WELCOME BACK TO TERM FOUR

 We have started Term 4 by having loads of fun!  Yesterday a group of kids made ANZAC biscuits.  They were delicious!

We also had a Rich Task for Maths to complete.  Mrs Ruawai got us to make up our very own Computational Thinking maze.  We had to come up with a character and either avoid characters or collect tokens.  We then got someone else to write the code to solve the challenge.  We
had a blast!

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Check out Royce's amazing maze!

MAKING OUR OWN CODES

Last week Mrs Ruawai gave us a challenge.  We have been busy learning how to write code to get from one place to another but this time... we had to draw in the characters and any obstacles that our character had to avoid.  Then we gave our maze to a friend to write the code for.  Our job was check that they got it right.

We LOVED it!

  

 

ISALEI'S CAR GAME IN ACTION

Asha and her friends had a great time testing out Isalei's Dodging Car Game on Friday.

FRIDAY FUN DAY

What a day Friday was!!!

We had our Games Day with Piako Tahi, auditions for Riverdale's Got Talent AND we had fish and chips for lunch!

Here are a few photos of us on what we think, was the BEST day of the year so far...

    

 

  

CODING & ALGORITHMS

We have been learning how to make an algorithm - this is a set of instructions.  We have to use arrows to REPRESENT the direction of which way we need to go.  It is really important that we check out algorithms (instructions) for any bugs before we bring it to the teacher for checking.  We need to DEBUG our work.  Thinking like this, is called Computational Thinking.

Here are a few photos of us thinking hard trying to figure out our algorithms.

        

GAME MAKING

We were so busy last week making our games.  We had opted in to the game workshop that we wanted to make.  

Some of us decided to work in pairs or small groups and some of us decided to work by ourselves.  We also have a group of kids who were able to work together to make a game WITHOUT help from the teachers.  They needed to be REALLY good self managers! 

Here are a few photos of us making our games.

 

  

Once we had made our game we had to test it to check for any bugs.  

Here is a great photo of Junior and Mrs Ruawai testing out one of our games.  

Look at the look of concentration on their faces!!!

RICH TASK - CODING

                  

On Friday, we completed a challenge.  It was a maze and we had to get the bee to the flowers on the maze.  The trouble was we had to watch out for the fly swat on the maze!

We had to make up a code to tell the bee which way to go.

MAKING CIRCUITS

Today some of us were lucky enough to work with Ian from Digital Circus. His company is helping our school to develop our Digital Technology Curriculum. We discussed what we know about electricity, and learned that electricity can be stored in batteries. We also learnt that the circuit must be complete for the electricity to flow through. Then we were let loose to create circuits, using batteries to make LEDs light up. It was lots of fun and we hope we get to do more of this work soon! 

Challenge 1: using playdough to complete the circuit, make the LED light up. Things to remember: use the long 'leg' of the LED on the positive side, or it won't work!

Challenge 2: add a second LED and see if you can make them both light up! 

Challenge 3: make the playdough into 'rocket' and 'flame' shapes and make three LEDs light up.

Challenge 4 (for fast finishers): make a shape of your choice and add extra batteries/LEDs to complete more circuits.

Beau and Cooper getting very excited that their two LEDs are working









  Such concentration!

Braxton and Jayden feeling very proud after making their rocket light up!

 Extra challenge: make a different shape and see how many parts you can make light up! This flower was made by Madison and Isalei. 

COMPUTATIONAL THINKING - CRAZY GAMES

We have been exploring Computational Thinking.  Today Mrs Lunn's kids had a go with the Crazy Games.  These games are CRAZY and so TRICKY!  You have to get all the pieces to match and JUST when you think you've got it right, you find a bug (a mistake) in the puzzle and you have to re organise the pieces!

WE GOT A LETTER!

This afternoon we received a letter from the teachers in Piako Tahi.  They miss us so much that they have invited to come and play with their kids at the end of the term.  They want us to bring some games to share with their kids.  The trouble is that some of the Piako Tahi kids, haven't been at school very long so we need games that they can play.  The teachers included the criteria that the games we bring, have to have.

Here's a copy of the letter they sent us...




We decided that we would love to go to Piako Tahi.  We are just a bit worried that we haven't got very many games to take with us. We might need to make a few to take.  That got us WONDERING...

We needed to brainstorm all our ideas.  We went in our whanau groups and filled out a brainstorm sheet with our teacher.  Then we got back together to discuss our thoughts.

Tomorrow we are going to play some of the games we have in our classroom to assess if they meet the criteria the Piako Tahi teachers set.  If they don't, it looks like we'll have to make some that do!

Watch this space!!!

CODING

As part of the new Digital Technology Curriculum, we are starting to look at how to code.  We were given a maze and we had to get the mouse to the cheese.  It was pretty easy to draw the way but writing the code for it, proved REALLY tricky.  

Lucky we are know how to persevere!

There was a huge variety of ways in which we recorded our codes.  

You might like to take to us about this at home.