We Have Moved Learning Spaces

We are now in our new classroom space. Well, it will be ours for while. Our old Koru 1 block is being redeveloped and is likely to be ready for us to return to later this year.

Everyone in Koru 1 was very helpful, participating and contributing to the team effort to move all of our furniture, displays and belongings to the new space. Things are running very smoothly and we are finding enjoyment and challenge in exploring how we can use our new spaces differently than before. We certainly have more options available to us now and want to make the most of these.




Here is a personal post from Caleb B's blog:




We are looking forward to showing our parents and whānau around in Week 10 during our mid year reporting round. It will be interesting to hear what they think too!

An Introduction To Tynker Coding With Mandy

On Monday the 26th of February, Mandy, our e-learning specialist, came in to Koru 1 to teach us a little about coding and introduce us to an app called Tynker. 

The reason we are learning about coding is that people say that in the future, people will need these skills to perform some of the jobs that may exist. 

Firstly, we had a discussion about what we knew about coding. Then Mandy explained to us some important words to do with coding. These were algorithms, sequences, commands, bugs, debugging and programming. 

Next, Mandy asked for a volunteer to be a robot to show how programming works. Jonty was chosen. Our task was to programme him to get to the door at the back of our classroom. We gave the commands, Willow W wrote them on the whiteboard, and Jonty followed our commands to reach the door. 

After that activity, Mandy introduced us to an app called Tynker. We logged in using our Google accounts and she explained how to use Blockly coding to complete the challenges and go up the levels from Space Cadet to Dragon Spells. It was interesting to see how Mr K can see how we are doing from his laptop. 

We found this session really interesting and our class learned a lot about coding and what is involved. It was awesome to see everybody engaged and enjoying what they were doing. We look forward to learning more about coding this year. 

Also, our DT Tuakana group is starting up a lunchtime coding club beginning this Thursday!

This post was a shared writing piece from Mr K's literacy groups. 

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.