The Curse of Stanley Yelnats

 Kia Bloggers,

In reading we are studying a book called Holes, it is written by Louis Sachar. It is about a boy name Stanley Yelnats. His name can be read forwards and backwards. If my name could be read forwards and backwards it would be Carolyn Nylorac. 

The story so far:

• Stanley was sent to Camp Green Lake as punishment for a crime he did not commit
• He was accused of stealing Clyde Livingstone's shoes, he is a famous baseball player.
• At Camp Green Lake, there is not lake and it is not green, it is a dry wasteland in the middle of no where.
• The boys at Camp Green Lake have to dig a hole a day, 5'x5'x5'.
• Stanley is from a poor family, he is overweight and at school he was bullied.
• Stanley's family is cursed, the always have bad luck. 
• They blame the curse and all the bad luck on Stanley's "no good dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather

This is the story of Elya Yelnats and why he got cursed.

Have you read Holes, or maybe seen the film?

Virtual Art Gallery: A Toroa Inquiry *Term 2, 2020*

Kia ora whanau and the Marshland community,

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown and reflecting on how Coronavirus has affected the world, Toroa students looked at what other global issues affect us too.

Some things we researched were:
What are Global Issues? (How) Do they affect us?
How can art spread a message?
What artists use their art to send a message?
How can we send a message about something we are passionate about?

Some topics that the students researched were; inequalities, inequity, poverty, the gender gap, pollution, environmental damage, mental health, racism, war.

The students created artwork to show these issues.

Take a look at our Virtual Gallery.  Leave your comments in the section below. What was your favourite piece?

Click here for the virtual Gallery

Last week of distance learning and it's been an impressive one

Hey Bloggers

It has been a great week, not only because the teachers are amazing and have given us heaps of great work, but because Level two is imminent. We are back at school on Monday, Hooray.

So this week.

Literacy. We have been reading Going Solo by Roald Dahl. It tells his story from where Boy (Roald Dahl's childhood stories) left off.

He then went to Africa to work for The Shell Company and he has many adventures there. Some of these are really funny, they involve animals and lots of the native people.
He then joined the RAF to fly in WW2.  At one point he delivered a secret package to a mystery man. We never find out what the package was, or who Cater was, who collected the parcel. We wrote a story imagining what happened with the package.

Here is Billy's story.

Going Solo is a great novel that I would recommend you read. What do you think of Billy's writing?

In maths we have been learning about global positioning coordinates, bearings and using a compass.We looked were the Natural and Modern Wonders of the World are, and then created a Seven Wonders of New Zealand.

Outstanding Adobe Spark of The Seven Wonders of Nz by Bella click on the link

Have you ever read any of Roald Dahl's biographies? What were your favourite stories?
If you could choose some of the Wonders of New Zealand, where would they be?

Stay safe peeps.

Roald Dahl: The Brave Survivor

In literacy we have been reading Going Solo by Roald Dahl.

It tells his story from where Boy left off. He went to Africa to work for The Shell Company and he has many adventures there. Some of these are really funny. 

He then joined the RAF to fly in WW2. We have recreated a part of the story where his plane crashes in the desert.

He manages to survive although he is blinded by the crash and badly injured. He does get his sight back eventually.

 Going Solo is a great novel that I would recommend you read.
 

Did you know Roald Dahl had written his biography for children to read? What was your favourite part of his story?

Parts of a circle animation

Hey bloggers!

This distance learning thing is awesome, my teachers make these wicked videos to teach us new stuff, and then we have to create something to show we understand.

Today I have learned about the parts of a circle. Did you know there was more than just circumference, diameter and radius?! Check out my animation to learn more.




I have not finished it all, as this is just modelling for my students!

Mrs D :o)

Learn about mean, median and mode with Scratch

Kia Ora Bloggers!

We have been learning about mean, median and mode. As a way of showing our learning, we have created a Scratch programme.
Scratch is a coding programme and teaching a lot of computational thinking skills.
To code, we need to learn have inputs, output, sequence, selection, iteration and storage. There is some problem solving and debugging that we need to do too, because there may be errors that stop the code from working properly. I found quite a few ‘bugs’ in mine, but it was great to work it out and really satisfying to make it run. Here it is, I hope you enjoy it and learn something.



Do you know how to code? What programmes do you use?
Let me know if you find any bugs!

Clever Counting!

Hi bloggers,

We are learning Samoan every Wednesday and over the last two weeks we have been learning how to count to ten.  I found this quite easy as it is very similar to counting to 10 in Maori.  Today we used Scratch to code a programme that would show people how to count to ten in Samoan.  Check it out!  Can you count to 10 in any other language?

This is just to say...

Kia ora Bloggers,

We are involved in the Get NZ writing and we are writing poems based on William Carlos William's poem This is just to say.

Have you done anything naughty? Be honest!

See you next time Bloggers.

Perfect Portrait

Kia ora Bloggers!

It's that time of year where teachers make us draw portraits! Arrgghhhh, I am terrible at drawing but maybe because this year it is more abstract it won't be so bad.

It's also about my interests, my culture so that people can learn a bit about me.
Here it is...

As you can see, I have a dog, she is called Mika and is a Springer Spaniel. I have a family, I have 2 children. I like going to the gym and going skiing.
My family is from Russia, Scotland and the UK. I have included the Silver Fern as I live in NZ.

The artist that this portrait style is based upon is Romero Britto, have you heard of him or seen any of his art work? They are really bright and fun.

See you again.

Beautiful Bar Graphs

Kia ora Bloggers!
Welcome back to the new year and my first blog post. I hope you all had a great summer break, personally I am not ready for summer to leave, and the autumn leaves to fall...I love the sun!

So, maths.
It seems simple, but drawing a bar graphs was surprisingly difficult. I had forgotten, or maybe I never knew, how to draw a proper bar graph.

Here is my first attempt.

I know right, not great. I had forgotten so many things, but I did label my axis!

So I now have a checklist;

• Scale starting at 0 and going up equally
• Gaps between the bars, even the y axis
• Labelling my axis
• A detailed title
• The frequency numbers on the lines, not in the squares 
• Use a ruler

I tried again and BOOM! my second attempt is so much better!

What do you think? So . much better, eh! 

Have you started your math programme yet? What are you learning? 

See you next time.

Hola! Conversations in Spanish!!

Morena Bloggers,

We have been learning spanish, it has been AMAZING. We have learned so much, here is a snippet of basic conversations between two characters.

I hope you like it.




Have you learned a language this year?

*Example post* Last Term - New Goals

Kia ora Bloggers,

So here we are, 14 October and the start of the countdown to the end of the year.
I have worked hard already, and this term is no different.

My number knowledge is a big thing I am going to be working on, at home and at school. I am working on Brick 21, 22 and 23. This means I have to work on learning my division rules of 3 and 9s, also factors, primes and multiples.

A link to the work I will be doing to practise these skills are
Divisibility
Factors and multiples

I am going to do my best to work on the a couple of times a week. I go on my computer at least an hour a day, and so I am going to spend 10 minutes before I do anything, working on these skills. I am going to try to, anyway!

Do you have any specific goals this term?

See ya in a few weeks when I review these goals, and hopefully get some number knowledge Brocks signed off :o)

Oranutan's habitats being destroyed for Palm Oil plantations

For writing this term we are looking at persuasive language. This is an animation to persuade
you that the orangutans need protecting. Their environment is being destroyed for the
production of Palm Oil We can stop this by not buying products, that contain Palm oil.

By Bella and Brooke

Powerful People

Toroa spent term 1 looking at the impact that people have made to the world. We asked big questions suc as, 'If you are powerful do you have influence?', 'Can you have influence without having power?', 'How do people use their power?'

From this learning, and discussion, students were invited to choose not only who they wanted to research, but also what to create to show learning.
There were no limits to what the students could do as an exhibit.

Engaging the students in what they were interested in was a huge success, as the learned about who they were passionate about, and they created in a way they were interested in too. Engagement was high, and the outcomes were fantastic.

We had an Expo to show and share the hub's work. Here are some images of the work.

Please leave any questions in the comments section. 

Survivor day 4

A fun filled day 4 of activities for Survivor!

Baseball maths, Atlas Challenges, Battle Ball, Afghan cooking! You name it, it's all go in Toroa!

Kahu Kiwi trying to master their spaghetti tower!

Korowai students channelling their inner Bob Ross!

welcome to the snake pit! Harakeke make a statement with their flag!

#FearTheBear! Kahu Kiwi runs strong with their spirit!

Whitau making quite the contraption.

Mr G running the atlas challenge! (Remember those...?)

Korowai thinking about eating their tower.... (Yum!)

Digging for gold! Trying to find M & M's through the cream! Hope you're not dairy intolerant! (don't worry they are not...)

Tristan testing out his  strength and balancing skills!

Ben's been hitting the weight room! 1st place for Harakeke!

Bring on the last day of survivor. Where we will see who will be crowned top house!

Toroa Survivor2019 - Day 2 Pics!

Kia ora!

Today has seen Survivor continue into Day 2, with kids thrown right into a mixed bag of competitions, with little information to go on for what each challenge would involve.  Students had to choose between representing their house in the 'Buckets,' 'Losing Your Marbles,' 'Lava,' and 'Dress to Impress' challenges.

Here are some snaps of what teams came to discover the challenges entailed.



In 'Buckets,' teams played Bucket Ball, trying to eliminate the opposing houses' buckets by throwing their dodgeballs past the opposing team's keeper and into the bucket.



In 'Losing Your Marbles,' students had to build the most interesting and complex marble run that they could, given the paper plates, newspaper, and toilet rolls that they were supplied with.



In 'Lava,' students found themselves having to move their team from one end of the 'river' to the other, using only two small squares of carpet.



In 'Dress to Impress,' students had only newspaper and tape to channel their inner Coco Chanels and Calvin Kleins, creating the most eye-catching and fashionable dress for the catwalk.


Finally, a few students were identified as 'Masters' by their houses, and were tasked with re-creating Edvard Munch's 'The Scream.'  There were some beautiful pieces created from this that we will post at the end of the week.

The afternoon brought a frantic Cantamaths competition that had everyone desperate to prove their problem-solving prowess.  Scores will be averaged across the houses and tallied for the final scores, but there were some impressive runs from each house.  The placings will be quite tight.

That's all for today.  See you tomorrow for Day 3!