Kotahitanga Week: Powhiri

This morning we had a whole school powhiri for Kotahitanga week. We (Year 7s) were the manuhiri, while the Year 8s were the tangata whenua welcoming us onto our school wharenui. 

Nina and Anja stepped up and presented our class pouwhenua to the entire school. They spoke really well and did our class proud. 

Pouwhenua Speech:
Anja:

Kia ora Ko Toku Ingoa Anja Edwards

Ko ahau he ruma 9 ākonga

Hi my name is Anja Edwards and I am a student of room 9. For kotahitanga week we have made a po whenua and in it we have included native plants, our school logo and what we enjoy in our classroom such as sports art and music.

Nina:

Kia Ora , Ko Toku Ingoa Nina a ahau ano ahau i roto i toku ruma 9. Hi my name is Nina and i am also in room 9. As Anja said before, we have made a Po Whenua for Kotahitanga week. The native plants are a Pohutukawa flower and 2 koru’s. The pencil , pen and paintbrush represent our education at HNI and the music notes and sport equipment represent HNI’s hobbies. Whakawhetai ki a koutou mo te listening

After each class presented their pouwhenua, the boys delivered an amazing haka.

Kotahitanga Week Preparation

Next week HNI will be celebrating Kotahitanga week. Kotahitanga week is a learning celebration that prepares students for our multicultural society, by looking at our classrooms identity and how our heritage influences our values. 

To show Room 9s identity, we were given the task to design and create our own Pou whenua to present to the whole school on Monday morning. So to complete this task everyone in Room 9 was given a four panel template in class to design on, before we held a class vote using google forms to determine our final design. 

Panel 1 was our winning design!

Congratulations to Nina, who came out on top with the most votes. Nina and her team of expert painters: Anja, Benedict and Carter will now make our class voted design come to life! 

Crab Football!

Just because it's raining doesn't mean we have to miss out on P.E! Room 9 and Room 12 learnt how to play crab football today, and it was so much fun. The trick is you can't touch the ground when you are in your crab shape, which trust us... is harder than it looks! We definitely felt our core muscles the next day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Questioning Matrix

We have been learning about our recent flag referendum in New Zealand as part of our inquiry and writing in Room 9. In inquiry we know that we need to ask effective questions in order to find out more information. Miss Fisher set us the task to form at least 10 interesting questions about our flag referendum in groups of 3 before sharing back to the class. We firstly discussed what good research questions were (open not closed) in class and then used a questioning matrix and to help us form these questions. 

Miss Fisher was so impressed by the amount of interesting questions we were able to come up with as a class! 

Science Technology

In science technology there is always something wacky going on. This lesson we explored magnets by testing if different materials were magnetic.

Food Technology

In food technology we are designing and creating our own Mama Mia pizzas. However to able to do this we need to think and test different ingredients we can maybe use. Our pizza design must be healthy, but from the looks so far, our tester pizzas look healthy AND delicious! 

Identity Collage

We have been exploring the idea of identity, and how we are all unique. We each have our own set of beliefs, values, goals, hobbies, likes, dislikes and choices in life. It is our identity which sets us apart from each other in Room 9. Our identity is who we are.

Using the technique of collage and a side profile outline of ourselves, we found cut outs from magazines which we thought showed our identity. Don't they look AMAZING!

Authors Purpose

WALT: understand the author’s purpose when writing a text

In reading we have been looking closely at author's purpose. Using the anagram PIE (persaude, inform and entertain) we have been determining the purpose of different texts and posters. The important clue we use to determine the purpose of a text is the language the author uses. To help us understand the difference between each purposes language, Miss Fisher used the example of M&ms. As a whole class we had to write three purposes for M&ms using the acronym of PIE.

Our task was to think carefully about each purpose (persuade, inform, entertain) and write a sentence which uses the correct language appropriate to that purpose firstly for M&ms, then our own chosen topic independently.

Problem Solving

WALT: highlight key information to understand what the question is exactly asking us

Each week in Room 9 we have problem solving Friday, where we work in mixed groups to use our multiplication strategies we have been learning in class to solve questions! It is important we work as a team, and use our maths knowledge and strategies to problem solve. One skill Miss Fisher has been particularly focusing on is our ability to highlight key information in the question FIRST before we even start solving. 

Last week we had the Problem Solving Games, it was lots of fun!

Lots of brain power going on here!

Capture the rugby ball CHAMPIONS

When it comes to capture the rugby ball, we are pretty good. We understand that we need to work as a team to both capture the rugby ball AND defend our box from the other team. We have lots of fun when we verse the other classes in Sheppard house! 

CHAAAAARGE!

We were a bit tired after multiple games

Change your words, change your mindset

It is really important in Room 9 that we use positive language when we talk about our learning. We learnt that by changing our words we can change our mindset, especially when tasks feel like they are too difficult or we become frustrated if we don't understand.