Hōpara 2021

Kia ora e te whānau  This week we have been digging deep into core learning. A huge majority of our class have been creating geometrical art, with the focus being reflection, rotation and enlargement. Below you will see some of their amazing designs! A number of students are in the process of creating a "decodable book", their challenge has been to include as many "r-controlled" vowels as possible - We look forward to seeing their final versions being complete in the coming weeks.  Learning conferences:  Over the coming weeks we will begin to prepare your children for these meetings, we look forward to sharing their successes so far this year. Please see times and days in the calendar below. Please see our karakia attached, we will begin our learning conferences with this.  Playing on the field: The field  has been out of bounds and may continue next week if the field is too wet.  House of Bricks  The House of Bricks team will be here in the MPF next Friday, the 2nd

Kia ora e te whānau  Well week 7 has just flown by! Firstly, we thank the children of Hōpara for coping whilst Mr B has been away sick and while Ashley was having eye surgery. Let's hope next week is a bit more settled! This week we had our second round of our inquiry rotation, we are absolutely loving the learning and pondering questions that are coming from these sessions. Learning conferences: Over the coming weeks we will begin to prepare your children for these meetings, we look forward to sharing their successes so far this year. Please see times and days in the calendar below.  P4C : A few weeks ago we read the book "The Barnabus Project" -  In a world built for Perfect Pets, Barnabus is a Failed Project, half mouse, half elephant, kept out of sight until his dreams of freedom lead him and his misfit friends on a perilous adventure.   From this book we discussed the key concepts/themes. We then designed our own "perfect pet", these pets had to incorporat

Kia ora e te whanau!  Rocket Launching Week 6: This week the focus was testing prototypes. For most groups the 'Goldilocks' measurements were 60PSI and 150ml of water, but we were still testing that out. All groups were designing bottle noses and fins so the bottles were more aerodynamic and had a smoother flight path. Sometimes pumping up the pressure was very hard, and at times we had to employ a rocket retrieval team! Our next steps are continuing to refine designs and some groups can start to experiment with parachutes to slow down the descent. Assessment:  This week as a team we really wanted to capture snapshots of assessment in numeracy and literacy to see progress over the last 5 weeks. Nick and myself were really impressed with the results of these two snapshots and we look forward to sharing this data with you at learning conferences.  Learning Journals: Today you should have received a notification for the next learning journal. Please take the time to look through t

  Kia ora e te whānau In Week 5 we started working on the Wonder Project Rocket Challenge. We began looking at the roles people working with rockets have like mechanical engineers and physicists. In groups, we started the launches by looking at two different variables: water volume and air pressure (PSI). The goal of the investigation was to find the sweet spot for the ideal pressure and water volume. The launches were exciting and sometimes the bottles flew in unpredictable ways! The groups were great at taking on their launch roles (timer, launcher, safety officer) to make sure we all kept safe. Out next steps are making the rockets more aerodynamic with noses and fins. Aside from making bottle rockets we also dug into our morning core learning which will be continuing next week, and some students had there our first look at google workspace. Everyone will be diving deeper into google workspace this week as we hope it will help streamline some processes.   COMING UP in  TERM 2 -  WEE