Marvellous Muffin Challenge

Here's what Mrs Harris's literacy group has been working on:

We worked in teams of 3 or 4.

We published our recipes to create a class recipe book.

Each group shared their keynote presentation, which described their muffins using similes.

We voted for our favourite recipe and the next day we made the winning recipe: "The Magic Mars Bar Muffins".

If you would like a copy of our recipe book, get in touch with Mrs Harris and she will email it through to you.

Magic Crosses

Today a group of us did some problem solving with Mrs Harris. We worked through our problem solving cycle in a team of four.

Each team member had an important role. We focused on the key competency, Relating to Others by making sure we shared ideas, listened thoughtfully to our team members and used great body language when problem solving.

Every team came up with more than one solution and reported back to the whole class.

Here's the problem we were working on. How many solutions can you find?

MAD/Athletics Day Movie Project

On Monday, we learned that we would be creating an iMovie to inform the school about MAD day
this term.
We went through the design thinking process to develop our digital outcome.
This process takes us on an in depth learning journey where we can all contribute.

Normally, we dedicate a whole day to MAD day, but due to running out of free days to do it this

term, we are combining it with athletics day.  

Empathise

First we needed to think about our iMovie audience.

Our audience is the Bromley School community.
Here is some of the information we gathered through discussion and brainstorming.
- The movie will need to be fun and exciting
- We will need to speak clearly so our audience understands our message
- We could include fun music to keep the movie engaging
- We will need to show the audience not just tell
- The movie will need to be short and informative
Define

Next it was time to define our task. We put our information together and created a timeline.
This gave us a clear idea of what we need to get done before the filming stage on Thursday.
This stage helps us get organised and start our next creative stage.

Ideate

This stage is fun and creative.
We start brainstorming our ideas by thinking, writing, drawing and talking.

Prototype and Testing

After generating our creative ideas, we put them together in a storyboard.
We included a sketch of the location, a list of props and any script that was needed.
Then we practised our lines and organised our props.

Finally it was time to shoot our movie. Even on filming day we needed to keep going back to the
different stages of our thinking process.
Some small changes were made to meet the needs of our audience and create some wow factor.

We would like to thank Mandy Dempsey for her help and input on filming day.

We had a lot of fun working on this project. Check out the finished product.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkKLpbm4Wuw&feature=youtu.be

The Perfect Purple Paint

Today, some of us made the perfect purple paint using 2 teaspoons of blue paint to 3 teaspoons of red paint. This would give us a total of 5 teaspoons of perfect purple paint.



We related this to our knowledge of fractions. We noticed that two fifths of the mix needed to be blue and three fifths of the mix needed to be red.

We talked about ratios. This perfect purple paint mix was a ratio of 2:3.

Next, we were given a problem. Here it is:

We used multi link cubes to show our problem solving. We were able to get creative with our answers by making something with our cubes. 

Here's Jarnia and Breanna's answer. It shows that you would need a ratio of 8:12. Eight teaspoons of blue paint and 12 teaspoons of red paint to make 20 teaspoons of purple paint.

Here's Caleb and Rylee's answer. They used their multiplication skills to get an answer of 8 teaspoons of blue paint and 12 teaspoons of red paint. They displayed their answer by showing the mathematical thinking that took place. 

It says x 4 E which they explained represents multiply everything by 4.

How would you solve the problem?

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!

Dance is Geometry

On Wednesday, Koru 1 had a project based learning day. Children learning with Mrs Harris explored geometry through dance and children learning with Mr K explored the effects of music.

First Mrs Harris played us an amazing video that showed us how we can use our bodies to create shapes and patterns. We discovered that we would be creating our own dance sequence that day.

To begin we needed to revisit what we know about geometric patterns. We completed two art based activities so that we could demonstrate our understanding of reflection and rotation.

Exploring The Effects Of Music

Yesterday we had an interesting day where all of the children in Koru 1 were involved in an integrated project day. Those with Mrs Harris were exploring geometry through dance, while Mr K's group were exploring the effects of music.

At the beginning of the day with Mr K, he explained the following values and key competency focus areas for us to think about, as we would be reflecting on these later on.

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.

How Well Do We Work In Teams?

On Monday we participated in a team building activity. We were in groups of four and the challenge was to build the tallest, free standing tower, using a set of specific materials.

The main aim of this activity was to work well in a team. Some of the ideas we generated around good team work include; strong communication, showing we care, sharing our creativity and contributing.

Everyone took on a specific role within the group. It was fantastic seeing all the different towers being constructed.

We ended with a discussion about what went well and what we could have done differently to be more successful at working in a team.

 

Elements of Drama

We have been learning about the elements of drama on Friday afternoons. It has been a fun and exciting way to finish the week.

We are exploring space, focus and mood. We have been thinking of creative ways to use our bodies and the space around us. We are working on staying in character and concentrating on our role. We are finding different ways to use our facial expressions and body language to convey the mood. 

Drama is a wonderful art to build our confidence, try something new and explore our creativity. It has been important for us to cooperate in our groups, think quickly and show courage.