Dinosaurs information report.

Today we have to write an information report about dinosaurs. We know a lot, so its going to be very long! 

Here is our brainstorm for the paragraphs. 

Here is some finished student work.

Junefia and Janett

Moana and Langiola

Dinosaur knowledge

Today we wrote down everything we have learnt about dinosaurs over the past 2 weeks. It was a lot!

Room 7

Dinosaur knowledge

Prior Knowledge

Animal

Predator

Dino is the root word

‘Saurs’ means something

Species 

Extinct 

Huge

Large bones

Long necks

Eggs 

Sharp teeth

Long tails

Eat people

Different kinds

Spikes

Horns

Mammals

4 legs

We learnt that...

 Bipedal means 2 feet and quadruped means 4 feet. Some dinosaurs are bipedal and some are quadrupeds. Some can change between the two stances. They are sturdy.

Theropod is a 3 clawed dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are warm-blooded, which means their blood temperature is always the same

Carnivore means a meat eater

Herbivore means a plant eater

Omnivore means it can eat plants and meat

Some dinosaurs are huge and some are small. Typically, huge dinosaurs were sluggish (slow). 

Dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. They started existed 230 million years. 

They died because of an extinction event, most people think this was because a meteor hit the Earth. 

Dinosaurs legs go out the bottom of their hip bones, whereas reptiles bones go to the side of their hips. Reptiles do not have an extra hole in their skull, but dinosaurs do. 

Mary Anning found lots of fossils on a cliffside in England in the 19th century. She was born in 1799 and died in 1847. She survived a lightning strike as a baby. In 1824 she found the first fossil.

 Non-avian dinosaurs are dinosaurs that are not birds. Avian means birds.

Metabolism means how fast or slow your body converts food into energy

Diverse means a big range

Modifications means changes. Dinosaurs have modifications such as spikes, armour, horns or crests. 

Clade means family.

Lineage means ancestors/descendants 

Paleontologists are scientists that study ancient things including dinosaurs

There are 4 main groups of dinosaurs; theropods, sauropods, ankylosaurus and pterosaurs.

Titanoboa was top of the food chain after the dinosaurs died. It killed people by constricting people. It spent most of its time in the water because it was super heavy. It was 13m long, as big as a bus. 

Hominins existed when 7-6 million years ago, the first humans to walk on 2 feet. 

People did not exist when dinosaurs existed.

 Adaptation is something that changes over time. 

Ecology - how animals relate to each other

Fossils are made when dinosaurs die and their bones get trapped in rock or mud. The bones break down over time but leave a mould, which is filled with rock. This becomes the fossil. 

Dinosaurs sometimes eat each other. 

There were 3 periods of time that have dinosaurs. This is called the ‘age of dinosaurs’ also known as the ‘Mesozoic Era’; Triassic period, Jurassic period, and Cretasous period. 

Then there were 3 more periods in time, “Age of mammals”, also known as ‘Cenozoic Era’; Paleogene Period, Neogene period and  Quaternary period.

Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.

Joan Wiffen found the first dinosaur fossil (a theropods tailbone) in NZ in 1975, in Hawkes Bay. She died in 2009. 

Dinosaurs laid eggs and they lived in family groups. 

Dinosaur reading

Next we started reading a really hard text about dinosaurs. Miss Ashley said it was written by adults for adults, so the language is really hard, but she wasn't going to baby us and rewrite it, we just had to learn the hard adult words. 

Here are some of the new words we found from the text.

In the text it talked about BC and AD, so Miss Ashley drew a timeline to explain what it means.

Fossil and dinosaur matching

After the slideshow yesterday, today we used pictures of fossils and dinosaurs and tried to match them up. We had to look at the size and shape to match them. 

Next one person from each group had to describe the dinosaur they were looking at without showing Miss Ashley, and she had to draw it based on their description only. This is some of the drawings.

Learning about fossils

Today we learnt about fossils. We looked at this powerpoint and read through it together as a class. We took notices and wrote down new words we learnt. 

Then we wrote a summary of the information from the slideshow.

Learning about fossils

Today we gathered our prior knowledge about our inquiry. 

Here is what we knew about dinosaurs - 

Dinosaurs

• Animal

• Predator
• Dino is the root word
• ‘Saurs’ means something
• Species
• Extinct
• Huge
• Large bones
• Long necks
• Eggs
• Sharp teeth
• Long tails
• Eat people
• Different kinds
• Spikes
• Horns
• Mammals
• 4 legs
• Some are vegetarians
• Locked up in a cage
• Eat grass
• Some have wings
• Died in the 19’s
• Different colours
• Roar loud
• Different names
• Tall
• Scare people away
• Spikes around their head
• Two arms
• Some are friendly
• Similar to dragons
• Shell
• Extinct long before Christ  - BC
• Hunt food
• People killed dinosaurs with hunting rifles
• Dinosaurs got short hands and bite them with their mouth
• Fight other dinosaurs
• Rough
• Strong long bones
• Big and long
• Muscles
• Faster then flash
• Fast and have long teeth
• Eat other dinosaurs
• Big feet
• Didn’t eat people - Ana.
• Eat other species.

Here is our prior knowledge about fossils -

In the afternoon we used this slideshow to learn about fossils -



We wrote sentences as we read through and talked about the new/difficult words and wrote what they meant. 

Here is what we wrote - 

Fossils are dead animals or plants. They are usually skeletons found embedded in rock. Sometimes fossils are footprints or poo. Small animals or insects get stuck in tree sap which hardens and traps them forever. Large animals can get trapped in ice, or their carcass gets trapped in layers of rock. Over thousands of years, pressure builds up and the ground. Next the mould left is filled with minerals that form rock. This rock shape is the fossil - an exact replica of the dinosaurs. This process takes 10,000 years. Palaeontologists find fossils when the top layer of dirt or rock washes away.

Carcass - dead body

Dissolved - when something disappears in water

Mould - a shape that can be filled

Erode -

Vital - important, critical, crucial, necessary

Climate - weather

Siberia - a country near Russia where a fossil was found

Mammoth - a giant animal that looks like an elephant, but it is hairy and has big tusks. they are extinct now.

Parihaka

First we remembered everything we could from last week.

Last week we learnt that there was something called the New Zealand Land Wars that happened between 1845-1872. It was all about who controlled the land in NZ. It was complicated because some land was traded fairly and some was taken. The wars were imbalanced (unfair) because the Europeans had more manpower (people), and a higher quantity and quality of weapons (more of them and better ones). The Maoris were outnumbered so they had to use secret plans and some guerilla warfare tactics in order to fight back.

The big idea about this is that the two groups of people viewed the land differently - Maori’s held a collectivist viewpoint, where land and other resources (oceans, fish, forests) should be cared for and shared by everyone. Europeans held an individualistic viewpoint, and wanted to own the land in order to have farms and make money. Even today there viewpoints cause conflict around the world.

Parihaka

Our first questions -

Junefia - What does Parihaka mean?

Parihaka means it is the name of their village or their place.

Marlene - why did the people send the kids out?

They didn't want them to get hert.

Dyzon - why were the two guys sent to prison for 16 months?

Te whiti and his friend tohu went to jail cause the europeans thought that if they take the leaders of the tribe they all would run away, but they didn’t.

Marilyn - why was the village surrounded by soldiers?

Lynch - what people left the land that Parihaka was built on? (Who was there before them?) There was a Maori tribe that lived there but we don’t know who. They got sent off the land by the government and the land was claimed for Europeans but they didn’t build on it for ten years.

Garth - why did Te Whiti go to jail?

Te Whiti was sent to jail because he was the leader of the Maoris and the Pakehas wanted the land back to make farms. But when he was in jail, his people were scared but did not run away from the land. They protected it.

Anittah - was there a reason Why all the Maori men went to jail?

So when the men go the Children and the ladies will get scared and leave.

Ana - why were the protectors put in jail?

The government put the mens in jail so they could scare the womens and children away and they could take the land back, but they didn’t run away they protected the land.

Maria - why did the government promise the people land?

So the government promised to them a piece of land for them to live on. And in ten years no one claim to live on the land so they built a new village called Parihaka.

Moana - why did 200 children block the road?

Because the europeans did not want them to get harmed or killed them.

Wesley - does Parihaka still exist?

Yes the Parihaka village still exist and Maori people still live there and honour the history

Tisharn - why was Parihaka famous?

Because he was a peaceful man and he taught it to a lot of the maori.

Angellynah - why did the soldiers burn the peoples houses down and destroy their crops?

Cause they soldiers thought that the land was theirs and they wanted to get off the land.

Michael - How was the government able to keep Te Whiti and Tohu for 16 months without a trial?? The government was made up of Europeans so they had control. There was no Maoris in the government to defend Te Whiti and Tohu, so they just did what they wanted.

Tsai - Why did the Europeans want the land?

Because they were jalless that the maori had land and the parihaka did not. They wanted to make farms.

Joshua/Rakel - why did the Maori people build their new village at Parihaka?

They built land because the europeans government didn't give them land so they had to build some new land and they called it parihaka and their leader was called te whiti.

Janett - Why did the government let the men go out of jail?

Because the jail have to many parihaka mens in the jail and the they set them free.

Langiola - Why did the people offer the soldiers 500 loaves of bread?

So there kids can survie and themselves because there in a war so the can fight people to. They have to be full with food so they cant die cause they have to protect people that are in danger and not make themselves or anyone, else stave because together we are strong we are family because we all love each other so much.

Mathew - Why is this story famous in NZ?

The Maoris were peaceful.

Litia - Why was Te Whiti preaching to the people? What was he preaching about?

He was preaching by peace. Cause he wanted to make people peace full like how he is.

Rona - What happened at the end of the story? What did the people of Parihaka do?

Founded in the mid-1860s, Parihaka was soon attracting dispossessed and disillusioned Māori from around the country.

Miss Ashley - where is the village of Parihaka? Where were the prisons kept?

The village of Parihaka is near the coast by Taranaki. The prisoners from Parihaka were sent to jails in different places all over NZ. The most famous one was in Dunedin, and it was pretty much a cave. The men were kept in caves without trial. When they were released they went ship back to Taranaki.

Big ideas -

• Maori were peaceful!
• Europeans wanted land to make farms.
• Maori were kind and offered the soldiers food.
• The government promised them land, but they never gave it.

Learning about Captain Cook

This week we have been reading a difficult text about Captain Cook -

Captain Cook Charting Our Islands by Melanie Lovell-Smith

School Journal Level 4, May 2016


Each day we annotated the text given to us (1-2 pages per day) and we talked about the words we didn't know or understand. Here are the words we learnt.


New words from Monday (page 28-29)

Transit - movement

Endeavour - the name of Cook’s ship.

Continent - a big landmass with lots of countries in it

Landmass - piece of land

Turanganui-a-kiwa - a place near Gisborne

Observing - watching

Tahiti - the island of Tahiti, a place

South -

Rare - something special

Predictable - you know when it’s going to happen or what is going to happen

Occur - happened

Pairs - two things together

Astronomer - a person who studies astrology (root word is astro)

Century - 100 years

Accurately - doing something correctly and carefully

Inaccurate - doing something wrong

Various - different

Then each student had to think of a question and find the answers either in the text or use Google to find it out.




Pages 30-31 - Tuesday

Sounding - a way to chart land

Anchor - a heavy thing that stops boats from drifting away

Fathom - 1.8m

Coastal profiles -

Wounded -

Translator -

Dispute -

Cross-cultural communication -

Conflict -

Essential information -

Aground -

Overboard -

Tallow -

We did the same thing again where each student had a question to answer about these two pages.



Pages 32 & 33 - Wednesday

Instructed - told

Chart - make a map of something

Enormous - big, massive, giant

Unfamiliar - something you don’t know

coastline - the line where the water meets land

Surveying - the process to make a map

Prominent - big, important, significant

Plotted - put onto the map

Sketched - to draw something

Crucial - critical, important, essential

Horizon - where the land and sky meet

Quadrant - (root word is quad which means 4) - something with 4 parts

Occasionally - sometimes, infrequently

Precise - clear, accurate

Greenwich - a place in London

Voyage - journey

Lunar - moon


Pages 34-37 - Thursday

Course

Shallow

Inlet

Circumnavigate

Territory

Shipwrecked

Repairs

Timber

Convert

British Empire


Next we made a summary of the story


Captain James Cook set sail from Britain in August 1768 heading to Tahiti.

He took scientists to Tahiti so they could observe the transit of Venus. Afterwards, he went to New Zealand. This voyage took three months and then the crew spent circumnavigating New Zealand and charting the coastline.

They measured water depth by using a lead weight with tags on it indicating 1 fathom (1.8m). They also sketched the coastal profile (the beachline).


They measured the distances between prominent landmarks and the ship, the distances between the horizon and the sun, and the angles between the sun, moon and stars. Longitude measures vertical distances around the Earth and latitude measures horizontal distances from the equator.

Captain Cook sailed to Australia and claimed it as British territory. Then he charted 3,219km of Australian coastline. He took 6 weeks to repair his ship Endeavour. He arrived home in Britain in July 1771.

He visited New Zealand two more times in the next several years before being killed in Hawaii in 1779.


On Friday we reviewed all the words we learnt on Monday-Thursday and tried to make sentences out of them. 

The bold words were from the new words list.Sentences

Litia - Captain Cook was instructed to sketch an enormous chart.

Wesley - In the 18th century the British wanted to expand their territory so they began surveying the South to find a rare continent.


Ana - Captain Cook and his ship named Endeavour went for a wonderful voyage from the British Empire to Tahiti then they had a dispute and conflict erupted.

Ana - accurately measured the distance between the horizon and then plotted the prominent landmarks.

Maui myths sequencing

This afternoon we got into 4 groups and each group was given pictures from different Maui myths. 

We had to put them in the order of the story and retell the story from our heads. 

Next week we are going to make groups to make a CREATE task for each Maui myth so we can present them in assembly later in the term.

Maui and the fish

This week for Inquiry we have started learning about Maori myths and legends. 

The first one we learnt about was Maui and the fish, which is where New Zealand came from (or so the myth goes...)

First we watched this clip - 

First we talked about who was in the story and what happened...

Then the next day we watched it again and had a more in-depth brainstorm and discussion. 

As we watched it again, we paused it and talked about what had just happened.

All the words in red are words we used to describe what we saw, then later we tried to use these in our writing. 

Here are some students writing - 

Vaimoana

Tisharn

Dyzon

Junefia

Marlene

Janett