Week 6- Why am I?

In Team Awesome, we are continuing on with our "Why am I?" Inquiry. On Monday we took a deeper look into some of the problems which kiwi kids our age may face. The problems that we have identified as a team are: inequality, friendships/relationships, physical and mental health, and use of technology/social media.

Throughout the day, we went through four different workshops, each one focused on a different problem. The aim of the inquiry is that we will all design a product, programme or toolkit to support someone dealing with one of these problems. We want to help other young people, as well as ourselves.

We have now chosen a problem to look deeper into and we will be starting to design our end products over the coming weeks.

Watch this space for our end results!

Great excitement today - Team Awesome get to work in the upgraded DPE spaces

Most of the Team Awesome students got their first opportunity today to work in the upgraded DPE rooms this morning.

Testing to see if we can run the school lighting on lemons?

Morning tea time signalled that the kitchen is up and running as some of the students had peach turnovers they had made to eat. They smelt inviting though no one was prepared to share!

More room to dance!

Art and Construction

The Block Assembly today

Team Awesome students did an awesome job today at their 'The Block' themed assembly.

It began with Onslow College's band Retrospect playing - they are ex Raroa students and are looking to qualify by public vote for the national finals of Smokefree Rockquest (text Retrospect to 8466)

Next came The Block style building challenges - round 1 was teachers representing their houses - our own Mr Johnston was a super builder - scoring the gold medal. Mrs Collins came in a close second for silver!

I was so excited for Mr Johnston that I blurred the only picture!

The second building challenge involved a student from each house.

Assembly also featured the singing of the National Anthem, recognition of the 100 plus students who went to Sportsfest and the students involved in Mathswell, NIWA Science Fair and Tournament of the Minds which are all coming up in the next few weeks.
Congratulations to the assembly organising group - you did a fantastic job of representing Team Awesome today.

Gymnastics!

Students in team awesome have been enjoying our gymnastics sessions. It has  been great to see students develop their ability to land in a controlled way, develop floor skills, build strength and develop confidence!

Literacy - News Teams, SCARE Stories, Novel Studies and Assembly!

Our News Teams have been learning to create interesting and well researched news articles. They are starting to create some amazing blogs and websites to share their articles with the world. Have a look at the featured blogs on the side of this post. Soon some groups will start filming their news shows, I can't wait to see how they will turn out!

Our writers group are creating exciting SCARE stories (setting, character, action, reaction and ending). They are currently working on developing detail in their stories, adding in adjectives and well chosen nouns to make their writing more interesting.

Another bunch of students have also been working really hard on running this week's school Assembly. They have come up with the theme of "The Block Raroa". Can't wait to see it all come together!

Learning Street Opening

Today, Team Awesome students were amongst the first people to enter our new Learning Street. Located just outside of our block, the Learning Street is the end product of half a year's worth of construction. The space will become the working Hub for our DPE team as well as a break out space for all students across the school to come and share their ideas. 

The opening ceremony included a karakia and a blessing from Apotoro James Makowharemahihi, whose kind words celebrated the combined efforts of everyone who contributed to the building project. 



This week the DPE team will be moving all of the new equipment in, and we can't wait to experience the new space first-hand starting next week! 

Sexuality

Last week we started our sexuality lessons with a session which introduced the upcoming learning and set a safe environment for our future discussions.  Throughout the next three weeks we will be covering content within the following areas:

- Changing bodies and feelings
- Relationships
- Communication and Decision Making
- Reproduction
- Where can I go for support?

We encourage you to ask your child about what they are learning within sexuality. This week we are looking into the changes they will experience during puberty. Here are the Year 8's from Room 9 and 10 sorting statements about pubertal changes and discussing whether they are true or not. The discussions were very insightful!

PE- Gymnastics

Now that the hall is back in action, we have started gymnastics on Wednesdays and Fridays. We have enjoyed our first two sessions this week and are looking forward to progressing through the many different skills throughout the next four weeks.

Literacy Week 2- News Teams

In Team Awesome we have been learning about what makes a good news article, we are linking this in with our new inquiry and with the Olympics. As part of this, we have created our own news teams and have been researching current events, writing articles, meeting deadlines and earning money (on banqer) for our articles. It is very exciting and so far most of us are meeting our deadlines!

Throughout the term we will be broadcasting our news in a variety of different ways. Some on blogs, some on videos, some in paper print. Each week the Editors in Chief (Miss Morris and Miss O'Malley) will choose three articles which will be put to print on this very blog. The winning articles will earn their team a cool $100 on banqer.... Watch this space for some exciting news articles!

Intro to "Why Am I?" Inquiry

In the first term we asked "Ko Wai Au? Who Am I?", and this term we will build on the knowledge as we begin to explore the different aspects that make us the way we are. Our next focus statement: "Why Am I?" encompasses everything from body systems, to emotional well-being, to physical health and much more. Today, the students started to develop some "I wonder why..." questions as they took part in different experiences, curated by the teachers.

Some experiences included seeing the brains and hearts of sheep, experiencing virtual reality, testing the limits of our body, and thinking about how colours and art can affect how we feel.

Time to Share our games with Mahi Ako

It was a rush for some but most were successful - the need to get the games we had made completed ready to be played on Tuesday afternoon meant some of Team Awesome worked through lunchtime!

The games were set up and the visitors arrived ready to play!

There were squeals of excitement as winners were found! Recommendations were made - come and play this its fun!!

Thanks Mahi Ako - we enjoyed sharing with you.

Game play day!

Today was the exciting day that we officially got to play each others games! There are a wide variety of game themes ranging from shopping, to world travel, to murder mystery, to the Olympics! 

The teachers of Team Awesome are so impressed by the dedication and quality of work put in throughout this term and we are excited to share the games with people outside of our team. 

FINAL GAME DEVELOPMENT WEEK!

This week we are working extremely hard to create the final copies of our games ready to be played on Friday. We have been working hard in our groups to put all our research and learning from throughout this term into action. We have been solving any problems that come our way and creating some very exciting looking games. We're even creating our own boxes! 

Maths!

Students in Team Awesome have been continuing to learn about fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios during maths time. All four groups have been focused on developing new strategies and skills and students have been fully engaged in their learning.

In Miss Morris's maths group the students had a real treat, they were asked to apply their learning about proportions and ratios to work out fractions, percentages and ratios using M&M's. They then had to use the data they had collected to create a graph of their findings.