Learning about hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes.

Today we learnt about hurricanes, cyclones and hurricanes and typhoons. 

We read an online article. 

We read through it and highlighted any new words, any information we thought was important, or things we didn't understand. 

Then we talked about these highlighted information and created a brainstorm. 

Check out all our ideas!

These are our key ideas about what a tropical cyclone is. 

Did you know that hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are the same thing, but are called different things in different places in the world?  

We compared tornadoes and hurricanes. Tornadoes last minutes or hours, travel short distances, can't be predicted, are smaller in size, form over land and can travel upto 483kmph.

Hurricanes last days or weeks, travel long distances, form over the ocean, are bigger in size, can be predicted and can have wind speeds at up to 322kmph.

This is Miss Ashley's picture of how a tornado forms. The conditions which are needed are hot air at ground level, cool air and strong wind at high altitudes and a thunder cloud above. 

These are the new words we talked about. 

We talked about the Greek alphabet because when the World Meteorologist Organisation runs out of A-Z names, they use the letters from the Greek alphabet. 

Look at all our ideas! 

We also linked back to our Week 1 learning when we learnt about what weather conditions were.

Natural disaster haiku poems

Today we learnt how to write Haiku poems. 

We chose a natural disasters topic to go with our inquiry. 

This was Miss Ashley's example.

Here are Room 7's haiku poems.

Percentages, Decimals and Fractions

We are learning about how fractions, percentages and fractions are related. 

We first knew that 0.5 is the same as 1/2. 

Then we figured out that 1 whole is written as 1.0 when its a decimal. We know that 100% is one whole. 

So then we wrote that 0.5 and 1/2 and 50% are the same. 

We used our halves to find out that 1/4, 0.25 and 25% are the same.

We aded three quarters together to get 3/4, and then added 0.25+0.25+0.25 to figure out that 3/4 is the same as 0.75 .

Next Miss Ashley tried to trick us by asking us what 1.50 would be as a fraction.

We knew that 1.0 is 100% and 0.50 is 50% so we added them together and figured out it was 150%.

We drew a picture to help us figure out that 1.50 and 150% would be 3/2 or 1 and a 1/2 if it was a fraction.

 

Once we understood the place value of how to change between decimals and percentages, we did lots of practice. 

We are still learning how to change between percentages, fractions and decimals but we have made a great start! 

Earthquakes and richter scale

This week we learnt about earthquakes. 

We read a story called Quake, Rattle and Roll which helped us learn more about earthquakes.

We learnt about the richter scale. We drew one on the board and labeled it with what kind of earthquake it is (strong, moderate, small, minor, unfelt). We learnt that each level is 10x times bigger than the previous level. 

This is our definition of a richter scale.

This is our picture of how a tsunami is made through an earthquake. 

And here is our picture of what happens when two continental plates collide.

Here is Lopi, Paula and Kordell explaining what the picture is about.

These are our technical words. Reign helped us understand that continental means continents, and that there are 7 continents which are Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, Antartica and Africa. 

Kiwi-Sport - boxing

This term our Kiwi-sport is boxing.

Last week we learnt the rock, jab and cross.

This week we learnt how to move forward and backwards, and how to upper cut and hook.

Cook Island Language Week 2018

This is our item for Cook Island Language Week.

We did a counting song with our buddy class Room 2.

Financial Literacy in Programme (FLiP)

We were very lucky to be a part of the FLiP programme this year. FLiP stands for Financial Literacy in Primary. 

People from a company called PWC come and teach us about money and how to use it wisely. 

We learnt about savings vs. spending, identify and identify theft, different forms of ID,  taking risks, and insurance.

Our teachers were Kalolo and Michael. 

Check out the comments below to see what Room 7 learnt from the FLiP course!

Tectonic plates.

We have been learning about the layers of the Earth and what the crust and mantle have to do with volcanoes.

Today we did a puzzle of the tectonic plates and figured out that the Ring of Fire goes around the Pacific Plate.

Did you know that New Zealand sits on TWO plates?

Auckland Museum Outreach Programme

Today we had an amazing experience from the Auckland Museum Outreach Programme. Two guys, one called Tom and one called Aaron, came and taught us about Auckland's volcanoes. 

We got to learn about, hold and label REAL rocks from REAL volcanoes!

This coke bottle represented how pressure builds up beneath the crust of the Earth and how there are 2 kinds of materials (the fizzy part and the black part represent pumice and obsidian).

Pumice

Obsidian