All about Mohamad, Gabriel, Norman & Tania

Kia ora bloggers,

Today our experienced senior students have been teaching our new students and learners in Year 3 how to use google drawing.

Mohamad from Room 9 worked with Mohit from Room 6. Mohamad was the student, and Mohit was the teacher. Here is the drawing that Mohamad created.

Gabriel worked with Miraj (also from Room 8). Miraj was the teacher and Gabriel was the student. Here is Gabriel's completed drawing.

Norman worked with his expert buddy Rigg. Below is his google drawing.




Tania worked with Nevaeh to create a very colourful drawing about herself.

There was lots of different skills involved with creating these google drawings, but our experts did a great job at teaching and not taking over! They have to be very patient and understanding!!

 What is your favourite google drawing feature?

Chinese Language Week

Ni hao bloggers,

Did you know this week is Chinese Language Week? As you know, we have been really busy with production, so today we did a little bit of learning about The Great Wall of China! We even got to explore some of the wall using goggle maps.

Mohamad learnt that there are lots of people in China. He also learnt that people built the wall, not expensive machines.

Tania learnt The Great Wall of China is very long.

Litia learnt that The Great Wall of China is in China.

Gabriel learnt The Great Wall of China was built more than 2000 years ago, and that you can't see it from the moon. People struggled to build it because they made it big and strong.


Gabriel would now like to know if someone tried to break through it, what would happen?
Gabriel is also wondering how many people can fit on The Great Wall of China.

Miss Percy would like to know what it is built from and how do they keep it together?

Conservation Week

This week across NZ it is Conservation Week. Conservation is about ensuring that our natural environment and the native flora and fauna are protected and looked after.

Conservation Week is run by DOC (The Department of Conservation) each year to encourage people to get involved in nature and help to take care of it.

Watch this video to find out more!

Comment below on what you actions you already take to help persevere our native species.

What actions could you take in the future?

Pepeha Challenge

This week is te wiki o te reo Māori. 

We were inspired by this pepeha challenge and have been working hard to learn our own pepeha.

   

 Stay tuned to find out how we went with the pepeha challenge!

te reo Māori Memory!

Last term Papa Jarrod taught us about the days, months and seasons in te reo Māori.

To help us revise what we learnt, we played a game of memory. This game requires lots of concentration, so was a real work out for some of our brains!

Holiday Emoji Recounts!

Kia Ora Bloggers,

It's Day One of Term 3, and today we wrote about our holidays... We started by choosing one event and retelling a buddy what happened using this talking strip.

Then we wrote about our holiday event using emojis. We had to be quiet careful about the emojis that we used so the meaning of our message could still be understood and that our recounts made sense for our audience.

Here is Miss Percy's one. Can you decipher it?

The day after we moved into our new 🏠, we had no 🔌, so Mathew and I went out for breakfast. We drove down the road to a nearby cafe. I was still really 😴, so we ordered ☕ before we even looked at the menu. There were lots of 😋 options, but the one that caught my 👁️ was the crumpets with 🍫 and 🍦! Dessert for breakfast! How could I say 🙅? It was a delicious breakfast, but the best part was the fact that I didn’t have to cook it or wash any dishes! I felt super satisfied, but still wondered if our power would be fixed once we returned 🏠. 

Let's Learn about Somalia & Africa!

Kia ora, Talofa lava, Namaste, Malo lelei, Bula Vinaka and As-salamu alaykum! 

Today we celebrated the diverse cultures that we make up our Hay Park Community!

Did you know that there are over 10 different cultures that students our Harris Class identify with. We listed all the cultures, then voted on which one we wanted to learn more about, and the winner was... AFRICA! 

Faisa in her traditional dress, with her friends Eva & Valerie.

Faisa and her family are from Somalia (which is a country in Africa), so we dived into reading and finding out more her culture. We compared some of the similarities and differences between New Zealand and Somalia and collaborated together to create this slideshow.  

 

We also learnt a dance from Ghana, called Bala, Pata, Zoom which we opened our cultural day assembly with. You can check out our performance in the video below. The words are pretty easy, but combined with the actions and at speed it is pretty challenging - especially making sure everyone keeps in time with the rhythm!

What culture do you identify with, and how do you say hello? Leave us a comment below! 

Mana Performance

Kia Ora Bloggers,

Today we had a very talented performance by Bernard Mangakahia. It was called MANA: The Spirit of Polynesia. Bernard explained to us about the triangle of Polynesia. The islands that are in the triangle form Polynesia. Some of the islands that are in Polynesia include Samoa, Hawaii and Tonga.

Bernard performed some Polynesian dances for us including the hoop dance, poi dance and haka.

The hoop dance was the most interesting because it was done with hoops. Bernard was able to transform the hoops into animals really quickly! Watch the video below to see what animals Bernard created with the hoops.

Bernard then talked about how each hoop represented a challenge. He told us that when we overcome a challenge, we get stronger.

He then performed a poi dance and asked for volunteers. Malia and Valerie were chosen from our class to demonstrate the poi. Here is a video of them in action!

NZSL - Can you sign your name?

Hello fellow bloggers!

This week was New Zealand Sign Language Week. Did you know that sign language is an offical language in New Zealand alongside te reo Maori and English?

We learnt how to greet someone and how to sign our names. Watch this video to see if you can work out how to sign each letter.

If you can, we'd love to see you record yourselves and send us the link! You can click here to learn more!

#GetNZWriting

Hi Blogging World!

This week we've been learning how to write similes and metaphors as part of Warehouse Stationery's #GetNZWriting Challenge!

We've been really motivated to write metaphors about ourselves, and we even wrote one about our own class!!


Here is the Harris Class Poem that we wrote collaboratively!

The Harris Class Poem

Harris Class is a unique lamborghini, who
speed through their work with perfection.

Harris Class is a Christmas tree, decorated
with bright stars who shine in the dark.

Harris Class is a Cultural Day Celebration,
respecting each other’s cultures and sharing
who we are and where we are from.

Harris Class is an egg sandwich, hatching a
new idea every day.

Harris Class is a tidy, exquisite dress that
goes with the flow.

 Here is our finished product. We can't wait to receive our package from another school!

Measuring Heights!

How tall are you?

Harris Class have been learning to measure their heights accurately. We found it was pretty tricky, and we now know how important it is to make sure you are using the correct units to measure!

Check out some of our action shots!

Who is the tallest person in your class? How tall are they? Who is the shortest person in your class? What is the average height of people in your class?

Summer Learning Journey

Congratulations to Vitaraag who participated in the Summer Learning Journey over the 2017/18 Summer Holidays. For his efforts, Vitaraag received a certificate and some slime!

Vitaraag's literacy skills also improved as a result of him participating in the programme. What a great way to continue learning over the school holidays and develop his self management skills. Keep up the awesome effort Vitaraag!

Out of the Box Day!

Some very excited Year 4's and 5's received their own chrome books today! Check back soon to see how they're going learning in a digital class!

Mercia unwraps her new chromebook!

Eva being very cautious when removing her chromebook from its packaging.

Faisa is pretty stoked to finally have her own device!

Brent is checking that he has all the parts.

Aaron testing out his new chromebook!

Daily 5 - Read to Someone

In Harris Class, one of our Daily 5 reading activities is Reading to Someone. When we read to someone we sit EEKK which means: Elbow to Elbow and Knee to Knee.

Here are some photos of us learning how to do this activity independently. Can you spot who is sitting EEKK?

Veronica & Jemma

Mercia & Gaylene

Valerie & Aaron

Eshaan & Raad

Jamal & Terrence

Vitaraag & Aryan

Where did the time go?!

Woah! Where did the first 2 weeks of school go? We are already into Week 3, and no doubt the rest of the term will whizz by! 

At the end of last week, we all had to complete a one word summary to describe our first two weeks of school for the new year. 

Here are the words that Harris Class came up with:

What word would you use to describe your start to school this year?

Our class is growing!

Hi fellow bloggers!

Just a quick update to let you see all the fabulous faces that are in our class (our first pic of the year had quite a few students missing!)

📷  Photo credit: Miss Patel

How did we come to be Harris Class?

At Hay Park School, rather than room numbers, classes are named after NZ artists.

Our teacher (Miss Percy) found that there were sooooo many wonderful NZ artists, so she narrowed them down to 3. We examined work by the 3 artists, and created a PMI chart showing our thoughts about what we liked (positives), disliked (minuses) and what we found interesting.

  

We then voted for our favourite artist, and that's how we came be be HARRIS CLASS - named after Raewyn Harris.

Welcome to Harris Class!

Kia ora and welcome to our first blog post for 2018!

We are Harris Class and are a bright bunch of Year 4, 5 and 6 students at Hay Park School. Here's a photo of us on our very first day together!