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!

Toroa Survivor 2019 - Day 1

Kia ora whanau,

Survivor 2019 kicked off with a great April Fools prank where we told the students that it had been postponed until next week...some believed it, others realised the date!

After this short delay we got into it with the groups creating flags and chants for their house. This showed some amazing leadership and it was great to see the students trying their best. The flags are still drying, but this will be proudly displayed during the week and will be part of our finale game on Friday.

Here are some snaps of Day 1.

 Korowai started with the blind minefield: using trust and communication. 

Each house get to do all of the activities, and those with the most points/best times, will will points for their houses. These are totalled up throughout the week. 

 Whitau started with the Spelling Bee

 Kahu Kiwi- Number slap, what's the best strategy to slap the numbers in order in the fastest time possible? Everyone has to be involved.

 

 Harakeke made a good start on the general knowledge quiz- categories including geography and travel, sport and leisure, entertainment and science and nature

Students had 90 minutes to design and make a flag, as well as come up with and learn a chant for the house. 

See you tomorrow for day 2!

#theyareus

Aroha nui to all those who are suffering after the terrible attacks on the Mosques in Christchurch.

Here is Marshland School's tribute.

Geometric thinking

Gillstrom/Davies (Gillies) numeracy group were given this problem. Students were asked to work through it with very little pre-teaching. 

We wanted to see how the students used prior knowledge, and also how they would be able to give reasons for their answers. We are trying to develop using mathematical language, and sharing ideas.

This is how we did...

We are looking forward to discussing why there were so many different answers!

The Power of People

Our focus this term is The Power of People. We have been looking at the concepts of power and influence.
We have been asking;

• What does it mean to have power or influence over someone, or a group of people?

• Do people with power always have an influence?

• Can people without power have influence?

• If you are influential, do you have power?

• What do people do with their power or influence?

Some people that we have discussed are Malala Yousefzai- the girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban, Kate Sheppard, Dwayne Johnson, Robert Scott, Ruby Bridges, Jacinda Ardern, and many more.We have discussed that these people have either had influence that gave them power or have used their power to influence others. This is an interesting thing to discuss, as sometimes depending on the circumstances, the power and influence changes. Even the teachers in the hub have not completely agreed on some points, and have had some fantastic discussions.

The Students are now going to be researching a person who they thing is powerful or influential, and had made a difference in the world. We will be having an exhibit on the 11 April to show the community our presentations.

We are encouraging the students to be creative in how they present their work, it could be a model, a website, a painting, a dramatisation, a puppet show, anything really.

Keep an eye on our blogs to see that we come up with!

The Hub teachers have done the project too, and you can see their work on our site https://sites.google.com/marshland.school.nz/toroalearning/inquiry 

Here are some images of the work we have done leading up to our personal projects.

 

A mind map of powerful people personally, locally, nationally, globally

 

We discussed whether we thought people had power or influence, or both. 4 groups did it, and all came up with different ideas and explanations.

 

Mrs Davies researched Malala and learned to paint so she could create a painting of her. The painting is acrylic on canvas. 

 

Mrs Osborn researched Kate Sheppard and did a poster on her.

Who do you think is a powerful person, or someone who has had influence on the world or other people? Who would do want to learn more about and create an outcome about? 

Let us know in the comments, you might give us some ideas!

Tin Man Inspired Calendar Art

In Toroa we've been creating hilarious artworks for our family and friends to buy in the form of a calendar or diary.  We had a visit from a famous Christchurch artist, Tony Cribb who spoke to us about his ideas and his journey as an artist.  The students then created their own character or used the Tin Man in a poster using an idiom  - which is a play on words.  We think they look fab!