Year: 2023

“Keeping ourselves Safe” – Safe or unsafe

Constable Gordon, our community guest speaker, talked to us about the real world today.  We used laminated cards with different case scenarios to spark discussion in small groups about how to categorise them as safe, unsafe, or unsure.

Each case scenario was ambiguous because it depended on the context and the people involved. For example, “if someone is staring at you while you come out of the pools…”. If the person staring is a toddler or someone with learning challenges who is unaware of social etiquette, it is unclear whether the situation is safe or unsafe.

Key ideas:

• identify behaviours of other people that make them feel unsafe or uncomfortable
• distinguish between touch they like, touch they don’t like, and touch that confuses them
• say “no” to unwanted touch
• use Stop, Walk, Talk in risky situations.

Overall, the activity made us all more aware of our safety boundaries, regardless of who the other person is.

If you have any questions, talk with your teacher or an adult you can trust.

Keeping ourselves safe

Creating prototypes using Spaghetti and Marshmallow

Bula Vinaka – This term we’re using the  ‘Design thinking’ process to help us with our inquiry.

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving process that helps students develop empathy, ideation, and active problem-solving skills. Students learn to understand users, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to create innovative solutions.

This process involves:

Empathise: Understand the user’s needs and pain points.
Define: Frame the problem as a challenge or opportunity.
Ideate: Generate creative solutions.
Prototype: Build and test low-fidelity solutions.
Test: Get feedback from users and iterate on solutions.

Design thinking is a powerful tool for students to learn how to solve real-world problems in a creative and user-centered way.

Check out Room 9’s process, especially prototype and testing process.

Term 4 Inquiry – Make it Work!

Bula Vinaka!  Welcome back to Term 4 – this term is jam-packed with so much exciting events, our learners have learnt to roll with it.

Our inquiry is “Make it work”, under the umbrella of technology ‘designing and developing materials outcomes’. As a team one of our common problems is not having anywhere to sit or store our bags/sports gear. By using the ‘design thinking’ framework – empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test, this help the learners how design works.

This is our team 4 video of what we’ll be working through this term – thanks Mrs Lagitupu, great video!

Technology TKI link

Term 3 – PENN ‘Fit for purpose’

As part of our “fit for purpose” inquiry, we explored ways to prepare for Cross Country and stay active. We enrolled in the Zespri Virtual Adventure program, which provided us with pedometers. We then entered our daily step counts.

To stay active, we participated in daily brain breaks, which included sprinting twice on the basketball court, cross-country training with Team 4, and Kiwi sports. We also took our pedometers home to see how many steps we could take each day. Even Mrs. Siō had a goal of reaching 10,000 steps per day.

With the Virtual Adventure program, we also entered our food intake and water breaks (we did not include our data for this).

By staying hydrated more frequently, collaborated more as a class to come up with more “plays” for our brain breaks, and even tried to create new brain break ideas; We were more settled when we returned to class after our brain breaks.

We hope to continue this more consistently until the end of the year!

Tongan Language Week

This year Tongan language week theme for Uike Lea Faka-Tonga 2023 is ‘E tu’uloa ‘a e Lea faka-Tongá ‘o ka lea’aki ‘i ‘api, siasí (lotú), mo e nofo-‘a-kāingá, which means the Tongan Language will be sustainable if used at home, church and in the wider community.

Half of the students in our class are Tongan, so it is important to reinforce the Tongan language. According to the Ministry of Pacific People, only 40% of the 82,389 Tongan people in New Zealand speak their language. This is especially concerning for children under 15, of whom only 21% speak Tongan.

One way to support the Tongan language is to teach students how to recite their pepeha in Tongan. A pepeha is a traditional Māori way of introducing oneself, and it can be adapted to other cultures. By reciting their pepeha in Tongan, students can learn more about their heritage and culture, and they can also help to keep the Tongan language alive.

Check out one of our students Mia reciting her pepeha in Tongan!

ps>. Check out Eziaz, Meki & Ofili’s facts about Tonga below! Malo ‘aupito!

Five Facts About Tonga

 

Meki’s 4-facts-Tongan-language week

Eziaz’ 5 Facts: Uike Lea Faka-Tonga

 

A heart of gratitude!

Today, we had a special assembly to honour representatives from the Chen Family and other donors, including the Kadempa Buddhist Charitable Trust, Frank Family Trust, and Megaforce International Corporation.

During the assembly, our Senior Kapa Haka performed to express our gratitude on behalf of the school. Their generous donations have helped to ensure that more families have access to digital devices for their children’s learning.

The Chen Family’s dedication to promoting education and creating a nurturing environment for our children is truly outstanding. They are an inspiration to us all.

A Maori whakataukī – ‘He taonga rongonui te aroha ki te tangata’ translate to ‘goodwill towards others is a precious treasure’.

With this kind donation, it means and aim to increase leadership knowledge and skills for our learners.

We express our sincere gratitude and aroha for their generosity and support.

Life Ed – The power of words

During this week, we’ve had Life-Ed trailer arrive to our school escorted with Harold the giraffe. Sylvia and Monica were talking and coaching us on “mind chats,” or conversations we have in our heads. They explained that if our self-talk is negative, our brains start to believe it. This led to a discussion about fixed vs. growth mindsets.

We then watched a video about the difference between bullying and being mean or rude. It was important to learn the distinction between the two so that we could be up-standers and do the right thing.

We learned that words are powerful and that we can show empathy and kindness by being mindful of our language.  We also discussed the importance of not conforming to negative behaviour.

Finally, we learned strategies for shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. In our learning, what are some of the areas we need to shift from fixed to growth mindset?

Room 9 PENN – Prefect Korero posters

“Room 9 has been creating Prefect Korero posters after our school Assembly.
We use google drawing to begin our poster, using shapes, wordart, google free images and ‘ombre – effect’ scheme to use for our titles or our backgrounds and then posting it on Edublog!”

Kiwisports – Football

This term, our class had soccer with Coach Tre. He taught us the skills to play the game and be successful. We have students in our class who are big fans of Messi and Ronaldo.

Coach Tre used different games to teach us dribbling, turning, and shooting. We got better each week and were excited to have soccer. I wonder what skills our students need to develop more?

2023 Rm 9 Class Photos

How do we take such great class photos?

We line up from tallest to shortest. We’re each given a piece of paper with our name and a QR code on it. Then, we head towards the photographer, who decides where we sit. He checks that we’re all in the right position and looking our best, because these photos will be with us for the rest of our lives!

Behind the scenes:

Check out the behind-the-scenes photo footage to see how we do it.  We had 3 students absent: Sione, Utukura & Hisham.

How do you feel when taking photos?

Have you ever blinked in a photo?  Our secret: Keep smiling!