jackson's immersion week.

Day 1 Monday

Everyone had just got back from holiday and was still full of excitement, they walked into the classroom but there was a huge makeshift wall in the middle of the classroom with the words CAUTION and WORK IN PROGRESS on it. The kids couldn’t see through the wall and weren’t allowed to peep. Everyone including Miss Signal wanted to look.  They carried on with their work for the day which was designing a new classroom layout. All through the day there were strange alien like beeps and bops coming from behind the wall the kids had been promised they could open the (wall) on Tuesday.

Day 2 Tuesday

On tuesday morning everyone was very excited thinking that they could open up the (wall). But they couldn’t. One of the other interesting things was there was a flour trail going from the friendship garden to the wall and the noises had stopped. In the middle block the classroom received a note. Telling them that they were finally allowed to open the (wall) and look inside and that the mysterious workers had been sciencetechnologists and that there were four bags in the area in between the classrooms. Miss Signal went in first and then let in the rest of us there was the four bags so everyone sat down and got ready for the first bag opening. Inside the first bag was two bottles of white vinegar, a stack of tissue paper, two jars of baking soda, ziplock bags and a set of instructions. It was an activity they went outside because it said further down in the instructions it would explode! So they went outside and started. The instructions said to get a piece of tissue paper and put a tablespoon of baking soda on it then to fold it up to make a tablet. Then to fill a ziplock bag about one third of it’s size then carefully put the baking soda tablet into the bag yet holding it above the vinegar then zip the bag closed and drop the tablet into the vinegar then shake the bag and throw it then step back.

Day 3 Wednesday

On wednesday people were excited to open bag number 2. Inside the bag was stacks of paper scissors  tape and instructions. Each group got 3 pieces of paper,30cm of tape and scissors. The challenge was to make a bag that can carry the most weight my group got to 310 grams i think.The max that a bag made by kids reached was 990 grams i think.

     

day 4 Thursday

On thursday everyone was very excited to open the third bag inside the bag was jar and a note. The note said to send someone to the office to get something he something was two bunches of celery. And another note. Kids had to go to a different class and get some more supplies. Jars and a set of instructions.Kids had to get jars food colouring of their choice and celery then put water in the jar with 3-5 drops of food colouring then break the celery to the right length and put it in the jar. The next challenge for the day was to make a boat to get a cabbage patch doll (mini miss williams) across a small water tub. The materials they had was paper, hot glue, polystyrene and other materials like corks.

day 5 Friday.

It was friday everyone was ecstatic for the final bag inside was plastic bags, string and toys the challenge was to build a mini parchute for the toys who ever had the best parachute that took longest to crash to the ground won. Each parachute was made in a group of two each group sent one person up into anawhata to drop the parachute 5 groups would go at a time eventually both people from five groups went up to compete in the finals.

Shreeyal pop challenge

Instruction for the pop challenge

 What you need:
 Snaplock bag
 Baking soda
 White-vinegar
 Tissue paper

 Step 1:
 Find a buddy.


 Step 2:
 Open the snaplock bag, grab the vinegar and fill it up a quarter of the way then zip it up.

 Step 3:
 Grab the tissue paper and baking-soda, put the baking-soda in the middle of the tissue paper and fold it up.

 Step 4:
 Open the snaplock bag and put the baking soda ball in the bag, you need a buddy for this step, make sure you don’t drop the baking soda in the vinegar.

 Step 5:

 Get your buddy to zip up the snaplock bag. * When you are ready you can do the next step.

 Step 6:

 Drop the baking-soda into the vinegar, shake it, drop it on the ground, stand back and it will pop. There is the pop experiment

 By Shreeyal Rm12

Being a Zoologist

IMMERSION WEEK BY DOM AND BRENDAN

Inferencing - For the Birds

Today we practiced our inferencing skills when we watched this video 'For the Birds'

Immersion Day 1

WOW!

What a day!

Today we were SO excited about being able to see in the space that has been closed, but we arrived... and it was STILL closed!! The strange thing was there was flour from underneath the door all the way out and into the garden.  Plus there were footprints! Well... we think they were footprints!

We did some measuring, investigating and check out shoe prints!  Some of us thought it was Mr Iain - but he came to visit us and said it wasn't him!

So the mystery continued.

Until Vicki from the office came running in with a letter for Room 11 & 12 marked 'Special Delivery'.  Miss Williams gave William the special honour of opening the letter and reading it to us.  It was from the 'Scientechnologists' and they had left us 4 bags to say thanks.  We couldn't find the bags when Miss Signal got a call from Mr Giles saying that the area was clear for us to enter.  Miss Signal risked arms and legs to check the area was safe for us before we entered - thanks Miss Signal!

When we got inside the lab area we discovered all sorts of interesting things!  Plus we found the 4 bags.  We were able to open Bag 1 today and it contained a science experiment that we learnt was a chemical reaction with vinegar and baking soda.  Check out the video below!

Here's some more photos from our first day of Immersion learning 

in our big idea of 'Filling the Bucket'.

Immersion Day 1

Thinking Like Architects

Today we had a challenge... it was to think like an architect, a builder, an interior designer! We had to learn about measuring items and then using a scale create a model that was 1 tenth of the size of the original.  In our learning today we had lots of opportunities to either jump into our learning pit or cruise our way across the easy way.  Miss Signal was impressed to see many of us jump down into the learning pit, feel nervous and climb our way out the other side with huge smiles on our faces and new knowledge and ideas! Tino pai rawa atu Tumeke 12 - Excellent Tumeke 12!

It was a VERY busy day and we all learnt a lot of new skills - some mathematical, some social!

Here's the outline of the day... We learnt...
1. About scales, who uses them and why they are important.
2. What an estimate means and how it means to take an 'educated guess' - you can't just give any number, you need to use your knowledge to inform your guess.
3. Using a ruler and a tape measure - where to start measuring from and what cm and mm means!
4. To create a scale model of the classroom using the scale 1m = 10cm or 1:10.  We had to measure doorways, windows, walls and more.
5. How to create a brief for our client (Miss Signal and Room 12) - we had to think about design considerations such as: movement, learning styles, teaching space, doorways, safety etc
6. How to measured furniture and using the same scale created pieces of furniture from a birds eye view (looking down from above).  Also about how architects use the same symbols and create symbols to represent different pieces of furniture.
7. That we need to arrange our furniture in a suitable way that we liked, as the designer, but that also met the design brief (otherwise we might not get paid!)

At the end of the day one person stayed at the plan and our clients came around to visit us and question us about our plan.  Some of us looked very nervous at this stage!  We haven't quite finished and need more time to complete our plans. 

The winning plan will be used for our real classroom layout this term!

Check out some images from today:


Thinking Like Architects