Category: Ako | Learn

Paired Research Challenge

LI: to research questions about your dinosaur including their habitat, diet, predators, and protection.

For Inquiry we learned about dinosaur and fossils. We were challenged to create a presentation that tells facts about the dinosaurs we found when we created our eggs and hatched them open which was a Ankylosaurus. In the presentation we included their habitat, diet and protection. An interesting fact we found in this activity is that ankylosaurus tail is super powerful and their body is covered in bony plates (osteoderms).

Fossils

LI: To understand how scientists know so much about dinosaurs.

LI: To recognise different types of fossils and how they are formed.

For this activity, we were challenged to get into a group and create a DLO explaining the difference between Trace fossils and body fossils. In the DLO we included examples, information about each topic and the meaning behind it. For an example: Trace fossils are leaving important evidence behind, footprint, trail, burrow and other things that are related. Body fossils are unexpected things like bones, dinosaur skeletons, shells of marine creatures etc. Something interesting about this activity is that trace fossils can be found in hills or hard surfaces.

Mary Anning

LI: To create a DLO that tells Mary Annings story from her perspective story.

For inquiry we learned about dinosaurs, fossils and paleontologists. We were challenged to create a story about Mary Anning who is known as a famous fossil hunter and paleontologist in 1811. We went into partners and created a google vid that tells us about what happened and what she did during being a palaeontologist. Something I found interesting was Mary Anning was the only person who survived when the lightning struck, and when her father passed away and they were poor so she started to sell her fossils she had found in cliffs and in the beaches in Lyme Regis in England to carry on her fathers career.

Paleontologist

For inquiry, we watched a video showing paleontologists digging for dinosaurs. We learned about what a paleontologist is and what they do. For this activity we were challenged to create a 50 word statement that tells us what paleontology is and what palaeontologists do on a DLO but the challenge was that we couldn’t use over or under 50 words. One fact we found interesting is that Mary Anning was the first ever palaeontologist to find a fossil or a paleontologist has to examine fossils to identify what type of fossils it is.

Prime and Composite numbers

LI: How to identify prime and composite numbers.

For Maths, Group 1 learned about prime and composite numbers. We learnt about the difference between prime numbers and composite numbers; Prime numbers are numbers that can be multiplied by 1 and itself and Composite numbers are numbers that can only be divided evenly (it has other multiples than itself and 1). An example of a prime number is 17 can only be divided by another number because the number 17 has only two factors which are 1 and 17. A composite number is 22 because it has more than 2 factors which are 1,2,11,22. This led us to making a DLO explaining what the difference between prime and composite numbers is and adding examples/questions. I enjoyed doing this because it helps us understand the meaning. Something I learnt when learning about this equation is, a factor is a value that can divide a number evenly.

Why Maungrei sleeps – Pourquoi Story

Many hundreds of years ago in a country across the sea, there lived a volcano named Maungarei, the fire mountain. She had woken up from her dream, and she was activated to cause eruptions to happen since it was about her vision. As she took over with her anger, she started a rumble that was sending her to make the other volcanoes erupt. One of the volcanoes she sent erupted that caused 100 people to die. The problem that caused the eruption to happen was the gas coming out to ruin the buildings near her. Maungarei, the fire mountain, was angry because the people were walking on her maunga which made her temperature expand to make her explode.

Maungarei the fire mountain was a middle child in her small family. Her and the sister were so close, especially their brothers, they would always hang out until one day they left her all alone when she was asleep. After realising, the middle child is hard. It makes her feel cringed, annoyed and loud which causes the family to stay away from her. Maungarei, the fire mountain was solved from seeing her lovely family again, but there was one thing. Her parents came back with a newborn baby boy. They said they adopted him from the doctors for Maungarei to not be the middle child. Maungarei, the fire mountain, was confused and happy at the same time.

That made her think why would they adopt a new baby and bring it to me? Maungarei, the fire mountain, decided to go to sleep because if her heart got broken she would be able to erupt once again and lava would go all around the cities and buildings around her, that makes the gas flow high into the sky, passing the clouds, higher than the planes can go. And she didn’t want that to happen, so she tried calming herself down with the baby brother until One night he started crying. Maungarei was stressed out because she didn’t know what to do, so she decided to move around, crushing down all buildings to return the baby brother back to its local place. She started to feel like she needed to rest, so she collapsed in front of a city and stayed there until her parents arrived back. A clever animal was climbing on her maunga, comforting her as it thought it was painful. Maungarei and the clever animal started a conversation. Maungarei assumed 

“Hello my name is Maungarei, the fire mountain. What is your name?”. The clever animal responded back with

“That is a cool name! My name is the clever warriors”. 

The clever warriors asked 

“Why are you in this spot? Aren’t you supposed to be there?”.

 Maungarei, the fire mountain, replied with 

“I’m here because I was looking for my family and where to return the baby”.

Maungari, the fire mountain, went back to sleep. You’re wondering who taught Maungarei how to sleep? Years ago when she was born, her mother and father decided to teach her some skills as she grew older and older, the first thing they taught was how to fall asleep and to not erupt, her mother and father tried explaining it to her and moved her around. They have been practising this for a long time until she finally found out how to. One day, her behavior changed into not worrying at all and to instead be happy and carry on her journeys because when she first met that clever animal (The clever warriors) she remembered him saying 

“Don’t look back at the past, think about the future and don’t doubt yourself”.

When Maungarei, the fire of the mountain started to sleep, the town and cities were far too quiet, people not walking on the maunga (thinking it would erupt once again). But as days went by the news came on saying that the Maungarei Mountain has been dormant which means it will not erupt. Everyone felt safe and happy when they heard those words come out of his mouths clearly and respectfully. The Maungarei Mountain was safe to go for a walk and everyone went for an exercise, started playing sports on its ground, people went shopping, went to the cities, playing outside which was sorted out peacefully because of the clever warrior. The next day, everyone was going out, touching the maunga with respect, feeling happy and saying respectful words to its grounding.  The world emerged from the shadow of the volcano with a renewed sense of hope and resilience. People were indeed over shared experiences, and there was a collective commitment to protect the environment and promote harmony with nature.  As the people around her are living peacefully, Maungarei the fire of the mountain remains to keep her eyes closed until she erupts once again. They should all remember that her heart is still alive and will continue to beat.

My Image I created using AI prompts :

For this writing task, we have been learning about Pourqoui stories. Pourqouri stories is a type of folktale that explains why something happens or exsists. For example: why are kangaroos tall? Kangaroos are tall because they have long and strong legs which are powerful. Sometimes pourquoi stories are belief of different types of cultures (include powerful words, past tense and dialouges).  We made a pourquoi story about why maungarei sleeps, and then we got to have some fun after we completed it and made an image on Adobe express. For Adobe Express we used it for generating a image using prompts that explains about maungarei sleeping/resting as in a volcano, when we do our prompts it will appear with lots of images. I wrote in my prompts “A angry fire mountain called Maungarei with it’s eyes and mouths closed”. I tried using powerful and understanding words in my prompts because I usually get a image of just a volcano exploding or a normal volcano.

Volcanic Eruption Animation

For inquiry we learned about volcanoes and what are the different types. What causes a volcanic eruption? The volcano erupts when 2 tectonic plates crash and touch each other that can make the magma rise to the Earth’s surface which can rise and flow out onto the flat surface of land (that can cause damage to buildings and people, etc…). While it’s erupting, the gas goes everywhere including it going higher than the clouds are usually at. Once the pressure is high enough, the magma erupts which could push through the volcano’s vent. What are the 4 types/differences of volcanoes? The 4 types of volcanoes are shield, cinder cone, composite (another word is stratovolcanoes and lava domes. I enjoyed doing this activity because I get to learn information about volcanoes by watching the videos and using our smart searching skills.

Volcanoes

For this activity, LS2 learned about the 4 different types of volcanoes (Cone, Dome, Shield and Caldera). Our challenge for this activity was to use our smart searching skills to find information about the volcanoes, an example is Mount Saint Helens is a composite volcano. A composite volcano also known as startovolcano is a steep sided (cone shaped) volcano that is formed/created by layers of lava, ash, gas etc…

In groups of 3 or 4, this lead us to making a poster about volcanoes by using Canva (which is a website you can design and create). In this poster, it talks about the meaning of the 4 different volcanoes cone volcanoes are shaped like a cone that has steep sides, Dome volcanoes is a shaped like a rounded hill, Shield volcanoes is wide and includes a slope and caldera is a large hole that is related to the Earth’s surface formed for when the volcano erupts.

I enjoyed doing this activity because we can learn from and with each other by collaborating. Something I learned from this activity is that volcanoes are not the same because some have different kind of shapes.

Diary WW1

LI: To retell an event in history through the fictional eyes of someone who was there.

For this activity, we’ve been looking at a text that took place in ANZAC (World War 1) on the 25th of April 1915. We watched a video about their life or what it looked like in the trenches also about Hami Grace’s diary that was read from one of the soilders who participated in the war. Learning about this helped us write our own diary together as a reading group. We used Google Videos to record our own self reading the diary entries we created and tell them about I enjoyed using this as it allowed me to learn about what happened during world war 1. Something I found interesting about this task was when watching the video, I realised how tight the trenches were for all soilders to fit in.

Time Travelers Podcast

For this activity we were challenged to create a podcast about Reverend Samuel Marsden. We have used our Inquiry knowledge to help us write questions that we might have asked Reverend Samuel Marsden if we had a chance. On Adobe Expressed we used Podcast to record our voices and script we have created. For our role Brooke, Melle and Haloti were the hosts and Mareta was Revered Samuel Marsden. I enjoyed doing this activity because we participated and took turns saying our script.

Something I have learned is that when we read our script we have to use expression because if we don’t people won’t be interested.