Is Technology Good or Bad?

Today I asked Team 8 to reflect on what they have learned about technology. I asked them if they thought technology was good or bad. Here is a short video I took of some of the children sharing their thoughts...

Please leave us a comment with a question you think could help us to better understand the implications (good and bad) that technology brings to the world? We will answer them with a reply. 

Little Gardens

Did you hear?
The wonderful Arya's Mummy scored us a whole bunch of the New World Little Garden seedlings! Woo hoo!

Last week, we shared them out between the Junior School classes and still managed to have a whole heap left for us to plant so, on Friday, we invited our buddy class, Room 14 to help us. 

The teachers didn't help us, we had to read the instructions with our buddies. We hope that they grow!

We still have some more that we will plant next week. Keep your eyes peeled if any of them have germinated when you get to school Tuesday.

Here are some pictures of us working with our buddies...

Our Favourite Stories and Drop everything and Read (D.E.A.R.)

Here are some of Team 8's favourite Stories.  We have really enjoyed listening and sharing our favourite stories this week!  Thank you to all for bringing your books in.

As part of Literacy week we had a Drop Everything and Read time.  A Bing Bong went over the speaker and we had to stop everything and read any book.  Team 8 loved it so much Mrs Grant had to stop us after 15mins to get ready for lunch.

Team 8 has loved Literacy week!!!!!!

Want to Design an Aeroplane?

With our second round of Genius Hour fast approaching, it was great timing last Thursday when Mrs Crowhurst invited an aviation engineer to talk to us.

The engineer worked for Boeing. She showed us heaps of pictures of all the aeroplanes that she had helped to design - Now we all want to go to university to study 'mechanical engineering'!

Afterwards we had a go at designing our very own paper aeroplanes. We learned that for the paper version, bigger wings were better. Some of us even added 'flaps' which we insist helped them to stay in the air longer.

Maybe some of us will take this 'passion' and develop it further in our next genius time?

Indian Culture

Did you know that Nayla's ancestors come from India and that her mum was born in Fiji? Well, on Friday we were lucky enough to have her (Nayla's mum Sanjana), come in to tell us all about it. 

She was born in Fiji and came to New Zealand as a young girl.  She told us that to say hello in Fijian we say "Bula" and to say thank you we say "Vinaka"

She shared with us the traditional Indian costumes that Nayla and her brother wear for special occasions. We were even allowed to try them on if we wanted to. They were very colourful and had lots of jewel-like details on them.  I liked Sanjana's pink sari the best, it was very soft and sparkly.

She also brought in some henna and drew patterns on our skin. It took a little while to dry, and some of them got smudged but we still enjoyed getting our "tattoos". Traditionally henna is used for weddings and special occasions. My pattern is still on my hand, is your's still there?

Thank you sooooo much Sanjana for coming in. I hope you didn't get too far behind with your work?

We learned SO much and really appreciate you taking the time out. We are continuing our learning about Indian culture this week so hopefully we will have some cool art to show you at the end of it.

x

Sri Lanka

On Thursday Sayuni's Daddy came in for a visit. 

He showed us a powerpoint and answered all our questions about Sri Lanka. 

We are very lucky to have two people in our class who come from Sri Lanka; Sayuni and Anoji.

This is them in their traditional dress

Did you know that there are 3 different languages in Sri Lanka (Sinhala, Tamil and English)? Sayuni and her family speak Sinhala and Anoji and his family speak Tamil.

Here is Sayuni's Dad holding the Sinhala alphabet

He told us, that to greet other people in Sinhala, we need place our hands together, bow and say "Ayubowan"

Sayuni's mummy came for a visit too, she made us kokis to try. She had made them in the shape of Sri Lanka. They were sweet and crunchy.

Anoji's mummy also joined the party and brought us some Kesari to taste. It was yellow and was also nice and sweet. 

Here we are eating all our traditional Sri Lankan sweets (lot's of us went back for seconds ;-)

Thank you so much mummy's they would have taken AGES to cook and they were soooo delicious!

To finish it all, On Friday we talked about all the things we had learned. Here is our wall display that we made together. Can you remember what the Sri Lankan native bird in the picture is called?

Thank you so much to Sayuni and Anoji's families for coming in and sharing your culture with us. I say it all the time, but Team 8 is so very lucky to have such a supportive whanau like you.

x