So Many Concept Activities!

Over the last few days the students enjoyed a range of activities based around dinosaurs, deep sea, space and volcanoes. The idea is to spark curiosity and help us create questions to inquire into. There is literally too many to list but here are a few photographed below. 

The students visited a website and sketched some crazy looking deep sea creatures. They then added the creature to the zone it belonged to. 

During this activity the students were moving coloured water with sand in jars to help them understand how the sea works. 

Students added their questions about dinosaurs to a dinosaur and are now painting it. 

We are taking a scientific approach to our learning and we have identified the skills of a scientist. Luckily, we found a scientist to draw around to help us display the skills.

We are trying different science experiments to help us understand things. We are also practicing our scientific skills. We observed what happened when we mixed bicarbonate soda and vinegar to create a reaction and recreate a volcano erupting.

Concept Groups - Deep Sea, Space, Volcanoes and Dinosaurs

Pounamu have split into groups to explore 'Undiscovered.' The students decided on four areas they were particularly interested in and have created lots of questions they want to answer. 

As scientists, we have begun to explore some of these questions. As you can see, there is a wide range of approaches to each area of study. The 'dinosaur' group spoke to T-Rex for some of their answers and the volcanoes group went off to discover more about the 'eruption cloud.' They couldn't believe how many volcanoes there were in the North Island and how devastating the ash cloud can be. The deep sea group were exploring the different types of oceans and the space group were outside getting a sense of scale of the Solar System. There was an incredible amount of learning going on! :) I wonder where this will take us?

The Amazing Astro-Physicist Squad

During concept time the AAPSs (Amazing Astro-Physicist Squad) were learning about planets in our Solar System. They set themselves up to represent all the planets and how far away from the sun they orbit. The sun was the gate at the far corner of the field and Neptune was on the hill by the sports shed.

We then explored the impact gravity has on us by rolling down the hill!

And then we made are our arms "weightless."

Finally, we used our Sequencing skills and sequenced the planets by distance from the sun, temperature, length of a day and size.

During concept time we tinkered to find out what we wanted to explore in more detail.

Celebration with Lights, Messages and Sculptures

Pounamu wanted to say a huge thank you for all your support during our celebration of our student's amazing work about the brain. It was so wonderful to see so many parents enjoying their awesome sculptures. 

We are particularly proud of the diversity of ideas on show. The students spent a long time learning about the brain and how they could create the best sculpture to share their message. We gave the students the opportunity to create their sculpture in the way they wanted and we think the wide variety of models proved that. Some students even learnt how to use Google Docs so they could create their own message boards - now that's ownership!

A fantastic effort from all students and there was a lot of fun on the way! :)

Luma

This is the video made by Alfie, Ollie and Phoenix that was in the brain box at Luma. Here are some other photos;