features and icons on them.
Homework task - who is featured on the $50 and $100 notes? What can you tell us about them?
Click on the link below to see the 'Brighter Money' website to find some information. Why do you think they have called the website that? What is brighter about the notes?

Brighter Money

Our Assembly Item

We had great fun on Friday at our assembly. It was great to be able to share some of our learning with everyone. Here are a few photos of our item - a big thanks to Mrs Wright for taking them for us.

Reading out some of our 'Tramp' poems

What a great job everyone did with our ukulele song! Well done!

Persuasive Writing

This week we have begun to explore persuasive language. We talked about what this is and how it is used. The clue is in the word 'persuasive' - to persuade or convince someone, making you want to do or believe in something. It is about putting your opinions across and sometimes changing someone else's. We thought of all the different ways we see persuasive language in our everyday lives. Here are some of our ideas:

• advertising
• speech making
• lawyers
• politicians
• protesters
• the media - TV and newspaper

We discussed how persuasive language is used in each situation. We all found how advertisers use persuasive language to be really interesting - special offers and larger than life claims!

Our first activities involved carrying out mini debates in class around topics based on life at school. The two topics we had were - 'fizzy drinks should be allowed in school' and ' school holiday should be longer'. The class was split into 'for' and 'against' and each side had to come up with some key points and ideas. It was really fun sharing ideas back and forth. We noticed how some arguments were stronger than others.

Tomorrow we will begin writing to persuade. Our topic came from a conversation that Paton had with Mrs Jackson - how insects may become the next major food source. Would you eat bugs? We all said 'no - yuck!' at first but after watching the following clip some of us were beginning to see the possible benefits. Our writing will be trying to persuade others that eating bugs is a good idea!

Watch the clip and see if you can be persuaded!

Science Fun!

Today we carried out a science equipment. The question posed was - 'what will happen when we add raisins to a glass of fizzy?'. We brainstormed our ideas - some ideas were:

• the raisin will float because it's very light
• the raisin will turn back into a grape because it will absorb the liquid
• the raisin will dissolve because of the sugars in the liquid and the sugars in the raisin
• the raisin will lose its colour because of the sugars in the liquid

Then we gave it a go - this is what happened...

We were amazed by the dancing raisins! We think that the raisins kept rising and falling because of the bubbles. The bubbles were attracted to the raisin at the bottom which made it light enough to rise to the top, then the bubbles popped which made the raisin heavier again so it sank. We shared lots of ideas about why this all happened, linking to the gas in the fizzy, the dehydrated fruit and the density of it. 

We wondered if we could prove that it was all related to the gas in the fizzy. We tried the same experiment with water and it didn't have the same effect - nothing happened. Then we tried adding lots of raisins to a glass of fizzy - we wondered if there wouldn't be enough bubbles to make them all float. We found that the raisins still floated up and down. 

We still had questions and wonderings - we wonder...

• does this experiment work with different types of fizzy? Like L&P or Coke?
• does this experiment work with different types of dehydrated fruit?
• what if we used sparkling water instead of the fizzy? does the sugar content of fizzy have an effect on the experiment?

We are going to try these ideas next week!

New Zealand Sign Language Week

NZ sign language is one of New Zealand's official languages and we have taken the opportunity this week to learn some basic sign language. We have all really enjoyed it!

So far we have learnt how to sign 'yes', 'no', 'good morning', 'good afternoon', 'thank you', 'nice', 'nice to meet you' and how to introduce ourselves, signing 'my name is ...'. We learnt the alphabet in sign so that we could spell out our names. Today we learnt how to count to 10 and also some of the signs for animals. It is quite challenging to remember all the different actions. 

Some of the students requested the links to the NZSL online dictionary and also the Deaf organisation website that we have been using - please click on the links below. Explore both sites and see what you can find!

Happy signing!!

My Life In Sign - NZSL Week

NZSL Online Dictionary