It's all go in the 'Orange Block' - Tane Mahuta

STEAM

Term 1 has come to a close very suddenly. All classes are up and running with a technology project in relation to bird migration. We have imagined, asked and planned how we will record some data about the birds in our South Dunedin community, we thought hard and planned how we will use technology to assist us to find the data using spikes, micro-bits, i-pads, apps and more. With the data that each group finds, our next step is to use technology to help make changes in our community in relation to our bird community. 

Upon research we found that 2-4 billion birds are killed every year by cats in America, we wondered how many birds die of this in New Zealand, we wondered what affect seabirds have on our native birds in our community. There are so many questions we can ask and lots of problems to solve. I'm looking forward to how we can help the birds within our community. We'll keep you up to date early next term. 

PŌHUTUKAWA

In Pōhutukawa this term we’ve been focusing on making characters and describing them in our writing. We learnt about all the powerful tools and features we can use in our writing to describe a character and how these aspects make our writing more engaging for the reader.

We created a drawing of a character from our imaginations and gave them names. From there, we spent a whole week planning for our writing. We planned for how we want to describe our characters, the language features we can use, along with how we can use the senses and the environment the character is in to help us as well. We then took our time to draft our descriptions, paying close attention to how we were structuring our work. We published our work on a Chromebook and linked a QR code to our writing. Lastly, we brought our characters to life in the form of some funky art.

Here are some cool quotes from a few members of our class:

“King Zealdrous has tough rock-solid abs like the Hulk. His armour is made of ancient solid gold” - Agape Genet

“Carson is a tiny little mushroom man who is only 10cm tall. He is a pretty fun-gi. He lives in a glass container for people to look at him, this makes him feel like he’s trapped like an animal in the zoo” - Abbie McCallum

“Joe has blue eyes, bluer than the sky. Short brown hair as brown as dirt. He has a brown dirty beard full of hot chips that fall out his mouth” - Hemi Robinson

Check out some of the character art we made!

More examples attached below!! 

RIMU

Keeping it Real – Science in the Schoolground

This term in Rimu we have been following up on our learning about migration and evolution by designing science experiments and carefully observing animal behaviour to determine how and why slaters move to maximise their chance of survival. We even managed to film our Monarch butterfly hatching! … click here

Students were citizen scientists by collecting data for the Great Otago Gull Count as part of a University of Otago study. Although red billed gulls are common around Dunedin, did you know they are 'Nationally Vulnerable’? This study is designed to understand where different species of gulls go and why, so that we can reduce negative interactions between humans and gulls.

Year 7-8 classes have also been preparing our garden beds and biodome with veges and learning about pollination and native plants to increase biodiversity and grow nature friendly food in our schoolgrounds. Pics Below... 

We have become Seed Savers and will swap these with other schools as part of our Garden to Table programme. If you have any spare seeds or seedlings to share please contact Ms Hunt in Ruma Rimu at davinah@carisbrook.school.nz

RATA

This term's literacy focus in Rūma Rata has been on writing interesting and accurate character descriptions.Skills such as employing well-considered adjectives and adverbs to capture ideas more precisely, employing personification and similes to help capture a reader's interest as well as describing not just what can be seen, but what can be heard, smelt or even smelt have all been areas the students have diligently been working on.

Here is a small sample of some of the superb ideas that have resulted from all their hard work.

The magician wore a long towering black hat perched upon his head which he used to hide many of his evil tricks. A moustache, long and thin, hid under his nose that was long and curved with the point at the end like the point of a blade. He had a cunning smile designed to trick any audience.

Mai Lindsay

His pale skin was deathly white apart from two tiny pink splotches on his bony cheeks. He had a large hooked nose like a beak and a large protruding chin too. His mouth was stretched into a wide grin which revealed his murky yellow teeth. Above this was a long curling black moustache. The strange man had small round ears and his tiny beady eyes glinted maliciously.

Scarlet Bagge

He snoops around town moving like liquid through the shadows. He wears a menacing grin that shows off all of his pearly white teeth. The man has a huge moustache which curls the edges of his cheeks protruding to a whip-thin point at each end. His ears are so full of fluffy gray hair that they looked like that of a troll's. His wardrobe certainly didn't help his looks with a huge top hat hiding his bald scalp and a large grubby trench coat with a million pockets that could easily fit a week's grocery shopping in, being his usual uniform.

Toody Mahutte

He was wearing a new hat and a blueish purple top. He also had on black pants and matching Nike shoes. Just then his dog jumped up and licked him. His face looked all scrunched up like a paper ball.

Tahana Taiapa-Sinclair

I walked into the decaying miniature cottage and removed my red riding hood, placing it on the nearby table. An unusual smell of wet dog mixed with a dash of old lady's perfume suddenly rushed up my nose. I walked cautiously over to my grandma's room to find her lying down in her old creaky bed underneath a musty flower quilt. Bold, evil brown eyes however looked at me straight into my eyes. She also had horrendous shear-like teeth that hung out of her sloppy smiling mouth. My 'grandmother' had an ancient frilly pink nightcap that barely held hairy pointy ears. I felt ill at ease.

Paige Martin

As I stood below the short ringmaster I noted his long twisted moustache curling around his sharp jawline. A huge hat complemented his large sunken eyes. The ruffles in his black suit smelt of coffee and my stomach turned at the smell of his breath. His voice cackled and he threw his hands to his chest as he announced the next act.

Jacaranda Horsfall