Battery Hens or Cage Fighting?

So the latest update on the rebuild is that the wall outside our classroom is being moved closer and a cage has been put on the walkway (for our safety, of course).

When Mr Rogers said that the new building was getting closer this is not what I imagined! Still, it's going to be great when the new buildings are finished!

This is the HUGE crane they used to shift the wall (Donald Trump would be proud!)

Friday Sport 04/08/17

After all the rain and snow we have had over the last few weeks it was great to get outside and have our Winter Sport Tournament on Friday.

Here are some pictures taken by Ruby (7Sh), Josh (8Gb) and Jakita (8Gb):

Timelapse of the Construction Site

Leigh's Construction have developed a website that has an image of our building site updated every 15 minutes during daylight hours.


To access this site click on: Construction

The Road to Nowhere

In my last post about the rebuild I said that we can't wait for them to start building something . . . ANYTHING.

Well, I forgot to mention that they have started building something . . . the path from J Block to S Block. 

It seems to be taking a while for this project to be completed, and as the S Block end of the new path is now blocked off it simply makes it harder to get from J Block to the rest of the school. 

Not that we are complaining at J Block, but I wonder what will be opened first: the path to S Block or State Highway 1 to Picton.

Rebuild Progress So Far

When we returned from the Term 1 holidays we found ourselves fenced and walled in, as if Donald Trump had invaded J-Block.









We weren't sure whether we were re-building a school or establishing a deer farm!

Then they started cutting down our trees.

Fortunately President Trump has told us that Global Warming is "fake news", so who needs trees anyway?



Actually . . .  WE DO

Then they demolished the old Administration block . . .

. . . except for the strongroom, which still appears "safe".

Next they took down our covered walkway 

 . . . followed closely by our old library (finally, as it's been closed for ages).

It's all becoming very exciting . . . after the "hurry up and wait" from Term 1 we are really seeing some true progress in Term 2.

We now can't wait for them to clear away the rubble and start actually BUILDING something . . . ANYTHING.

High Impact - Explaining Force

This is an example of what our "High Impact" blog posts should look like:

FORCE

Force is the amount of energy needed to move an object from a state of rest to one of motion. That is, if I want to move an object that is standing still I need to add some force to it.

We see this when we kick a football. The ball might be sitting on the ground, but the force from kicking it pushes it away from me. The greater the force (i.e. the harder I kick the ball) the faster it accelerates away from me.

Kete: High Impact

In our High Impact Kete we are learning about the physical world and how forces and motion impact on our daily lives.


One of the key contexts we are using for this learning is marble runs. We are learning about potential and kinetic energy, and we are exploring how gravity, friction, wind resistance and centrifugal force all impact on our marble runs.

On Friday 5 May we undertook our first task - to see the longest time we could keep our marbles

in motion.

Here are some photos of our constructions:

                           The team who won the first challenge
                           (at 24.9 seconds) was Team 5:

                           Loishane, Deianira, Jade, Shonte and Nadia.


 Here is a video of their prize-winning marble run in action:

In this digital world it is great to see the girls making good use of books in their learning 😀

Class Treaty 2017

At the beginning of Term 1, as part of our "We Are Hornby" kete, we looked at the Hornby High School values of:
                     Commitment
                     Achievement
                     Resilience
                     Respect

As we had just celebrated Waitangi Day, we decided to write our own Class Treaty to describe how we will demonstrate these values. This is the contents of our Treaty, which we all signed:

We also discussed the Treaty of Waitangi and the problems that have occurred over the years because both parties to the Treaty had different interpretations of the documents they signed. The wording was not clear.

This showed us that we need to make our own writing really clear so that when people read what we have written they understand what we are trying to say. We need to write with our readers in mind.

Haere Mai 2017

This is the first post on this blog for 2017. A special welcome goes to the 32 students in 8Mt and their families and whanau. I have been getting to know the students a bit better over the past three weeks, and 2017 looks set to be a great year!

I have updated the links to student blogs at the right of this blog. This will take readers to the learning blogs of each student in 8Mt. Over the year we will be posting evidence of our learning, and we welcome comments from our friends, family and whanau.