Ōtautahi Pizza At The DigiAwards

We were so excited to be presented two awards for our Ōtautahi Pizza website at the Grow Waitaha DigiAwards. In previous posts, you can read a little about the project. But below is an article that Atarau, Milla and Arona wrote for our school newsletter. We had many successes from across our whole school. 

DigiAwards 2019

On Wednesday the 13th of November, the Grow Waitaha DigiAwards hosted an awards evening at St. Margaret's College for the finalists. Bromley School entered many different entries for many different categories. The categories were website, story telling (retelling original stories), coding, comercial, Te Reo, and an open category for any entries. Loads of schools in the Canterbury region entered with their unique creations. The awards were given by companies around Canterbury.

Everyone was greeted by Haeata’s Kapa Haka group and they did some waiata along with a Haka. There were over 700 people who attended. There were also many people from schools who were nominated. The prizes were things like advanced mechanic building sets, coding equipment and Chromebooks.

We are so excited that the overall runner up was Mrs Gardner’s class, Kakano 1. They won a Chromebook! They entered a video called Te Waka O Tamarēreti. The overall winner was a boy from Avonhead called Thomas. He entered a Battle Bots game he coded and created himself.

Bromley School won a number of different categories, which was awesome because it was our first time entering and we won so many awards. Below is a list of our winning entries.

Storytelling Winners (Bromley):
Year 0-2: Te Waka O Tamarēreti from Mrs Gardner's class, Kakano 1.
Year 3-4: The Nine Ika Of Matariki. From Mrs Hix and Mrs Togiaso’s class, Pitau 1.

Storytelling Runner Ups (Bromley)
Year 0-2: Skytins Vs Zombies. From Mrs Wixon and Miss Paterson’s class Kakano 2.

The Open Category Winners:
Year 0-2: The Brave Shadow. From Mrs Macintosh and Miss Newth’s class Kakano 3.

The Open Category Runner Up:
Year 3-4: A Special Place. From Mr Cron and Mrs Sung’s class in Pitau 2.

Website Winners:
Year 5-6: Ōtautahi Pizza. From Mr K’s literacy group in Koru 1.

There was also a special prize given to Ōtautahi Pizza which was a $750 voucher for PB Tech. This was given to them because one of the judges believed that the way we created it and designed it deserves an extra special award.

Throughout the night there was lots of cheering from Bromley. When they announced who was in 2nd, Bromley would start cheering because they noticed that Bromley won. There was lots of support and all the entries had lots of effort put into them. Bromley left St. Margaret’s happy and were even happier about the results.

Here is a link to the Grow Waitaha website for extra info, including the winning entries.
https://www.growwaitaha.co.nz/digiawards/

Ōtautahi Pizza Project - Part One

Mr K's literacy groups have begun a new project. We are creating a website that will contain recipes for pizzas we have made - all named after some of our favourite places in Christchurch.

We hope to enter the website into the Grow Waitaha DigiAwards, which has a theme this year of celebrating innovation in Ōtautahi. Our creation will be submitted in the website category.

To start with, we set up a Trello board that we could use to track parts of the project that we need to do, are currently doing, and have done. It has been a great tool to display where we are at daily. Some of the initial tasks we have been working on are researching different types of pizzas, finding out what pizzas people like, designing our own pizzas and investigating ingredients. We have also needed to carry out organisational tasks, like deciding on our groups and planning the purchase of ingredients.

In Term One we took part in the Food for Thought programme through the Heart Foundation. We learned a lot about healthy diets and lifestyles, and the facilitator left us with a $60 Pak n Save gift card to put on a healthy lunch. With that money, we decided it could be used to purchase the pizza ingredients, so teachers did not just put on a lunch, but we designed and made it ourselves.

We decided on the name 'Ōtautahi Pizza' for our website. Then Mr K created a design brief for us to create a logo for it. This was loads of fun and many of us made entries for the competition. Some of the requirements included the logos being professional looking, using appropriate colours and that they must be our own designs.

To choose a logo, Mr K set up a Google Form for us to vote on which design we liked best. Arona's design, with a red and black background was the one that most of us chose, although many of the others will be put on our website for viewing.
Here is Arona's chosen design:



The designing of our pizzas took two weeks. This included lots of group discussions, negotiating ideas, exploring different herbs and spices, and using the Pak n Save website to calculate prices. Many of us have also been using the Tayasui Sketches School app to draw our ideas to show what we are making visually. This is also the tool many of us used for our logo designs.



In groups, we made sure that all the ingredients came under $60 in total. Last night Mr K took our shopping lists to the supermarket and picked up the ingredients we asked for. Guess what? It came to $59.71! Nice work on our behalf to make the most of the gift card.

This morning we organised roles within our groups, like someone to construct the pizza base, someone to put on the toppings, a videographer, and a group manager. Everyone managed their roles so well and the morning was a real success. We were so proud of how the pizzas turned out and we are looking forward to constructing our website and sharing the recipes with you, including some other interesting site sections we are planning.

And yes, they tasted really good!

We would like to say a special thanks to Sheryl, who helped us create the pizza bases and prepare the toppings during organisation time.

How Well Do We Manage Our Time?

This morning Mr K's literacy groups worked out that we have about 1200 hours of school each year. It sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But we wonder how well we use this time.

We wrote about how we feel we having be doing with time management. This involved placing ourselves on a continuum, then explaining why we put ourselves there. When sharing, we praised those who were able to give evidence and explain specific times when they have or have not been managing their time well. This was a very reflective task.

In Koru 1, we have a lot of systems in place that help to encourage us in this area. These include having our own weekly planners, classroom jobs, regular routines like personal reading, and a number of independent learning tasks we need to manage our time and resource to complete each week.

We will continue our discussions and reflect on time management as the year progresses. It is an important skill to master and we certainly want to make the most of our learning time at school.

Statistical Investigation - Taking Action

Recently some of us carried out a statistical investigation with Mrs Harris. We went through the process of formulating questions, collecting data using a tally chart, presenting data on a bar graph and making some statements about our results. Here are some of our graphs:



Livy's question was “What emotion do you use most?” The results caught Mrs Harris' attention so we analysed the data as a class and we came up with these statements:

- Most children in our maths group feel happy, most of the time
- No one in our maths group feels scared most of the time
- Some people in our maths group feel sad, angry or lonely most of the time

This concerned us so we decided to take some action.
In small groups we created a brain storm of "Cheer Up Ideas".  After the brain storm we had a meaningful discussion about how treating others can have a huge impact on their day. Many of us talked about our school value caring and how we can use this value to support and encourage one another.

Our statistical investigations allowed us to learn a lot about the class including favourite fruits, movies and subjects at school.

Diving Deeper with Ms Nicholls

On Monday some of Koru 1 went to a special literacy session in the library with Ms Nicholls. We were diving deeper into the picture book "We're all Wonders".

Before Ms Nicholls read us the book she told us that for some of the tasks we would need to work together. She asked us the question "How will I know if you're working in a team?". Some of our responses were:

"Communicating to each other by talking to each other and explaining ideas" - Aiden
"Cooperating and sticking with an idea and trying to improve it" - Zeke
"Using good body language and good eye contact" - Archie

Next she read the book  to us and told us to look out for the powerful message in the story. She wanted us to think about the question "What makes you a wonder?" Here's what some of us thought:

"Everyone's different in their own way" - Te Wai
"We're all different and unique" - Jarius

Another question she gave us to think about was. "What's the difference between being unique and being a wonder, what makes you a wonder, think about it being like the word wonderful. What makes you wonderful"?

Then Ms Nicholls explained the different tasks to us. Each task provoked us to show why we are a wonder. We used digital technology and art. Here are some of our creations:

All About Me - Interest Projects

We are well underway with out first IPs of the year. Interest projects, also referred to with students as ‘IPs’, are independent or collaborative group projects that arise out of the structured class inquiries focussed around our core school themes. Interest projects are designed to be student-driven and teacher-guided. 

An interest project requires students to have a plan, keep others updated with our progress, and finally to share our learning to give and receive feedback from our peers.

The focus for this term is an All About Me project that each of us are working on. Mr K and Mrs Harris shared their finished projects with us several weeks ago, and since then we have been using IP workshop times to create our own. Some parts of the project have been really interesting to think about, like the meanings of our names or where our families come from. Here is what we are including...



IP workshop times have been a great chance for us to develop our self management skills, including being able to organise our own materials and setting up spaces for learning.

We will give another update when we are closer to sharing time, including some of our personal reflections.

The Effects Of Music Project

A group of students working with Mr K were doing some musical exploration yesterday. We made some nice links between our My Voice Is Powerful theme for this year, where we can explore the arts in our world as a way to express ourselves, as well as our key competency focus on Managing Self. In this area, we have been working on making thoughtful and responsible decisions. The day-long project was also an opportunity for us to learn a little about the science of musical instruments and how they create different sounds.

We began the day by doing a variation of the well known 'Take a line for a walk' art activity. We listened to Stayin' Alive by The Bee Gees and simply let our hand do what it wanted as it moved across the page during the song. As the music speed up, slowed down, changed pitch, etc, we made different movements with our markers.

We then chose 3 colours that we thought fit with the song. Mr K modelled how to blend the 3 colours underneath our lines, then we each completed our own piece. There is no right or wrong, we were simply wanting to show how we all hear and interpret music differently, which adds to our uniqueness.

Digital Portrait Project

Today Koru 1 had a project based learning day. Mrs Harris took a group of children who were creating a digital portrait.

First we played a game called the elaboration game. The purpose of this game was to take a closer look at some portrait examples. We learned about four different styles of portrait photography. For each one we created a list of what was needed to take a successful shot.



We enjoyed using our creativity to compose our own portraits. Some of us selected locations outside, while others set up a scene inside the classroom. We worked in pairs or small groups to capture a variety of photographs.



To add another dimension to our portrait collage we did some close up perspective sketching. We used the iPad to zoom in on our eye. This allowed us to look closer and create a more detailed sketch.



Next was the editing stage. We learned about cropping our photos and adding filters for effect. The final step was to add our photographs into a grid. For this, we used the iPad app, pic collage.



Everyones digital portrait shows all four portrait styles plus a close perspective pencil sketch. It was interesting observing everyones finished project. They all looked very unique and eye catching.

Next time you're near Koru 1, come on in to have a look.

The New Koru 1

Over the past week we have been enjoying getting to know the new Koru 1. When we say that, we mean both the people and the redeveloped classroom block we are now in. About half of our class were in Koru 1 last year, with our new Year 5s coming from a mixture of all of the 2018 Pītau team classes.

Something that we value a lot in Koru 1 is having a strong vision for the year. This is an essential agreement that sets out what we want our people and our learning environment to be like.

We spent time this week sharing our learning experiences at school and discussing our opinions about what should be in our vision. This was done through a group activity where we contributed ideas on what our ideal class should look like and sound like, as well as what we believe the role of the teachers should be.



Once collecting and sharing all of our ideas, we summarised them into the following vision.

We are really proud of our vision and we will be referring to it throughout the year.

A traditional whakatauki we have been thinking about this week is...
Whiria te tangata
Meaning: 'Weave the people together' - which we feel captures the essence of Koru 1 constructing our essential agreement.

Hauora Interest Projects - Part 2

This week we have been sharing our recent interest projects. It has been wonderful seeing our peers taking the stage, putting the focus on them and their learning. The main idea behind sharing our interest projects is to celebrate our efforts, identifying highlights, and giving and receiving valuable feedback in order to set new goals for ourselves.



Interest projects can be testing for students. We really need to show that we are developing important skills and attitudes in the areas of organisation and time management, as well as general research abilities. How we use the time that we are allocated in class for these projects, called IP workshops, is one of the areas of evaluation at the end of each interest project cycle. The end products are not the only important thing, the process is also significant.

Here are some student reactions and comments:

Jesse said "Sharing was good. When I saw others doing it, I was not as nervous. I really felt excited and wanted to go up. I feel pretty good about my next interest projects. I learned that I can get up in front of people and not have a big shock. Overall I feel proud of myself".

Quinn said that when sharing he "... Had a good feeling because I knew that others didn't know much about my topic, so I was providing them with personal information. I think next time I would practice my speech a bit more, but overall I think it was pretty good for my IP that I've done at school".

See our individual blogs for our IP evaluations and links to the media many of us created. The evaluation template we each completed is shown below. You can see the particular areas of focus for these projects.

Hauora Interest Projects

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

We are currently in the middle of individual interest projects (IPs) that relate to Hauora (health and wellbeing). This has been a significant focus for us this year and these projects are a chance for us each to dig deeper into a topic of interest within the wider theme. 

The aim of the project is to learn all about something that we know, or have heard, can affect the health and wellbeing of people, then share back our findings with our peers and teachers. One of the main goals here is to create a powerful forum for the students of Koru 1 to educate their peers about how they can improve their own hauora, while developing many of the independent inquiry skills that successful interest projects require. 

Our IPs have 3 rules that we must follow. 



Late last term we completed our plans and displayed them on our classroom walls. During our open evening, we were able to share these with our friends and whānau, getting their feedback and explaining how we would be approaching each of our projects.



This week we are reaching the 'putting it all together' phase, where we are beginning to write up our research findings. Some of us have been using Google Forms for the first time to create our own surveys. Especially as many of our topics of interested within our health and wellbeing theme affect us kids, we think we can get some valuable information from our peers about certain issues.



Next week we will be working on our presentations, which will come in many different forms, and we will be sharing these projects in Week 3. After presenting, we will be spending time reflecting on our projects, identifying our highlights and challenges, and finishing off our IP documentation.

Interest projects are not new for many Bromley students. Madison, who is in Year 6 and has completed 3 IPs before, has some insightful thoughts about them:
"I like interest projects because we get to find out about things we don't know. I get excited finding out new things. The researching is fun. I can get a bit nervous sharing, but once I start, I'm fine. You are really proud of yourself afterwards".

Keep an eye on our Twitter and blog for updates.

Good Luck To The Bromley Brains!

We are really excited to have our Year 5 team, the Bromley Brains, taking part in the Canterbury ePro8 semi finals this coming Thursday. This is an engineering competition, in which the team qualified by coming 4th out of 12 teams in the regional heats a couple of weeks ago. We also had another team, the Year 6 Bromley Coders, who performed admirably but unfortunately missed out on qualifying for the next round.

The Bromley Brains worked so well together and no doubt will have a fun, but intensely challenging time again this week.

We look forward to seeing how you go!

Siapo-Inspired Art In A Connected Classroom

Last week a group of us were exploring Samoan siapo art and spending some time creating our own siapo-inspired patterns. To develop our value of being connected, and showing the connection between us, we are working towards creating a collaborative art piece to display in our new classroom. All going to plan, we will be moving later this week.

We began the morning by watching a video of some Samoan villagers creating siapo, following a special process from start to finish. We make our thinking visible on a large whiteboard by completing a See - Think - Wonder routine. It was interesting discussing how the art can be respected by other cultures too, not just people of Samoan heritage.

Here is the video.

We decided on our process and how we would manage our time and materials. The desired outcome was for each of us to have four 10cm x 10cm coloured squares (everyone's would be different, but the four we each create would be the same). We would then all contribute these to a large collaborative piece that includes everyone's pieces.

Below are some photos of us working on this project. Check out our individual student blogs for personal learning reports of the day. We will share images of the collaborative piece once installed in our new room.

Special Visitors This Week

On Thursday this week we were very excited to have some special visitors to our school.

The government announced a new policy around putting mental health workers into a number of schools. More information can be found here.

The exciting part for us was that the Prime Minister held the press release from our school.

Our Kapa Haka group and two of our Ariki student leaders, Sheldon and Helena, greeted the PM. She then spoke to some of our teachers and parents about the benefits of the initiative.

Our Vision For 2018

We have recently been putting the final touches on our vision for the year. This is our essential agreement, which is the result of a lot of exploration and discussion over the past two weeks.

We began by sharing some of our experiences at school, and identifying what we know works and what doesn't for us to learn well at school. Things like noise level, classroom layout, and the role of the teacher were discussed, and it was fantastic to see most of us having strong opinions and ideas to confidently share.

Amazing Places - Planning This Term's Interest Projects

This term’s interest projects will be all about some of the many amazing places in our world. We have each chosen our own place to find out all about. It could be a landmark, a natural wonder, or a town or city that really interests us.

We have begun our IP process from there. To have some teacher support in our questioning, we have split into 3 project groups. There are based on what sort of place we have each chosen - landmarks, natural wonders, or towns/cities. Mr K and Mrs Harris met with us and we had some discussions in our groups about the shared driving questions we could agree on, and then we added some of our own driving questions we are curious about.

Take a look at this video we shared in assembly on Friday, which features some of us talking about creating our plans.

We can't wait to get into our IP workshops and learn all about these amazing places. Remember to keep an eye on our Twitter, personal blogs and class blog for updates.

The General Election - Having Our Say

Last Friday was the day for us to vote in the General Election. As we were taking part in the Electoral Commision's Kids Voting Programme, we cast a vote that let us see what it would be like to take part in the election. We used special ballot papers that looked nearly identical to the ones used for the General Election in our electorate, Christchurch East.

Our Goals Are Moving!

At the beginning of this term we each identified one skill goal and one attitude goals that we thought would help us in our learning. These big goals have helped us to create some smaller goals for our individual planners and to give us ideas for our weekly reflections.

We placed them along a continuum and have been moving them along when we have been showing progress.

Check out some of the photos over time. Can you see a change in the grouping of the goals?

Week 1

The General Election - What Are The Party Policies?

It has been a very interesting week learning so much about the upcoming election. We have received our kids voting ballot boxes in the mail.

Here is more information about the kids voting programme. 

After watching this video, we now know how to vote, but not all of us know who we want to vote for. We realised we need to find out more about what the parties all care about.

On Monday we split into small groups within our larger literacy groups. Each group was allocated a political party contesting the election, where they had to research what the party policies were (the policies are the list of things that each party say they will do after the election if they are in government).

Over the next couple of days, each group used Google Slides to collaboratively put together a presentation to share back with us. Mr K and Mrs Harris made it clear that we were not persuading people to vote for the parties, but simply explaining what their policies were.

Savannah said, "It was fun doing the research, because I already liked that party. It was good using Slides because we can share it with everybody in our own group and they could each do their own parts. I asked the group if I could do water policies and everyone agreed. Ava found out about a policy for getting kids to school safely and reducing rubbish and Kelli did some other policies. I was a bit nervous sharing back to the class with all those eyes looking at me!"

Yesterday we began coming up with ideas for policies we would try to campaign on if we were involved in a Bromley School election. We tried to think of things that would improve our community, either to address existing problems, or just new exciting ideas. 

Next week we will be looking closely at some of our policy ideas. Could any of them be worth exploring further?...

There Is An Election Coming Up...

We shared the following video in assembly on Friday. It was great being able to communicate with all of our Koru team, teachers and parents about how we are building our understanding on lots of things related to a general election.

After sharing this video, Mana, Lilly, Zavier and Kaizen courageously shared their arguments for what the voting age should be. We had all of the audience vote for who they agreed with on the way out at the end of assembly. After counting the votes, we will announce the debate results soon. 

The students who shared their arguments received great feedback from teachers and parents! They can be very proud of themselves. 

This week we will be exploring what we already know about how elections actually work and what we still need to find out.