🦠 Genomics - Smallest to Largest Living Organisms 🦠

WALT: Place organisms on a continuum.

Task Description: This middle block, Room 4 are working on genomics. To calm ourselves we had a silent SSR session then we moved onto the the real deal. Today we are also in practising how to be in a class at college. We had the whole college class layout and Mrs Stone shifted into the mode of a college teacher. Our task was to put in order from the smallest to the largest type of an animal living organism. These were my picks out of many. 

☑️ TRACKING MY LEARNING TERM 2 🍂

Task Description: *This work was from last term but was dragged to this term to finish due to a lot of events that happened*. Last term as some of you may know our topic for team 5 was genomics. We focused of DNA coding and the exploration of things mystery. During this time we had a presentation called tracking my learning.....where we track our learning. This helped check out our progress on cells and what we currently know. I think that I have definitely learnt a whole lot of information and I have stored it in my brain ready to share with many more! 

🤔 Reflecting On My Maths This Year ➗

Reflecting on My Maths This Year

In Room 4 maths we got to check our test scores from our previous maths test we had. Our task was to create a blog post reflecting on our maths this whole year. My favourite part of maths I enjoyed was area & perimeter and volume. I found this maths era my favourite because I actually enjoyed learning about it and it also helped me find my strength. Even though this was a great learning lesson, I still think that I didn't do quite well when it came to just maths in general.

Whenever I do maths I always seem to forget some part or just straight up forget what we even learnt. I think this is what I think brought me down in my maths test because I was very hard for me to recover all the things I did. At first, I felt like I was doing very well and then it just kinda went downhill towards the end. 

Besides this, the maths I've done this year has actually been good. I even learnt a lot of things that I previously didn't know at all. The reason for this is because Mrs Stone teaching strategies were very easy to understand. She came down to the students level of maths and helped us work through a question step by step. This was very helpful :)

In my test I did well at geometry, measurement and statistics. I'm still working on algebra.

What would I rate my maths out of 10?
4.5/10

🔬 Looking at cheek cells! 🦠

Even though this term our theme is Life's a Stage, Room 4 will still be continuing on our genomics learning topic from last term because we didn't get a chance to cover all of the information about genomics due to our busy schedule. This is why, Room 4 got a chance to look at cheek cells. To help look at the cheek cells properly, we used a few microscopes to help us give our observation more description. We had to go into groups and I was with Bethan and Paikea. 

As always, we sat on the mat and followed instructional video on how to look at a cheek cell. The man who was instructing the video was very specific in what we were doing. What we needed:

-Microscope
-Slide
-Popsical Stick
-Sodium Chloride
-Methylene blue (stain) 

The man in the video said we had to rub the popsical stick gently, but at the same time try to get all those little bits - we were looking for all those dead cells. We didn't have enough slides so only one person from our group had to do it, Bethan Volunteered while I was disgusted by the fact that we had to do it. 

Mrs Stone handed out the slides to each group and we were strictly forbidden to not smear our all over it and hold it by the corners. If we were to smear our hands all over, then we wouldn't be looking at our cheek cells, but our germs and hands. Bethan took the popsical and rubbed it all around one side of her cheek. She went in there! After that, Bethan rubbed the popsical remains onto the slide. I was soooo disgusted.

I then added the sodium chloride which made no change, but when Paikea added the Methylnene Blue it made a quick change. This was to help us look more into the cell in depth. After that we waited for it to dry because we didn't have any covers to look at the cell without it drying.

Once we came back, we all scattered the microscopes we had around the room and carefully examined and observed what we saw. We had different objectives that helped us look closer into the cheek cell. Mrs Stone also gave us paper and we had to actually draw what we see and write an explanation below. Here's mine:

🏫 TERM 3 ~ THE CRAZIEST TERM! 🙃

Term 3 was one of the most pact, fun and craziest ever! Many things happened that I never got a chance to share with you all on my blog. I myself was very, very busy to the point where I had a breakdown. OK TOO MUCH INFORMATION!! This blog-post is just a little revision of term 3 from my perspective. Enjoy!

TEAM 5's ITEM

Term 3's immersion assembly was an awesome introduction. We got to eat a variety of seafood that were live cooked. All the prefects had to be the "waiters" to the school and give them out to people that were in a good manner. It was pretty hectic, but the food was amazing. We each got to know about our team will be learning about this term through presentations. Team 5 (my team) announced through a song that we will be learning about the cell and how all living organisms are connected. I was surprised by the topic as it's something new coming from the school! But what I didn't know what we all didn't know this topic was about to hit us right in the face. OOOF!

We all started from the basics of the basics and we were all to make a copy of an presentation called Tracking my learning which will be our presentation throughout the whole term. We were also given transcripts written by our scientists working along with us during this topic. The transcripts were an helpful guide for us and we would have to take notes. Once we learned about the topic we would put all the things inside the tracking my learning slides and also answer questions.

AQUA DRAGONS - REALLY TINY

Room 4 also ended up getting a class pet! Mrs Stone received some aqua dragons for her birthday and she decided to make it a class pet. Aqua dragons are a live aquatic creatures. They adapt in water, light and temperature. The class tried to care as much as they could for the tiny creatures but unfortunately someone tipped the tank and a lot of them died which left us with a small amount. We were very sad, so we tried to take care of the left over ones but to no avail. We realised that they were all dead :( R.I.P AQUA DRAGONS 2019 - 2019.

The production was also a great hit this term! Mr Jacobsen announced that there will be a school production called The Toy Shop on ZipZap avenue! A lot of people auditioned but I didn't. I decided to finish off my work after realising how much time the production would take from my learning. The production was good! The actors, dancers were great but, I'd really like to acknowledge the lightnings and technician crew, they were an awesome asset :)

This is all my memory can recover from last term (sorry if you wanted more). It was so pact!! If anything else does pop into my head I'll be sure to make a blog-post about it. This may not look as crazy, tiring and pact, but if you were in my position.....YOU WOULD HATE IT! Thanks for reading this blog post and stay tuned for more :)

🔬PARTS OF A CELL / SOMETHING IN THE WATER ANIMATION 🧬

Walt: To identify and describe organelle.  
Task Description: As you know this term our school inquiry topic is Something in the water! Team 5 decided to look into life and it's deeper meaning. This meant, the whole term we learnt about Darwin Theory, 7 life processes, Web of life (Food Chains), Animals/Humans (Bodies) and Different type of cells. It was a whole lot of work, but I was interested, determined and amazed by the different things I had learned.

Here is my cell animation. This animation is about the parts of a cell. If there is a lack of information from my movie then it's because we had a short amount of time to learn about cells. Our first task was to find a photo of a cell and draw a similar one (WE DID NOT TRACE, ITS NOT PART OF THE SCHOOL POLICY) I found drawing the cell easy and simple. During this time didn't really look into cells yet.

Fast forward, we finally learnt about the cell. During our learning session about the cell we had to label each part of it and take notes while watching a video guiding us about cells. We also got a chance to partner up with someone and make our own DLO about the parts of a cell. I have made a blog post on my DLO in a previous blog post that will be linked below.

When making our animation we had to write buttons and arrows about the different parts of the cell. By the way, we used HyperStudio (a creativity tool software) to create out animations. Each button we made led to a different slide animation of that part. This is exactly what I did. Once I finished, I improvised a script in my head for my introduction then I let it just flow along reading off the slides.

I hope you enjoyed my little animation about the parts of a cell. If there are any mistakes I am sorry because the whole video was just one full voice recording take. I also hope that you picked up some things as you watched the video :)

CELL PRESENTATION

🧬 WHAT IS A CELL? GENOMICS LEARNING 🔬

TASK DESCRIPTION: I have been tackling this task for almost two stressful weeks :) I am finally happy to finish this and we can move on from cells. Our task for genomics was to make a DLO of any kind showcasing what is a cell. I decided to partner up (well we decided a long time ago) with my BESTIE MAKAYLA! This presentation just talks about all the different parts of a cell and what a cell is in general. I used a video to help me learn more about the cell in depth. I hope you enjoy and also visit Makayla's blog for her amazing content!

Kayla's Blog

🐙 Octopus Facts 🐙 ~ Makayla & Amelia 🖇️

🐙 Octopus Facts 🐙 ~ Makayla & Amelia 🖇️
Task Description: This week we have been learning about Octopus! To start off, we all sat down on the mat and shared what we already knew or learned about the octopus. We then watched a video all focused on the octopus itself. We definitely picked up a lot of facts and even though we knew some already the video allowed us to look into the fact in depth. Me and Makayla then partnered to make this presentation all about the Octopus. We used all the facts that we learnt from the previous video to fufill this presentation. I hope you enjoy :)

Makayla's Blog

Measurement Reminiscence 📏➗

WALT:  calculate area and perimeter

Task Description: This week for maths we are working on measurements. Touching on this topic is very interesting. I learnt a lot of maths during this session. In one of our slides we had to convert the fractions between decimals and percentages. We also did the area and perimeter of rectangles, as well as measurements. Enjoy!

Amelia - How do we know if something is alive?

 Task Description: Yes! Were back @ school and we have a new term of learning! This term our theme is Something in the water! He Mea I Roto I Te Wai! This is a science inquiry and for our class inquiry is How do we know if something is alive. We learnt what makes things alive on the mat together and then fulfil this presentation above where we elaborate more on what it means and what things are alive or not alive around us. Enjoy!

✈️TRAVELLING AROUND THE WORLD🌎

Task Description: This term we have learnt a whole lot of things! Part of our learning is making DLO's where we travel around different continents and/or countries around the world. First, we had to draw a world map on Hyperstudio as a guide. We then choose three or more different landmarks in countries. The next step to our DLO is to go to Scratch (a online website where you can code) and code our drawings to make it look like we are travelling the world 🌎

This is my finishing animation. All you need to do is press the green flag and let me do the talking! Once it's finish or if you want to stop it press the red button. I really enjoyed making this DLO and I have learnt many, many things while doing this - Continents, Coding and Drawing. I hope you enjoy this DLO.

Credits: SONG - DJ TOA COMO LA FLOR REMIX - NOT MY SONG ALL RIGHTS TO THE OWNER! - R.I.P SELENA -

🌎 South America 🌎

Task Description: This week the continent we have focused on is South America. To further our understanding about this continent, we looked at some videos looking into particular country's inside the continent and also listen to what other kids in our class have to say about the continent. After that, we all went and picked a country and did our own research of a particular country. I hope you enjoy!

🌍 Europe & America 🌍

Walt: Learn the difference and similarities between two continents (country).

Europe and America have many similarities because way back Europe colonised North America. During this time Europe brought over a lot of things such as their culture, foods and traditions. Even though colonisation doesn't happen between them now, these two country's still do a lot of trading. Let's look at food for an example, Pizza originated in Italy located in Europe. America took pizza and made it and improvised the different flavours. In Italy they made their pizzas more traditional and hand made whereas America makes lots of  bulk Pizza from companies like Dominoes. There are many more things about these two countries so I will share them soon!

Fabulous Fractions!

WALT:  We are learning to find equivalent fractions
Task Description: This week Room 4 Maths is working on equivilent fractions! I loved this maths topic because it was something I enjoyed last year. So, it's good to re-fresh my memory about this. In this presentation our teacher gives us different levels to work on and I decided to go back and work on the roots. We also had a recap of last weeks work which was angles. I also visited a few workshops to help refresh my memory. I hope you enjoyed this weeks maths work!

Learning about North America 🌎

Task Description: Hello and welcome to another blog post! This week as you know our this is I like your Latitude. Part of this topic is learning about different continents and all that stuff. This week we are researching about North America. In the past week we looked at a lot of things about North America like the different countries in that continent. I learnt a lot of things and I have put it into this little book information above! Enjoy!

Prefect Korero 👍🏼 Happy Samoan Language Week 🇼🇸

Hello, and welcome to another blog-post from your's truely! To start off, I'd like to say a huge happy samoan 🇼🇸 language week to ya'll. If your new to this NZ does likes to keep cultures alive by celebrating them in different dates. This week it's Samoan language week!

To celebrate Samoan language week we decided to connect our weekly korero with this weeks language week. This weeks korero is Say it properly, Please! A lot of different cultures have names that not everyone is famalliar with. So, always be aware of peoples names because when you say it wrong they can feel a little bit hurt inside. Always ask the person how to pronounce there name first and then you will know. I hope you take this korero and put it onto practice! Happy Samoan Language Week 🇼🇸

Maths - Coordinate Conundrums

WALT:  identify coordinates and use grid references to give directions



Task Description: For maths, I decided to finish off last weeks work before I move on this this weeks. The topic for last weeks maths is Coordinate Conundrums. In our presentations we are given different levels to work on. I decided to work on the 1st level because i'm not really confident in this type of maths. We worked on a treasure map and tried to locate where a certain place was using coordinates. We also had a extra question about the treasure map.

What is Longitude and Latitude?

This is a little activity we were instructed to do. Not many people know a lot about Longitude and Latitude so if that's you this is for you. Using my knowledge I wrote down what I knew about the two and what it would be around the world. This is what I have done and this is also an image of the longitude and latitude of PES :)

I like your Latitude!

WALT: Use compass directions to describe location.

Today, Room 4 kicked off the day with inquiry. If you read my previous blog-post then you know what our current theme is for this term which is I Like Your Latitude. Anyways, Mrs Stone gave us a task to answer different questions about New Zealand using our knowledge about Latitude and Longitude. If you click the blue icon then you can see my answers to each question. Enjoy and I hope you learn more about New Zealand.

Maths ~ Mean, Median, Mode and Range

Today for maths, I decided to attend a workshop just so I can get a better understanding of our maths topic for this week. Today I learnt about Mean, Median Mode and Range as you can see above this picture of my working our above. I our workshop Mrs Stone gave a full explanation about each word and I observed it by writing it down on my maths book. One of the words I was most interested in was Mode and Range. I learnt that teachers use Range a lot in teaching when it comes to looking at what level his/her's students currently at. Mode is when one number always comes up multiple times. Well, this is what I have learnt so far and I might blog more about this throughout the week :)