Highlights from Week 3's Distance Learning

Here is the end of the week report for Week 3, Term 2.

First, our Maths-Whizz report.  19 students worked on Maths Whizz, and all those people progressed up at least two levels.

Our top 10 students (by time spent doing Maths Whizz):

1. Luca
2. Otis
3. Eillie and Milan (third equal)
4. Mia and Kadence (fourth equal)
5. Emma
6. Dimitri
7. Adam
8.  Josh

Our top 10 students (by progressing up Maths levels):

1. Adam
2. Eillie
3. Otis
4. Mia
5. Milan
6. Emma
7. Lucas and Charlotte
8. Wallace and Sam

Nearly everyone has been reading on EPIC,  and as a class we have read 1,148 books over 187 hours on EPIC  so far this year.   

People also worked hard on the SeeSaw tasks this week.  Here is a snap shot of some of the work.

In Maths, we have been learning about position and direction in different, interesting ways.

We placed objects around a table and described their position to each other using Maths positional language.  

We read maps and described routes taken using Maths different directional language:  the points of the compass, left and right, and quarter, half and full turns.  Some people explained direction using their bodies, some people used toy cars while others used clocks and cars! 

On Friday, we made our own pirate maps using our mapping skills.  Some people even made them look like authentic maps from the olden days by tearing or burning the edges of the map and dying them with cold tea!  

We read pirate books (there were over 90 pirate books to choose from on EPIC!) and made pirate-y work banks before writing pirate stories about finding treasure and life on the high seas.

Some people even made pirate flags so people on their daily walks would know to stay away - some family bubbles were in fact Level 3 pirate ships!  People used paint, collage and computer tools to make their flags.

In Literacy, we read and wrote about animals in the rainforest and penguins exploring a deserted aquarium during LockDown.  Using assigned books as our guide, we made word banks of interesting verbs and adjectives to make our writing more exciting to read.  

After we had written our stories from deep down in the rainforest, we made rain sticks so we could emulate the sound of rain splashing down on the abundant foliage.

As it was Earth Day on 23 April, we wrote about ways we can show the Earth our love and kindness.  We made posters giving people ideas about how they can help our planet.

As usual, in our daily Google hangouts, we shared our news and our learning.  Everyone enjoyed using their mapping skills to make their own pirate map.   

However, the most popular learning experience was Science About the Sea, when we investigated the density of salt water using eggs.  People then explained what had happened in their experiment, and why.  We found that the egg sank in water with no salt but floated when a LOT of salt was added (because the water was denser than the egg).  In the third experiment, when we very carefully added tap water to the very salty water, and made sure that we didn't mix the dense salty water and the less dense tap water, we saw that the egg still floated on the dense salty water but sank in the less dense tap water.  That made the egg float in the middle of the glass!  Some people found that their eggs sank in all three experiments - it is can be disappointing when things don't work.  This often happens in Science.  Scientists then have to work out what is happening and why - many very important scientific discoveries have happened in just this way.

Finally, some people have been doing other exciting things in their bubble this week.  Nathaniel had his eighth birthday which we celebrated with him at Friday's Google Meet, and Ruby has been doing scavenger hunts in her garden.  Another action packed week!

Ruby sorting out her scavenger hunt items.