Waste Audit

We have signed up to become a Waste wise school. This means we are going to do everything we can to reduce the waste we create at school. Today we did a "Waste Audit" with Shelley from the Auckland Council. We kept the waste generated over a week and sorted it into different categories. Then we weighed and measured the different sort of waste we had. We found that we recycled a lot of paper, glass, tins and food. We also discovered we put a lot of paper and food into the wheelie bins which goes to the landfill. The most unusual things we found in the school rubbish were a dead bird and a baby's nappy.

Cleaning out the Worm Farm

Last week Room 5 decided the worm farm needed to be emptied because the shredded paper and food scraps we had been putting in were overflowing. So the class spread out a cover and emptied it completely. We put lots of the worms in two buckets to put back and dug out all the wormacast at the bottom. There was a lot! We spread it in the garden and then put the worms back and the food scraps and shredded paper that hadn't been used by the worms. There were thousands of worms so they must be content and healthy in their environment.

World of Maths

This week we were lucky to have a visit from "The World of Maths." There were a lot of hands on activities spread around the room and we had to use our skills to solve the problems and work out the answers. Some of the activities were pretty difficult. We liked the Hexagon Haunt which involved putting hexagons in the correct place. There were three different ways to do it and it involved a lot of trial and error to get them in the right place. The activities showed us how maths is used in our everyday life in lots of different ways.

The Fish Philosophy

This year the senior students are learning how we can use the main ideas in the "Fish Philosophy" to improve the class atmosphere and make our learning environment a positive and happy place. The four main ideas are:
Choose your attitude: It's about accepting responsibility for the choices you make.
Play: It's about having fun, enjoying yourself, being spontaneous and creative.
Make their Day: It's about doing somethings special for others.
Be There: It's about being focused on the person or task you are working on.
Every day we discuss what we have done to make our classroom a positive place to learn not just for ourselves but for others as well.

Bikewise

It's bikewise month and we have started the year learning the rules for cyclists and how we can cycle safely on the road. Senior Constable Watt has visited us and given us a practical test which we carried out on the tennis courts. We could get a maximum of 10 points if we did everything we should have. Most of the class scored 0 or 1 or 2. Three of our class scored 3 or 4. 4 was the top score. Now we have 3 weeks to practice our skills before Mr Watt returns to retest us. We have lots to learn. Using signals and knowing when to give way are areas we need to improve.