Kea Class @ Pompallier

Mahi Tahi This week Kea class started "Mahi Tahi". Mahi Tahi is all about collaboration and team work. Mahi Tahi is something which is done quiet often in our senior school with all the senior students, the teachers have seen amazing changes and results in the students.  Kea class will be doing weekly STEM activities in groups and they will need to use the "Four C's" when working in their groups. The Four C's are collaboration , creativity , critical thinking and communication .  This week we discussed the Four C's and we unpacked each word. 4 posters with each word on was set up around the classroom then students were allowed the opportunity to walk to each poster and add their ideas about what each word means to them. The responses were FANTASTIC!  This coming week Kea class will be doing their first STEM activity. 

Imaginative and Creative Prayer  Our Religious Education focus for the first three weeks of term 3 was imaginative and creative prayer.  One of the classes in the school were set up with about 11 different prayer stations. The prayer stations varied; 5 finger prayer, praying for the world, praying in colour, creating a daily prayer, praying with an object, quiet reflecting time etc. All the different students of the school had an opportunity to explore the various prayer stations and learn new ways to pray. The prayer stations were run by the senior students. We took some of these wonderful ideas back to our class and we did some prayers, such as creating a gratitude prayer chain, creating a prayers poster for the sick and praying in colour.  The students of Kea class thoroughly enjoyed the RE focus. Please have a look at a few of our photos below. 

In STEM we have been learning about the properties of  materials. We have been mixing, dissolving and melting different materials. As part of our learning about melting we watched candles burn and melt. We decided to make Teacup Candles to gift to the other classes, for them to use for McAuley Day. We created decorative designs for the saucers using blue, gold and silver colours. At assembly we gifted these to the teachers and classes. 

Today we started to create our musical instruments. We invited Te Kahu class to buddy up with us to help with using the tools and the construction process. Everyone in Kea class had a buddy working with them. The photos show the Tuakana-Teina creativity at work. Many thanks Te Kahu for all of your help. Kea Class are well on the way with their instruments. Some are ready for decorating already, and others just need a little bit more work before being decorated. The students all enjoyed their learning, and they are all very proud of what they have achieved so far.

On August 8th Pompallier School all traveled to Cutler's Farm for our school cross country races. Kea Class really enjoyed the day. They have written some great recounts about their experiences to share with you. In our writing we were trying to use description and personal comments to help our readers visualise what was happening and understand how we were feeling.  On Thursday the 8th  of August the whole school was at the Cutler’s farm for Cross country.  To get to the farm, we had to walk down a muddy and smelly track. When all of the students were there, we all walked over to the gazebo to start the races. First went the seniors, next the  juniors. We were second to last to run . When Mrs Watson yelled, “ GO!”,  we all ran through the mud and nearly slipped over. When we came to the plank,  I felt like I was going to fall… and I nearly did! But I kept on running again. Finally, we got to the hill.  I tumbled down, but i got up again. Then I passed where Sittie was st

This term our STEM focus has included The Arts - we are enjoying STEAM sessions on Wednesday afternoons, that are supported by our Literacy and Maths learning activities related to our focus on Music and Sound.  This term we have used a discovery learning approach. We have had a variety of different musical instruments to investigate and play. We have learnt about different types of musical instruments and how different materials are used to make different sounds in different families of instruments - string, percussion, brass, wind. We have carried out a variety of activities to learn about sound and how certain materials can be used to make particular sounds. Our aim is to design and make a musical instrument of our own.  Each student has used what they have learnt about musical instruments, and how sound is produced to create a plan to make their own musical instrument, using labelled diagrams to show what the instrument will look like. Our plans include the mat