Wednesday, 26 September 2018
The Editing Glasses
Thursday, 6 September 2018
Room 2 - Physicists - Electric Car Convention
Today we built and experimented with cardboard electric cars. We turned into scientists and shared our claims and findings with our scientific community (our classmates). Our big question was How might we make our car go as fast as possible for as long as possible. We briefly talked about the safety rules we needed to follow and then we set off making our own cardboard electric cars. Here are a few photos taken while we were creating...
After we'd had a bit of time to create we tested our creations to see how far they were able to move. We discovered that some of our designs needed a bit of extra help and that some needed to be modified in order for them to work. Here are a few photos of our final creations...
We talked and shared as a scientific community about what we had discovered and thought carefully about what we might test again if we had time. Here are a few of the notes about what we discussed...
Monday, 3 September 2018
Science Week Coke and Mentos
Check out the Science behind why this happens, it is surprising!!
Making Lots of Bubbles
After a lot of debate, scientists are now saying that the primary cause of Coke & Mentos geysers is a physical reaction, not a chemical reaction. Their explanation is this process called nucleation.
After a lot of debate, scientists are now saying that the primary cause of Coke & Mentos geysers is a physical reaction, not a chemical reaction. Their explanation is this process called nucleation.
All the carbon dioxide in the soda – all that fizz – is squeezed into the liquid and looking for a way out. It’s drawn to any tiny bumps that it can grab onto. Those tiny bumps are called nucleation sites: places the gas can grab onto and start forming bubbles.
Nucleation sites can be scratches on a glass, the ridges of your finger, or even specks of dust – anywhere that there is a high surface area in a very small volume.
The surface of a Mentos is sprayed with over 40 microscopic layers of liquid sugar. That makes it not only sweet but also covered with lots and lots of nucleation sites.
In other words, there are so many microscopic nooks and crannies on the surface of a Mentos that an incredible number of bubbles will form around the Mentos when you drop it into a bottle of soda.
Since the Mentos are also heavy enough to sink, they react with the soda all the way to the bottom. The escaping bubbles quickly turn into a raging foam, and the pressure builds dramatically.
All that pressure has got to go somewhere, and before you know it, you've got a big geyser happening!
Learning with Science in a Van
The wonderful people of Science in a van, sharing their knowledge of forces with us.
Wednesday, 22 August 2018
Dance Time In Room 2
Today we heard some fantastic speeches in Room 2. I am so proud of all the hard work that the students have done towards their speeches. We needed a break today in between speeches and this dance was the result. Enjoy.
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
Monday, 13 August 2018
Bike Safety Talk
Room 2 listening to Sarah about bike safety. Thanks Bigfoot Adventures for keeping us safe.
Tuesday, 31 July 2018
Wednesday, 4 July 2018
We're Touring Sunnyhills with CoSpaces
This week we've been trying out CoSpaces an app that lets us build and code our own worlds. We've been looking at ways to show how Sunnyhills Shines by providing people with insight into our special spaces at school.
Many of us really enjoyed being able to use this app and created some pretty amazing spaces. Here are a few photos of us getting started with CoSpaces...
Take a look at some our spaces so far...
The Field By Nessa, Chisan, Mikayla & Josh
Tree Island By Samuel and Joseph
The Swimming Pool By Ashley, Ella and Kathy
The Library By Ryan
We're constantly editing these spaces, so pop back occasionally to see how we've improved them. Click on the links to go directly to the space. Remember you can view these spaces in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality just use the link on your phone in the CoSpaces app and using a Merge Cube if you're looking to watch in Augmented Reality.
Thursday, 21 June 2018
A Great Conversation about Sustainability
We participated in another KidsEdChat on Twitter yesterday using our class account @SHS_Room2. This week we talked about sustainability and what we're doing to help live a more sustainable life. We created our own personal rubbish bags following a video created by a fellow KidsEdChat class. We thought about what we were already doing at our school and what we could challenge others to do.
These are the questions we were answering during the chat. It would be great to keep thinking about these as the year goes on especially as we're an Enviro School and want to make a positive difference to the environment we live in.
1. What does sustainability mean to you?
2. What things do you do in your school that show sustainability?
3. How would you include sustainability practises into your day? Can you add some ideas of how you could help our environment to the padlet
4. Have seen any sustainable practises in you community?
5. Watch the video and take some time to make a rubbish holder post a photo of it if you can
6. List somethings that you could do at school to reduce your school’s carbon footprint.
7. What would you say to other students in your school about what they could do to develop sustainable practises at home and school?
Here are all the tweets that were made during the chat...
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Rare Earth Elements - Finding out More from a Scientist
We were all really excited about having Michael come in and talk to us and we had lots of questions to ask him about Rare Earth Elements. He was brilliant at answering all our questions, we now know even more about Rare Earth Elements.
Some of the things we learnt were...
- Praseodymium (Pr) is the rarest rare earth element
- Rare earth's aren't found by themselves they are usually in other minerals - they have to be blasted, crushed and dissolved out of other minerals to get them to their pure form
- The find in Japan is in mud, it's very different to the other Rare earth finds
- The find in Japan has about 5000 parts per million of Rare earth
- To extract the rare earth elements in Japan they could use a tool sort of like a vacuum cleaner to suck up the mud from the bottom of the sea. They would then need to seperate the rare earth elements from the other elements in the mud.
- China has about 97% of the world's rare earth mines and supply.
- It can be dangerous to mine rare earth - rare earth elements can be found with radioactive materials
- There can be a lot of damage to the environment when mining rare earth elements. Rare earth elements are found in small concentrations so there is a lot of waste associated with mining them
- Sometimes miners have to dig up a whole mountain just to find a small amount of Rare Earth Elements
- If we were looking at rare earth and how much of it is in the environment we could say that 2 1/2 people out of 28 students in our class might contain some rare earth elements.
- If we were looking at 1000 marbles maybe 1 of them would be fairly pure rare earth.
Here are a few photos from the talk:
Watch this space, we're almost finished adding some more information to our Slide Decks and our What's in Your Device Boards so we'll post those to our blog soon.
Thursday, 24 May 2018
Life Education Caravan
We had our first visit to the caravan today, I was so proud as the Room 2 students knew all the answers because of our pre-work. You all Rock Room 2. Check out the videos below to see some of the learning.
Wednesday, 23 May 2018
Life Education Articles
Life Education Pre-Visit Videos
In Room 2 we have been getting ready for our visit to the Life Education Caravan, later this week.
These are the videos we have watched and discussed. Please talk to child about them at home as well.
These are the videos we have watched and discussed. Please talk to child about them at home as well.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
Pink Shirt Day Certificates
Last Friday our Room 2 Pink Shirt Day winners were Mikayla and Rebekah. They were awarded these special certificates for showing kindness and displaying empathy. Well done girls.
Maths Today
The POC maths group, were today working with Fraction's. They did an amazing job I was very proud of them.
Saturday, 19 May 2018
Well done Tiger
Tiger got the assembly certificate this week for being focused and working hard. This was voted on by the Room 2 students which makes it even more special. Well done.
Thursday, 17 May 2018
Rare Earth Learning - Putting it Together
Today we started putting some of our learning about Rare Earth Elements together in a slide deck.
We also started creating a display board. We haven't quite finished yet so watch this space for more photos soon.
Here are some of our slide decks from today. They are a work in progress so keep an eye out for updates. We're working on how to put research information into our own words, this is a tough skill to learn but we'll keep working on it because we know we can do it.
Sunday, 13 May 2018
We Are Room 2 Mr Mac
This is the end of Breakout video. I kept calling Room 2......Room 3. This was my 5th attempt to get it right.....I still got it all wrong. SORRY Room 2.
Wednesday, 9 May 2018
Room 2 Mihimihi's
Look below to see Kathy, Svasti, David, Ryan, Xavier and Doreen doing some wonderful Mihimihi's in Te Reo. They all did so well, we are proud of them in Room 2.
A Digital Classroom & A Twitter Chat
Today we worked in Google Classroom for the first time.
We used Google Classroom to access all the documents we've been working on.
We each have our own login using our Google Suite accounts and we can click on the things we need to do, read the instructions and complete the assignment. When we are done we can press the turn in button and our teachers can see all the amazing work we've done.
Here's a screenshot of our current classroom page. We'll be working on creating a much cooler banner in the next few weeks.
One of our assignments on Google Classroom was to answer a few questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI). We did this so that we were prepared for our afternoon Twitter Chat.
A Twitter chat is when you can connect with a whole lot of other classrooms and chat about a particular topic. The great teachers that created KidsEdChat tweeted out the questions and we answered them. We also got to read and reply to other answers from other classrooms.
Before we did the Twitter chat we talked about what was okay to Tweet and what was not okay. We also talked about how to stay safe while we are online. We made sure we only used our first names and didn't tweet any other personal information about ourselves. We also made sure our Tweets made sense and that they weren't offensive to anyone - we tweeted just like we would talk to other people - with respect.
We had a bit of a hard time getting everyone onto the Twitter chat so we didn't all get to Tweet today but hopefully we'll sort that out for the next chat. We did have a great group Tweeting as much as they could - check out their tweets below...
Sunday, 6 May 2018
Growth Mindset Girl
Well done to our 150% Growth Mindset girl from Room 2. Keep up the wonderful attitude.
Well Done Oscar
Well done Oscar for your certificate, for bring awesome for our new friend Mrs Lee. Keep up the good work.
Thursday, 3 May 2018
Our Search for Rare Earth Elements - Our Wonderings
Yesterday we read the New Zealand Herald Article "Game Changer: Discovery on Tiny Island Could Alter Global Economy"
Here are our wonderings about rare earth elements so far...
We used these resources to help us find out about Rare Earth Elements and why they're important:
We talked a lot about Neodymium and how important it is to have it as a magnet in many devices we use today. We need these magnets as they are really strong in small amounts compared to ferris magnets that would have to be really large to be as strong as a neodymium magnet.
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| Ultrapure neodymium under argon. Image linked from here |
Wednesday, 2 May 2018
Our Search for Rare Earth Elements
We started looking at what rare earth elements are today in Room 2 and why they are important. As part of this learning we did some Unmaking, we dismantled a variety of cell phones and NextBooks to have a look at what they were made of.
The slide deck above shows you a few photos of us in action. We are keen to find out more about what's inside our devices and more about the kinds of rare earth elements they contain.
Watch this space for more details about what we've discovered about Rare Earth Elements.
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
Mr Mac and his Google Ballons
Hi Room 2, hope you are having a great holiday. I have been on a Google Summit for the last two days. That is where I got the balloons from, I have a lot of very cool thinks for us to do to help you with your learning. So get ready for Writing choose your own stories using Google Forms, making digital breakouts using forms, using Google My Maps in Mathematics and a whole lot more.....see you all soon.
From Mr very inspired Mac
Thursday, 12 April 2018
Eating Like An Anzac
Here we are eating some Bully Beef like what the Anzac soldiers did. Some of us liked it some not so much.
Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Friday, 16 March 2018
Auckland City Mission Talk
Alexis from the Auckland City Mission talking to us about their job and poverty.
Great start to our new inquiry topic.
Wednesday, 21 February 2018
Mr Mac and his Dish Washer
Here is Mr Mac and his beloved dish washing machine......he won't let anyone touch it.
Mr Mac and his Dish Washer
Here is Mr Mac and his beloved dish washing machine......he won't let anyone touch it.
Tuesday, 20 February 2018
Tents
Setting up the tents at camp....pity we didn't get to sleep on them. They did remember how to put them up.
Mud Head
Nessa came back from survival with a new hair style. We had to get her in a shower next morning as it had turned very hard. Poor thing, she still had a smile.
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