Totara's Christmas Concert Item

Last night and this morning Grey Main School had their annual Christmas Concert. As part of Totara's item the entire Syndicate performed Grease Lightening. Sorry the quality isn't so good but you get the drift!

Lunch Draw

Congratulations to Holly and Mya who won McDonald's for lunch for completing their basic facts for the term. Holly chose to take Mackenzie for lunch which was pretty cool because it was her birthday!

What an awesome way to almost end the term!

Royden's Maths

Royden has been working really hard on his maths this week with Belinda. He has been working on patterns and rules. This is Royden's pattern that he made up and made Miss Hines try and figure out. Great job Royden! You are a star!

Struggles of the Titanic

Yesterday the boys decided to finish off their video about the struggles of the journey on the Titanic. They were very creative and Miss Hines loves their sense of humour and their willingness to give anything a go. Wananei boys!

Ko Wai Ia?

Today for Te Reo interchange with Whaea Katie, we learnt the sentence structures Ko Wai Ia? (Who is she/he?) and No Hea Ia? (Where are they from?)
We had to choose someone who was well known and create two slides showing these sentence structures.

Visual Mihi's

This term Totara 1 have been going to Te Hiringa once a week with Whaea Katie to learn Te Reo. We have been learning our mihi's and our challenge was to create a visual mihi and Screencastify it. Click on our names to see our finished products.
 

Wyatt	Caitlin	Royden	Reilly
Kyle	Mackenzie C	Jordan	Alexander
Cameron	Jimmy	Mackenzie H	Callan
Ruby	Kaleb H	Shialla	Ben
Nikalai	Holly	Griffin	Alex
Emma W	Mya	Emma O	Autumn
Xavier	James	Kaleb P

Totara 1 and 2's Mannequin Challenge

To keep our minds off all the earthquakes today, Totara 1 and 2 had another crack at the Mannequin Challenge. We think it looks pretty good considering we had to evacuate our classrooms 20mins before hand. Belinda, you look amazing!

Preserving the TAE Hut

Today on our field trip we got to see the restoration project of the TAE (Trans Antarctic Expedition) Hut or the hut known as Hillary's Hut) The plan is to restore the hut back to its original colours. The hut has experienced some extreme weather over the years and it needs it's roof fully replaced. When restoring the hut they discovered that it was full of asbestos, so that has to be removed safely and disposed of properly. Here is one of the videos we watched about preserving the hut. We can't image how anyone could build in such cold temperatures!

3,2,1 Blast Off!

Today our field trip took off to Antarctica. We jumped on board a C17 in Christchurch and landed outside Scott Base on an ice shelf.
So far we have learnt all about how we would get to Antarctica, what clothing we would need and the field training you have to undertake in order to explore Antarctica. Antarctica can experience some extreme weather and we need to know that we can be safe if we were trapped in a snow storm or experienced a white-out.

We were really surprised at the weather - it was only -10 and beautifully sunny when we landed (unlike in Greymouth!)  Keep checking our class blog and individual blogs for more information and watch the video below to see how you would travel if you decided to go to Antarctica.

Antarctica

This week we are going on a virtual field trip to Antarctica. For us to be prepared Miss Hines has created a site for us to explore about Antarctica during our Literacy and Topic time. Click the link below to have a look at some of the things that we have been reading, watching and looking at.

Antarctica Site

Writing - What Makes a Great Narrative?

For the past term we have been working on writing explanations and we are a little bit sick of them, so today Miss Hines decided we would do something completely different and use our imaginations to write a narrative. Before she gave us our prompt, we had to show her that we knew what a good narrative needs. In pairs we used Padlet to brainstorm everything that we thought should be in a narrative. We will use this for our Success Criteria.

Buddy Class with P2

Today T1 buddied up with P2 to help them present their information on the life cycle of whitebait. P2 used their knowledge of the life cycle and we used our digital knowledge to help them present it in an interesting way. Watch our blogs for updates!

The Circus Is In Town

Some of the Zirca Circus came to school today to give us a taste of what we could see if we went to the circus. They were so flexible and could bend themselves in half! We were very impressed!

NZ Navy

Yesterday the Year 6 children from Totara went to the Regent Theatre to watch the show that was performed by some of the New Zealand Navy. The story was about a French Pirate who was trying to hook New Zealand onto his ship and tow it back to France but the New Zealand Navy stopped him. We thought this show was really funny and we loved the jokes that were told. 

Holly Robinson

Today we were lucky enough to have Holly Robinson, a New Zealand Paralympian who won silver in Rio, come and speak to us about her journey to the Paralympics. We got to see and hear her medal and we wish her all the best on her quest for gold in the 2020 games!

McDonald's For Lunch

Congratulations to Wyatt who won the homework draw for this term. He chose to take Ruby with him and enjoyed their frozen cokes!

CPR

Today we had our last session with Denise from St Johns. We learnt how to bandage wounds and how to do CPR. Miss Hines isn't sure she would like some of us to do CPR on her...
Here are some photo's of us in action.

Earth Picker

Yesterday Miss Panther came into Totara 1 and showed us a VERY addictive game called Earth Picker. It is safe to say that we have become obsessed but have learnt a lot about geography already!
Click on the link below and see how good you are, some of us have got bang on the spot!
Earth Picker

Angles

This week for maths WALT identify angles and measure them using a protractor.

We already knew that a circle is 360 degrees and a straight line is 180 degrees.
We have learnt that a right angle is 90 degrees and is always 90 degrees no matter what.
An acute angle is less than 90 degrees. We discovered that if we think of something little it is 'cute' so this helps us remember that an acute angle is a small angle.
An obtuse angle is more than 90 degrees but less than 180 degrees. To remember this we thought that this is quite a big angle and if you are big you can be obese (which begins with the same letters).
A reflex angle is an angle that is bigger than 180 degrees but smaller than 360 degrees.

We have had a lot of fun learning to use the protractors (although some of us have realised that we have to be pretty accurate in order to get the answer right!

Keep an eye on our individual blogs for our DLO's on angles.

Enlargements

This week we have been doing enlargements for Maths. Enlargements come under the Geometry and Measurement strand and they require the children to measure and draw their grid on their small character and then estimated the new size of their larger grid. They then used division to check that their estimations were correct for their larger grid. I was really impressed with the first attempts T1 made and we are going to continue to use the new skills we have learnt this week to create 
some more!