Sustainable Fishing by Anita

This week we have been discussing sustainable methods of fishing such as using a fishing line, spear fishing or even a sustainable fish farm. These methods ensure that we are not taking too many fish (over fishing) so that we are not putting them endanger. Unsustainable methods of fishing include using F.A.Ds (fish aggravation devices), bottom trawling (dragging a big net along the bottom of the ocean) and throwing dynamite into the ocean! These methods kill heaps of fish, dolphins, sharks and other sea animals  - which is putting them in danger!

Success!

Today we celebrated the end of our testing and Miss Stone's dissertation with a food technology lesson and pizza party. We have had a tough two weeks testing and we have all worked hard to improve throughout the year.

We decided to make everything, including the pizza bases ourselves so that they were more enjoyable. We started by mixing the ingredients together to make the dough.


After we left it to rise we floured our tables and began to knead it and roll it into a pizza shape.

Then we covered our pizza in the sauce and toppings of our choice: bacon, chicken, pepperoni, tomato,  mozzarella, pineapple, garlic and different types of herbs.

Miss Stone took them to the staffroom to cook and we prepared for our pizza party. We all really enjoyed eating the pizza that we had created.

Maui Dolphins by Salote

Maui dolphins have been endangered by fishermen’s nets and they need help because the number of dolphins is becoming smaller and smaller from them getting caught in nets or because of bottom trawling. People have been putting the dolphins life in danger because they also capture calves.

What  are Maui Dolphins?

Maui dolphins are the world’s rarest and smallest known subspecies of dolphins. They are the most endangered sea species in the world and there are a tiny amount of them left, they are also subspecies of the Hector’s dolphins. In New Zealand scientists have declared that there are only 55 dolphins left. That is a really small amount!

Why are they endangered?

Maui dolphins have been living with threat throughout their lives and they have been caught up in fishermen’s net including trawling. For example, Fishermen have trapped the dolphins in there set-net while they have been setting for fish. They scoop any sea-creature up and don’t realise what they have caught in their net.

What people can do to help them?

People could stop setting their nets or trawling near the dolphins to prevent them from not getting captured in their nets. People could also help by writing to the prime minister and to the minister for primary industries.

Help the Maui dolphins by stopping fishermen from capturing our native species and don’t trawl by the dolphins.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi

In term two we learnt about the Treaty of Waitangi and we investigated New Zealand history. This prepared us for our school camp to Russell and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. We took some footage of the places that we visited and we used these images and videos as the background of our film festival movie. We wanted to create a movie that would teach other students about the treaty; to share our learning with them.
                 
Thanks to Bensound (2017) for providing the Royalty Free Music that was used in this movie.



We hope you enjoyed our movie and that you learnt more about the Treaty of Waitangi!

Anita Kelly Tarltons Recount

It was October the 30th,the sun was shining and the wind was blowing gracefully. Both Room 8 and 7 were getting ready for there big Kelly Tarltons trip. Kelly Tarltons is a Sea Life Aquarium which is placed near the Auckland City and the Mission bay beach.The whole aquarium is runned through pipes under the ground. The reason why our fellow Glenbrae students  were going to Kelly Tarltons was because of one of our amazing topics,protecting animals.

When we got our lanyards and backpacks ready we headed to the hall for last preparations.Our deptitul teacher,Mrs Raj announced a variety of rules Kelly Tarltons wanted us to follow. After that we went straight to the bus which arrived a few minutes ago . We hopped in the bus and greeted our bus driver. We then headed for Kelly Tarltons.

When we arrived at Kelly Tarltons, we went through the entrance which led us to our first destination, Scott Base. As you might know Scott Base was named after a very special person,this person's full name was Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Captain Scott was a british royal navy officer and a explorer who travelled to Antarctica and surprisingly found a extraordinary fossil. This fossil which was found by Captain Scott contained a lot of information. This fossil was actually the only evidence to show that the world and all its contents and countries were all together as one.

After visiting  Scott Base we headed towards the Penguin Exhibition. When we walked in the Penguin exhibition,the smell of raw fish hit us and the wetness beside the tanks made it difficult for us to walk. We saw some penguins swim and some penguins waddle behind the glass. At this moment it was lunch time and so one of the people who worked at Kelly Tarltons were getting ready to feed each and every one of the penguins. The instructors even lured some penguins in front of us just for show! We moved down towards the end of the glass and there we saw some Penguin eggs ready to hatch any time soon, It was so fascinating. As we exited the Penguin Exhibition we had to take a quick break to have our delicious afternoon lunch.

A while after the Penguin Exhibition and Lunch time we went to the travelator which took us under a huge tank where fishes and other amazing sea creatures were. The travelator was moving slowly so we got the advantage to look at all of the sea animals while we passed. We all were watching the fishes swim by and then we saw a huge stingray swim over our heads. We then saw a huge shark swimming on the left side of us,most of the Glenbrae students thought it was really scary and so they kept their distance.

After a small ride on the travelator we got to go to the rock pools to feel some sea animals.We lined up and then one by one we touched a small,brown starfish and a coral. When I got to touch the small, brown starfish it felt bumpy and rocky. The Coral also felt weird and sticky. The Rockpools were inside a cafe  and so that gave us a opportunity to look out in the sea from a large glass window.

After the Rock Pools the rest of the Glenbrae students headed to the bus which was parked outside. We all walked in the bus and there we went straight to Glenbrae on time for the end of the day bell. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kelly Tarltons for inviting our school to learn about the animals among the sea. We saw a lot of beautiful animals and their natural habitats. We have learned alot from your aquarium,Thank you.

Halloween by Tumanako

The tradition of halloween is to celebrate the friends and family that have passed away. Halloween is taken way back, like in the olden days when there was an ancient celtic festival known as samhain. During medieval times in Ireland and Scotland, the Samhain festival was held at sunset on October 31st and lasted through daylight on November 1st.  It marked the ending of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the “dark season.”people believed that the dead would return as ghosts so people would put food and wine outside of their house for the ghost’s to take. People would dress up as ghosts so they would be mistaken as one of them. Halloween was brought to the US by Irish and Scottish immigrants during the late 18th century to the early 19th century.

Today people celebrate halloween by putting pumpkins with carved faces in them spider webs around their houses and other things that scare off people for halloween. People still dress up as ghosts but they also dress up as monsters, vampires, the devil and other scary things too. As for the kids, they dress up in fairy tail people like, princesses, something mythical, something off a kids movie or anything that relates to being a kids costume. They go around house to house saying “trick or treat” and to be funny “trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something nice to eat”. They walk around with pumpkin buckets or anything else they can store their lollies in. As you can see over the time traditions began to change.

We can carry on celebrating the way that we are because there is nothing wrong with how we are celebrating but there might be some people that

are dressing up in costumes to blend, in but really they're just doing that because they want to kidnap a child or person! They could even be the people that live in the houses that your kids going to! So the parents are letting their children/child go by themselves/self, DON’T because one day they won’t be coming home!

In Mexico they celebrate Días de los muertos or Day of the Dead on November 1st.  It is a big celebration that honors family and friends who have passed away.
In Hong Kong Halloween celebrations are known as Yue Lan  meaning Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. During Yue Lan celebrations fires are lit and food and gifts are offered to angry ghosts looking for revenge.

Halloween by Dekorah

Why do people celebrate Halloween?

As you know Halloween is a holiday event that happens once a year at the end of October,but does anyone know why we celebrate it,or what even is Halloween? Did it have a name before Halloween?  Here is an explanation about what Halloween is and it’s history.

Halloween all started with a tradition that was celebrated over two thousand years ago. It was known and named as “The day of the dead” or in other terms “All Hallows”(this name was called by the saints on November the 1st.)The tradition of celebrating All Hallows was believed that the dead ascended from a door that lead into the underworld opened and let all sorts of spirits through.People believed and that the spirits would come and bring harm to their town’s and families.So during the Samhain festival people would leave offerings and food outside their houses so they would take the food instead of the people.Towards this people dressed up like a ghost or a dead being that made the spirits think that they are dead and would let people pass by.When people did this they could enjoy their times by passing house to house celebrating the festival of Samhain.

In in this event other countries also celebrated it but named it different things,and believed in different reasons.Here are what some countries celebrated it like,and what they called it.Halloween was accompanied by a Celtic festival of Samhain on which was called by “Summer’s end” for it was to be the end of Summer and the beginning of Winter,this was also a common reason why they celebrated this festival of Halloween.Medieval times in Ireland and Scotland,the Samhain festival was held at dawn on October the 31st towards the daylight of November the 1st,it was called “Dark season” which meant it highlighted the last day of harvesting,and the new day of winter. Over time Halloween was brought to the US by the Irish and Scottish people living in the united states during the 18th and 19th century.Ever since then traditions began to change.

Now Halloween is just celebrated by going other people’s doors and saying “Trick or treat” to get candy,or Halloween is just to have a family get together party,or even just partying.In the modern days though this event is mostly popular with children,in the original days trick-or-treaters mostly received fruits,nuts,money, and wine to contribute to their delight.In the present days Halloween Trick-or-Treaters became more popular in the US for all of the shops went all out of selling products contributing to Halloween,and sells 6 million each year just because of Halloween and its contents.

There are more and more reasons to why Halloween is celebrated and how other countries had celebrated it back in the day.We shouldn’t forget why is was created and all of its history,for Halloween has more to it than just getting free candy and sweets by just saying a phrase at someone’s door.

Feuerstein

This year Winnie, Po, Simeon, Pelenise, Fasi, Amelia and Maselino have been part of a Feuerstein group with Mrs Raj. This programme supports children to develop metacognitive skills; to consider thinking and learning in an organised, structured way.

Mrs Raj has been really happy with the students progress and so she asked them to share their learning in assembly. Each learner spoke very clearly and confidently about what they have learnt at Feuerstein and they explained how the programme is structured.

Riveting Riddles!

Today in Kiwican we were learning about respecting ourselves and our strengths. We first played a game where we had to tag people by jumping every time a whistle was blown, which was lots of fun for us all!

Then we had a discussion about respect before the next activity was introduced. In this activity, we were split into two teams. The first team went to room 11 with Miss Tuia while the second team stayed with Mr Numia. Miss Tuia's team were given a page of riddles to solve. This involved lots of discussion and sharing of ideas, as the riddles were very challenging.
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Mr Numia's team had to throw a hula hoop over a cone, which was harder than it looked as it could not knock the cone over. We had so much fun taking part in these activities we wanted to continue when the bell rang! Thank you Kiwican for another awesome session.

Friday Afternoon

This afternoon we took our writing to  Room 1 and Mrs Ripata. Earlier in the week we had written stories that would entertain younger children so we thought we would share them with the new entrant and year one students.

After reading our writing we also read some published childrens' books with them. We really enjoyed talking to the children about what they liked in the story and it was interesting to see what they found funny! When we were finished with our reading we helped them to play on the playground. We all had a wonderful time!

Diwali!

This week we have been celebrating Diwali, the festival of light. Mrs Raj came in and talked to us about the way that the festival is celebrated in India and we watched some videos about the story of Diwali. It was great to learn more about a different culture and religion.

Miss Stone asked us to create some Rangoli patterns. Traditionally these are made out of coloured sand and they are used to decorate the entrance to a house. We used felts instead, but we did place our finished designs on the door to our classroom! We also got to try some Indian sweets that Mrs Nath made. These reminded us a bit of donuts as we could taste pastry, butter and sugar.

Te Reo Bingo!

This week in te reo Maori we learnt the name for some of our favourite food and some common foods in te reo Maori. This was to support our current learning which is focused on food and drink.
We will continue to focus on this for the first part of the term, so keep a look out for some of the flash cards that we will be creating!

Buddy Reading

This week we discussed writing for a specific audience, so we decided to write stories and recounts that would entertain the younger students at our school. We spent the first few days of the week writing and illustrating these stories and we all had lots of different ideas - Miss Stone was very impressed!

Here is the beginning of Alex's story, about his early visit from Santa!

Last week on Sunday, Santa came to my house to play with me. We had lots of fun. Santa came in his sleigh with his 8 reindeer and they were all very friendly.

The first place we visited using Santa's sleigh was the candy farm. When we got there we ate lots of chocolate and lollipops and they tasted sweet like honey. When I ate the chocolate it melted in my mouth with joy. After eating all those sweets Santa got FATTER, his face grew more round, his stomach grew out of his shirt and his pants ripped! I asked him if he was okay and he just replied “Ho Ho Ho”.   

Check out Davarni's story about 3 bears:

                  

First Day Highlights

Today we had a class decision regarding the topic "are learning and behaviour the same?".
Some of us argued that we need the right attitude in order to be able to learn and that traits such as determination, resilience, motivation and drive for learning make it more possible for us to learn and achieve more.

However,  other mentioned that learning is not the same as behaviour, because behaviour involves controlling our emotions but learning involves developing knowledge and skills.

We decided to make up a profile of what we consider an active learner to be. We came up with the following:

• Determined to try their best
• Take risks
• Challenge themselves
• Share their ideas with others
• actively listen to others
• Are not afraid to ask for help
• Think critically about what they are learning
• Take responsibility for their learning 
• Take risks and are not afraid to fail
• Take opportunities that you are given e.g. to demonstrate your strategy with the class.
• Set and follow learning goals.

We worked on becoming active learners in our writing lesson, where we worked really hard to meet our writing goals.

Then we focussed on our behaviour in our class soccer match. We made sure that we were respectful and that we acted as team players.

Ignition Assembly: the Conservation of Animals

This term we will be focusing on the conservation of animals. We will be investigating different endangered animals and identifying the factors that put them at risk. Miss Stone made this video to introduce the topic:

                 

After watching this video, what questions do you have about the conservation of animals?

Architecture!

Check out AJ's description of the future house that he has designed:

The year 6's from room 8 had to act as architects and design a future house for Glen Innes. This my dream house that maybe could be built in the future.
                           
This house is different to the houses around today because the houses in Glen Innes are made out of wood but in the future the houses are all made from metal or bricks so it is stronger in a natural disaster like an earthquake, flood or tsunami. They would have different designs because the architects would create their own new ideas. They would be able to create way cooler houses and things because they have more technology and different ideas. 

The things inside the buildings could be different too. They not have books because they could use devices instead. They wouldn't have analogue clocks anymore, just digital. Everything could have buttons, like when you go to the kitchen you could press a button and then it could change to the living room. The appliances would be better - the oven would cook things faster for example. We could have robots to do things for us as well, they could even brush our teeth for us! Instead of having paper money we might only use digital money instead. People could create robots and get them to work so they could earn more money.

The houses would also be heaps taller because we don't have enough space for all the people to have a one story house. There would be more skyscrapers or three story houses, like the ones being built on Fenchurch Street.

In my house I have filled everything with water. People could adapt to live under water and probably they will have gills like fishes. Or they could invent technology that would let them live under water.  They have created things like floating chairs for their houses.

Here is the site I used:
https://roomstyler.com/3dplanner

History of New Zealand

This term the year seven students have been learning about Treaty of Waitangi and the history of New Zealand. They learnt about this both through their inquires and through their experiences at camp. They documented each historical event that they investigated on a timeline to document important dates in New Zealands history. Check out Sia's timeline below!

Live Stream!

Today all of Glenbrae school walked down the road to Pt England School to watch their school production "Live Stream".  We all really enjoyed the journey and we bumped into heaps of whanau on the way. A lot of our students have extended family and friends at Pt England, so we were looking forward to supporting the school and these people as well.

                            

The production itself was fantastic! We all enjoyed the story as it was about the pollution in a stream affecting the wildlife, which we learnt about in term 1.  We were really impressed with all of the acting, singing and dancing, but the main cast really stood out to us.  It was great to see them stand up with so much talent, confidence and pride.

As we headed back, we reflected on the message that had been portrayed in the production. Some of the students picked up rubbish on our walk, determined not to let the local wildlife down.

Political Debate

This afternoon we were invited to a debate hosted by Room 7. The students had split up into four political parties and they created different policies about how they would run the school. They considered issues like behavior, the repairs needed around the school, homework and the technology that is available.

Then each party sent their leader to take part in the debate. Alfred, Inoke, Tamati and Whitney were chosen and we were asked to attend as the audience, as we could make an unbiased choice about who were the strongest debaters. To start with, the leaders introduced their party and policies. Then the leaders had the chance to debate with one another and to ask questions. We saw that Whitney had listened carefully to the other leaders as she was able to ask lots of questions.

Finally, Mrs Tofa passed around voting papers so that we could select the winner. We all received a sticker for voting and looked forward to finding out the results.

Measurement Scavenger Hunt

This week we have been learning about measurement in maths. We had to select the unit of measurement that would be best to use, like mm, cm or m, to make an estimate and to measure each item.

We started with small items like pens and our chromebooks, before we moved on to some bigger objects like the length of our classroom. We couldn't do this very accurately because of all of our furniture, but we got a rough measurement!

Lilo and Pele wanted to see how long the window was.

Too young to vote!?

Today there was much discussion around room 8 about the 2017 election. The students have heard a lot about this election from the media, advertisements and billboards around Auckland. We all had ideas about who we might vote for and many of the students have met their local MPs, or those who are currently running.

After discussing the elections, some students took to Google to learn a bit more about the parties and candidates. Miss Stone delivered a quick lesson about voting and how the government is selected. We then decided that we should have a class election, using a voting form very similar to that which is currently used.

While our government was vastly made up by the same party (3/4 of the votes went to them and their MP), the remainder of the votes were made up of lots of different parties. It was great to hear our different reasons for voting for different MPs and parties, like their beliefs, level of experience and commitment to visiting/ working for our community.

We then took part in part in a breakout about the New Zealand Elections, by Michael Davidson. This helped us to put our new learning in use and to discover more about New Zealand politics. This was our most successful breakout yet - all teams broke out within the time limit and many of them either used one or no hint cards from Miss Stone - what a fabulous effort!

The first to breakout today was Telesia, Tumanako, Salote and Winnie's team. The girls split up the different locks really well and communicated to ensure that everyone contributed to the win. They were closely followed by Alex, Dekorah, Mathew and Trent, who started with the lead. Both of these teams demonstrated fabulous team work and determination.

However, Miss Stone was very proud of the final groups, who watched their classmates win the challenge, but who persevered and also managed to breakout within the time limit.

Duffy Assembly

This morning a Duffy role model, Niva Retimanu, came and visited Glenbrae School. Niva is an award winning journalist and radio presenter, so reading is a big part of her job! Niva read us a story called Kiss Kiss, Yuck Yuck by Kyle Mewburn. Although it was aimed at younger kids, Niva read with great expression and she was very entertaining!

After the story, Niva presented a couple of Duffy books to each class. We love getting Duffy books and we look forward to reading them in the holidays!

After the assembly, we created a description of our role models and we thought of the traits that we really value in a person. We then discussed the traits that we possess and the ways that we can embody them.

Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori

In honour of te wiki o te reo maori, we took part in a breakout all about te reo maori. We split up into groups of four and practiced team work, problem solving and using te reo maori.

Our groups found the first few clues quite quickly. They involved colours (which we learnt in term 2) and numbers (which we discussed this week when we practiced telling eachother how old we are). After some time, three groups got stuck on the same lock. Miss Stone gave them all the same hints, but even then it was quite tricky to work the whole clue out! 

In the end Alex, Dekorah, Maselino and Trents group won the Breakout, although it was very very close! 

Our Assembly

This week room 8 had the task of hosting assembly. Our presenters were Trent, Alex and Anita and our theme was Kia Ora Te Reo Maori, as it is te wiki o te reo maori. We opened with the Waiata 'Toro Mai' and discussed the theme of this years Maori language week in relation to our learning.

We shared our learning about the Treaty of Waitangi and showed our camp video, because we learnt about the Treaty and Maori culture at camp.



We hope you enjoy our movie!

Shared Healthy Lunch

Today we had a shared healthy lunch with the entire school. Each class made a different healthy dish and then we headed to the hall to try new food and to enjoy the kai together.

Room 8 were given the task of preparing sandwiches. This was no easy job as we had a limited amount of time to prepare enough to feed the entire school and some parents and teachers! We made cream cheese and cucumber, chicken salad and tuna salad flavoured sandwiches.

 

We really enjoyed trying out all of the different types of healthy food. We especially liked the roti wraps, sandwiches and fruit kebabs - they would be great for our lunchboxes!




After lunch we were visited by Mrs Wallbridge, who is a dentist. She told us that a healthy diet is the most important part of good dental hygiene - lots of sugary food will lead you to tooth decay! This gave us another incentive to eat well!

Kiwican

This week in Kiwican we were learning about overcoming challenges. We are faced with lots of different types of challenges every day; a tricky maths problem, a sports game, working with new people, an argument or social problem.

We took on the challenge of making different letters with our bodies. Some letters were more difficult to make than others and we had to all work together. Can you guess what these letters are?




Then we played a game of hoop soccer; we had to kick a deflated ball into a hula hoop. This was way harder than we expected as it was hard to judge how much force the ball needed to land in the hoop (often it would roll over it instead). We also found it challenging to do this in front of the class, as they watched us all.

Playing by the rules!

This week we started playing full touch games in our kiwisport lesson. Before we weren't playing by full rules and we were allowed to pass forward when we had both our rips still on. It took a little adjustment to get used to the new rules, but we had an awesome time playing our full games.



We split up into different teams and played five a side, which gave everyone a chance to fully participate and to be involved. What an awesome session!

Police at Glenbrae!

This morning the senior classes assembled in the hall to learn about the Police with Constable Jude. Each class got to participate in a range of activities during the morning and after morning tea the whole school watched as a police helicopter landed on our field.

We first headed to check out the police bikes. We learnt that motorbike police carry out similar roles as those in cars, but that they are sent to certain jobs more as they can get places faster. They usually work in the city as they can weave in and out of the traffic. We all got a turn at sitting on the bike and then we used a speedometer to work out how fast we could run - it was awesome!

Next we went to room 7 where we learnt about crime scene investigation. We learnt that every contact leaves a trace and that police search for these traces - which could be DNA from hair left on the scene, a persons footprint or fingerprints on something that they touched. We all got our fingerprint taken, which was a lot of fun!

Then we headed outside to the police tent and we got to try on a mini uniform and follow some commands as if we were officers! We also looked at the tools that the police use and carry, like their handcuffs and batons.

After that, the officers let us sit in the police car and we turned the sirens on.

After morning tea the whole school ventured to our field, where we waited for the police helicopter to land. Each class had the opportunity to look inside the helicopter and to learn about the tools that they have on board, like a high powered camera and infra-red.