2019 Welcome

Wow another year has started and we are already in March!  Welcome to our class blog for 2019.

What do you want to be able to achieve this year?  Write a reply telling me what you want to achieve at school this year.  

Ruma Kereru Art - ‘Sleeping City At Night’

Ruma Kereru has been working on city sky at night backdrops for art today. This is the first step in producing a sleeping city acrylic painting where we will have silhouetted buildings in the foreground using darker colours and lighter city nightscape colours in the background at night. 

 Our learning goal at this point is to paint a background city luminous night sky. 

 The specific skills to achieve this are:

 > Use small brush strokes (vertically).

 > Use bright contrasting colours. (Logan)

 > Use the flat side of the brush. (Jazz)

 > Don’t put heaps of paint on the brush. (Logan)

 Below is a link to a Google Photos slideshow featuring some videos and photos of our work so far.

 https://photos.app.goo.gl/EEgZBBfWdDpkv1Vk7

Haiku Poems in Ruma Kereru (14.08.18)

Students were busy publishing haiku poems today in Ruma Kereru here are a few examples. Below are our learning targets:

Alyssa has worked really hard publishing her poems at school today.

Fabulous work today by Sarah in poem writing.

Ally has worked hard in poem writing today at school, lots of quality language and very adept at leading her learning and being on task.

Koru Art Beginnings in Ruma Kereru - Term 3 Week 3

Ruma Kereru children at Tirau Primary School are studying the work of Simon Richards and his students at Manurewa Intermediate in Auckland who developed designs based on the Koru motif.

We are working on recognizing New Zealand's heritage / Kiwiana cultural icons and having a go at using them in our art while developing new creative skills with oil pastels.

Success Criteria:

• I'm able to discuss where the 'Koru' shape is used in Maori Culture and in Kiwiana.

• I can recall that the 'Koru' is based on the pitau, the young shoot of a plant, especially the uncurling shoot of the fern.

• I have five or six large simplified 'Koru' shapes in my drawing.

• I've created a successful combination of contrasting colours.

• Blending techniques are used for transitions between colours e.g. smudging or brushing on turpentine.

• I go off at least three sides of the paper.

• I use small strokes when colouring in my drawing.

We started by looking at photos of plants that would help us work on drawing a 'Koru' shape.  Everyone practiced their 'Koru' shapes on A4 paper first, see the slideshow below for some of our work with stylized Koru shapes.

We also practised our blending of colours using smudging with our fingers at the point where two different colours meet. Below is a slideshow of some of our blending colours practice work.

What's Up?

Hi Guys,

What's up?  What have you been doing over the past 3 weeks?  I would love to know.  Write me a post explaining your activities and learning.  I look forward to reading them all.

Passion Project

My Passion Project  

Introduction
A passion project is something to study that has an end result.  Something you you ABSOLUTELY LOVE to learn, explore or find out more about.  The topics are endless.  You just have to use your imagination.  What would you like your passion project to be about? 
Sit down and have a think.  Watch this Youtube clip and get an understanding of what's it all about. 

Here are some passion project ideas that might inspire you.  These kids are Year 9. 

The Steps:
You need to follow these steps.  All your learning is either recorded in your Passion Project book or on our class Google Drive.  
Sharing time.  Along the way, Mrs M will stop everyone and you will need to share where you are at with your project.  This will be every couple of days.

Step 1:
Choose your idea and have it approved by Mrs M before 3pm Tuesday 5th June.

Step 2:
Brainstorm your ideas.  It might look something like this.

Step 3:
Write your research question.  Your question is the reason for investigating your passion project.  Once you have your question, you will need to get Mrs M to approve it.

Step 4:
Start research.  You will need to record all your research.  You will need to write down all the websites you visit, the books you read, the people you might ask.

Step 5:
Now start your good copy.  In your book, you will need:

1. title page
2. Pictures and diagrams.  Don't forget these are an important part of your passion project.  Each one needs to be captioned to explain what it is.
3. driving question and the answer
4. facts to share

Step 6:
Presenting your project.  Keep it simple!  You don't have to get fancy.  We don't have the time to do this.  Think of the easiest way to present your findings.  Remember you MUST ANSWER YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION.  

Step 7:
Present your passion project to the class.  


Here are the final presentations of our Passion Projects.  Congratulations to everyone.  They are all amazing.

Aaliyah, Alyssa, Pipi and Tessa's videos

Hamburger Day

What a great day we had!  Everyone enjoyed their burger and some even got seconds with the meat patty!

Here are some photos of our event.  Many thanks to Deb Kingma from Young Farmers and Brett from ANZCO.

Our Ambassadors cooking the meat patties with Deb and Brett

I can smell them cooking!

Deb thanking us for all the learning we have achieved with our unit.

Our wonderful teacher aides and parents who served our hamburgers.

One, two three..... bite!

Yum yum yum!

Write a comment telling us what you thought of hamburger day.  

ANZAC Service

Congratulations to Bryah, Cooper, Denali and Corey for attending our local ANZAC service with Mrs Leonard, family and friends.  
Here are some photos of the service.  Many thanks to Mrs Leonard and Mrs Grattan for sharing these with us.  
Bryah and Cooper laid our school wreath on behalf of the students, staff and families of Tirau School.  
Don't they look fabulous in their smart school jackets!
Many thanks to everyone who helped our Ambassadors.