Year 6 Trip to Spark Arena!

Do you guys know who Suzy Cato is? Remember Suzy's World? Well she and Brendan Hines (the CEO of Spark Arena) decided to invite some Year 6's from various schools to Spark Arena for a most amazing experience!

First the teachers had to get a selfie with Suzy 😀

The first experience was...THE HAPPY PLACE. You might have heard of it, it's an awesome experience full of sensory rooms that made us, well....happy! The first was the ball pit. We all jumped in, including the teachers. It was very deep and hard to climb out of. We almost lost Faith, Nijel and Ms Sands! There were other crazy rooms like the chain and mirrors room, the sunflower room, the upside down room, and a globe that had confetti flying around. Here are some photos.

Next we went to The Sounds Fun Experience. This was in The Tuning Fork (where they had just had the NZ Childrens Music Awards). We were taught how to play trumpets, trombones, electric drums and more. We also learned from a recording studio manager (Barnaby) how to use a loop machine to create music with lots of instrument, beats and even our voices.

Lastly we went to the amazing Van Gogh Experience. This was a walk through digital multi-sensory exhibit of Van Gogh's paintings. The exhibit followed the different styles, influences and subjects he painted in his lifetime, along with the story of his life. It was incredible to see these paintings come alive with digital enhancements accompanied by classical music.

Not only did we get to see and experience all of this, but we even got provided with a yummy packed lunch at the end! How lucky were we!!!!

We are very grateful to all of those who made this happen. What an incredible experience. Tino ataahua.

Taha Tinana - Physical Wellbeing in Te Waka Ako

 Our Inquiry this year is Taha Tinana which is Physical Wellbeing.  

We have been looking at, thinking about and working on the many different ways we move, and how movement is important for our health and wellbeing. This term we have started using a Training Diary kindly gifted to us by the Warriors. In it we are looking at what is important when we train for sports. There are set up in blocks of weeks and each day students need to fill in a day of what they will do or what they have done. For example the first block is about Team Mates. In those weeks the students have to write a positive comment that they will say to one person each day. In the second block they need to record how many hours of sleep they got the night before. 

Areas of fitness

Another part of the diary is recording their fitness. They are tested on the 4 exercises in the photo and record their results. This will be repeated every 3 weeks, to see if they can log improvements. To help build fitness so improvements can happen, we had all students create a 15min fitness plan for themselves. They need to complete this set of exercises each day during our Kai Hauora session at 10am. This is fitness and fruit break.  An example of a digital fitness plan that students have to create is included. 

Daiki's Fitness plan

4 exercise test

They will stay with this plan for 2-3 weeks then update it with either more exercises or new exercises, depending on how well they are finishing it each time. All students had to have a running component at the beginning. Then they could choose any 9 other exercises. Many students chose skipping or hula hoops and the equipment is available each day.  

  

A Day in the Trenches - Anzac Day in the classroom

Little did the students know when they arrived at school on Wednesday, that they were about to be brought to their knees...literally. 

We teachers had transformed Te Waka Ako (our learning space) into an 'Under the Wires' no man's land. We had strung 34 wires (coloured wool) in an interwoven web about 1m off the ground. Each wire was wound around furniture and over obstacles. 

Students were asked to crawl under the wires holding only their Art book, a pen, ruler and a pencil. The day in the trenches had begun. While gunfire and mortar shells were played over a UE Boom, they started their day heads bent, trying to complete a basic facts test....with mixed results!

The teachers were dressed in black with army face paint and armed with nerf guns. Students were warned that if they poked their heads above the wires...they would be shot! This helped to get the creative juices flowing for some very descriptive writing. Fruit break was held under the wires, as was our fitness time...very restrictive planks and stretches.

Throughout the rest of the day the soldiers were released for swimming time (in torrential rain...appropriate) and then a lunch break, where they could stretch their legs. They returned to the trenches for a Gallipoli timeline picture dictation activity and each teacher read an ANZAC story out loud. 

At the end of the day the students crawled into pairs. One student was blindfolded and handed the end of one wire on a popsicle stick. The other partner was then given the task of leading their wounded comrade out of the trenches by following the wire to the end.

After a fantastic day of Anzac activities the students were very happy to get to their feet again (as were the teachers). Please visit their blogs to get their perspective of the day, read some incredible descriptive writing, about their thoughts and feelings of their day in the trenches.

  

Movement Art

 For one of our Visual Art activities we decided to mix together our learning about colour and physical activity. In our colour learning we looked at Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colour wheels. Then we looked at warm and cool colours and created landscapes with the land in warm colours and the sky in cool colours. In our Inquiry we have been looking at Taha Tinana - Physical Wellbeing. This term we focused on different sports and activities that include movement. So we are creating drawings of movement with colour radiating out from hot to really cool. 

First we took photos of people making different movements. Then we drew them in our art books. We had to choose one figure and draw it as a silhouette on a sheet of paper, then draw 8-10 lines around the figure until we reached the end of the page. The figure we are filling in black with vivid, the radiating lines are colour pencil from yellow out to black again. This process is not finished. More photos will be added next week as we complete our art pieces.