Kowhai News Term 4 Week 10 – Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto

Wow! It's hard to believe that the end of the term has arrived. We have had the most productive term and even in the last week, the children are continuing to be involved in a variety of interesting and exciting learning challenges.

Hats

It's nearing that time of year that the children will need to wear their hat at school. Please take time over the holidays to locate your child's hat ready for Term 4. If you need a new hat, these can be purchased from the school office.

Stationery
Some of the children need to replenish their school stationery for next term. Please ask your child if they require any more pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers or highlighters. If these could be brought to school in Term 4, that would be amazing.

MATHS - Mapping (Position and Orientation)

Over the past two weeks, the children across our team have been involved in a variety of hands on activities as they develop their knowledge of mapping skills. We have been working in collaborative teaching partnerships and have encouraged the children to work collaboratively too. This has enabled the children to support and challenge each other with their learning. The children have been learning how to read and make maps, follow and give directions and use positional language including: left, right, forward, backward, 1/4, 1/2 and full turns and compass directions, to name a few. Here we are in action:

Reading a map to find clues hidden in the hub.

Reading and creating our own maps.

Organising 'treasure' to go with our map designs.

Viewing and reading maps on Google.

Following maps to discover hidden clues.

READING - Plays

Reading through the play.

This last week, the children have been working on improving reading fluency through the medium of plays. For the children to deliver an effective play, the children have worked on maintaining their focus when working in their group so they know when to deliver their line, adding expression to portray the character, use a variety of facial expressions and gestures to communicate the feelings and actions of characters and to use a clear voice so the audience can hear what we are saying.

Practising our actions.

Adding in actions.

INQUIRY LEARNING - Change

We have been exploring the key concept: Change is inevitable and our actions can have positive or negative impacts. To enable the children to be agentic in their learning (making choices about what they want to learn), we gave them the opportunity to opt into various groups. This has seen children learning about changes with materials and changes with living things.

One group of children have been conducting experiments to learn about chemical and physical change. We have learnt that physical change in matter is reversible and chemical change is irreversible. Our experiments include:

Dissolving substances into water
Making salt crystals
Making sherbet
Trying to prevent ice from melting
Floating paper clips on top of a glass of water
Mixing cornflour and water to make oobleck (a non-Newtonian substance).

Next term we will be investigating the effects of some irreversible changes on our environment and be looking at recycling.

Making oobleck

Oobleck

Environmental Change - Endangered Animals

Our group has been looking at environmental changes and how these can impact on animal species. Children have been investigating endangered animals to find the reasons these animals have become endangered. The children are investigating ways in which they can raise awareness and possibly fundraise to help make a positive change to save animals from being endangered.

Developmental Play

Over the last few weeks, we have started a new programme in the afternoon for those children who need a break from our normal learning routine. We thought it would be great to give them the chance to enjoy some developmental play which so far has involved building with lego, sketching and making musical instruments. The children have benefitted hugely from this programme and there has been such a calm and focussed atmosphere in the hub. As it has been such a success, we are going to continue with this programme next term. Here are a few pictures of what they have been doing:

WATER - Fresh Water Frolicking

Paulette's group have been learning about water, the water cycle, where we get our fresh water from and fresh water ecosystems. This week has seen the children investigating the creatures that are currently residing in the ponds. We have discovered the water is very stinky! We are going to conduct a water quality test next term to find out how healthy the water actually is. This week we have observed the creatures that are living in the ponds and have discovered many larvae, water boatmen, snails, bugs and even FISH!