Marine Reserves Action Projects - Presentations

We were lucky to have Samara Nicholas come to listen to the presentations for the marine reserves action projects. She was very impressed with the calibre and variety of presentations.

Congratulations go to Addison, who won the main prize of a trip to the Poor Knights for her i-movie virtual tour of Northland marine Reserves.
Kayla received a highly commended award for her sculpture of a fish that she made with materials collected from the environment.

 Aylee and Aria present their artwork

 Anika Bella and Eunice presented information about threats to sea turtles

 Addie and her winning i-movie

Our Schoolkit work

Pod 2 have been working on activities provided by the "Schoolkit" organisation. 

We learnt about metaphors and wrote some of our own. We also studied a poem written by Iain Sharp, and used the structure to help us write our own poem.

Pod 2’s Iain Sharp Poem

Pod 2 is a giant bundle of enthusiasm,

wrapped in a tight rainbow of elastic bands.

Pod 2 is a flying fish, dancing across the surface 

when all the other sea life is asleep.

Pod 2 is a lake, reflecting the world and

 growing larger with the constant trickle of ideas.

Whenever we peep in mirrors, Pod 2 smiles gleefully back.

It’s encouraging.

Pod 2 is a double-decker bus, driving smoothly along the journey to success, and a bulldozer, pushing through work that needs to be done.

Pod 2 is a potato, ready to peel out information.

Pod 2 is an ocean, full of deep ideas.

Look there, and there!

Bits of rainbow confetti blowing from child to child.

I skip after them in delight, with arms wide open.

They might be Pod 2.

Our individual postcards, along with our poem and poster have been collected by the courier, and are on their way to Rotokawa School, in Rotorua.

We are looking forward to receiving our package from our buddy class, and learning all about them, too.

Samara's Visit

Last Friday, Samara Nicholas visited the senior syndicate and showed us her presentation on her recent trip to The Kermadecs with the NZ Navy.

Samara accompanied a group of young people who were chosen as part of the Sir Peter Blake trust.
They enjoyed diving, snorkellng and observing the different marine life and biodiversity in the area.

We have been busy working on our "Action Projects" as part of our follow-up to the Reotahi Marine Reserve.

We found Samara's presentation interesting and informative.

We used Samara's presentation to help us recall our experiences and ideas from the Reotahi trip.
We're using these as a basis for our writing blast for term one: a Memoir or "Moment in Time" piece of writing. 
We worked together a a syndicate to write our initial plans, draft our first copy and also to discuss how to re-craft and edit our work to correct errors and to make it even more interesting for the reader.

Swimming Sports

Our swimming sessions have now finished for this term. As we swim first thing in the morning, the water has become very cold.
These members of Pod 2 represented Hurupaki School at the Whangarei schools swimming sports at Whangarei Intermediate, last week.

Congratulations, Ashton, Kaja, Alyssa, Kadin and Angelina.

Experiencing Marine Reserves

We are looking forward to our visit to Reotahi Marine Reserve on Wednesday 28 February.
All children should have brought a letter detailing our visit, along with a permission slip, that now needs to be returned to school.

Jordan, from the EMR programme visited us on Tuesday and took a session with the children in the classroom, followed by one in the pool, teaching them how to correctly use their snorkels and flippers. The children all enjoyed the experience.

Introducing the First Learner Quality : Resilience

Along with our work on "The Learning Pit", "Key Competencies" and the Hurupaki School Values, we are now introducing the "Learner Qualities". These are the capabilities that will help the children to cope when faced with situations of challenge in their learning, or other areas of their lives.

Pod 2 discussed this and have made a Y-Chart on our classroom wall, of what showing resilience looks, sounds and feels like.

We wrote some memoirs of times when we used resilience, and shared some of them at our first assembly of the year. We also had a team who presented a great skit demonstrating different ways in which people have showed resilience in difficult situations.

Devron, James and Aylee sharing their experiences of resilience.

Drama skit about resilience.

Look out for some of our stories featuring resilience.

Our Learning Environment:

We have been establishing expectations for our learning environment. We discussed the different areas that are required for working and decided on the behaviour that is expected for each area.

The class first brainstormed, then voted on the names for the areas.

Some of suggestions were very creative!

Our areas are:

The Station: we are all on different learning journeys and the station is a stopping off point where we gain directions for the next part of our journey.

The Whanau Space: Where we complete the attendance register, share ideas and have workshop sessions for different groups.

Greenwater Hut: where people who want a quiet space may go to work.

Buddy Bach A space for buddies to work, giving peer feedback, buddy reading, discussing work together.

                                                     Green Water  Hut

                                           Collaborating in the Whanau Space

Welcome to Pod 2 2018

Welcome to Pod 2    2018

We are all ready and excited! We're looking forward to a great year ahead, and seeing our year 5 and 6 students becoming even more skilled at driving their own learning and becoming true examples of reflective and self-managing individuals..

Mr Nicholas has been busy organising our new environment and we're looking forward to input from the students as to how the different learning areas can be best utilised for a range of learning activities. Giving the students greater autonomy and responsibility for decisions affecting their learning and relationships is one of our big goals for the year.