THE FLYING FISH - MAKING CHALLENGE

We had an absolute blast on Friday!

Mrs Lunn read us the book called the Flying Fish.  It was about a boy who made a kite that looked like a fish.  We decided that WE would like to make kites too!

Mrs Lunn and Mrs Ruawai introduced us to Te Ako Ritenga.  This is the Riverdale School Learning Process Model.  It comprises of five different stages - hook, wonder, explore, act, and reflect.  The great part about Te Ako Ritenga, is that you can move forwards and backwards through the stages if and when you wish.  At the moment, the teachers will teach us the whole process in a linear order so we get use to what is involved at each stage.  Over the year we have done various parts of Te Ako Ritenga but over a longer period of time so THIS time we are doing the stages in quick succession so we can learn to go through the process by ourselves...

After Mrs Lunn read The Flying Fish, we were HOOKed!

First we WONDERed what we would need to find out to be able to make our kites.  Within our groups we came up with questions like..

• What materials would we need?
• How do we make the kites fly?
• How long is 30cm?
• Where will get the materials from?
• How will a kite fly if there is no wind?

We shared our WONDERings with the rest of the class.

Our next step was to EXPLORE our WONDERings.  During this phase we were able to explore measuring with rulers, we watched a video on how to fly a kite and were even learnt how to take notes on what we were watching.  This is a pretty fancy skill for us.  It involves us taking in all the information and processing it to find out the most relevant information that would help us.  We had a look at a variety of kite designs and decided amongst our group how we were going to build our kite.  

Next we drew a plan of our kites...

We spent ages planning and constructing our kites.  The teachers were very impressed with how we were able to use all the information that we found out in the EXPLORE phase, to make our kites.  Some of us made kites with a keel.  Some of us made kites with a support that when across the wings of the kite.  Keira made a spool for her kite.  What competent learners we are.

After we finished our kites it was time to ACT.  We held a Kite Festival outside of our class.  We were able to REFLECT on the success of our kites.  Some kites flew, some didn't, some were too short and some fell apart.  It was great fun and we learnt a lot too!