MAKE IT MONDAY - RESCUING RAPUNZEL

You will NEVER guess what happened today!  We got a letter from Rapunzel asking us for help!

How could we say no to Rapunzel?  She needed our help!  We said YES, we would LOVE to help!

First we had to WONDER about all the things we needed to know before we could get started helping Rapunzel.  We came up with lots of questions like...

• How tall is a metre?
• How can we make our invention move slowly?
• What safety features can we add in to our invention?
• How could we make our invention creative?

After we had brainstormed all our ideas and questions, we went into Wonderland to EXPLORE.  There were lots of activities set up so we could find out about time, length and more about Rapunzel.

Some of us put on puppet shows of the story of Rapunzel,

We learnt how to tell the time and to decide if something was fast or slow. 

We practised drawing the hands on clocks.

Look how busy we are interacting with our friends and learning new things!

One of the activities we could do during EXPLORE was to design a Princess Dress.  

We loved this activity!

Mrs Lunn printed out a story of Rapunzel.  She was a bit cheeky and mixed all the pages up!  We had to read the pages and put it back in the right order.

The kids played a game where they had to draw the hands on clocks.  We are getting pretty good at remembering that when it is something o'clock, the long minute hand touches the number 12.

Once we thought we had learnt everything we needed, we check-pointed ourselves to see if we were ready to go ACT.

During the ACT stage we drew plans of what we thought we would make to rescue Rapunzel.  Then it was time to make (we actually love that part the best)

 There were all sorts of solutions to Rapunzel's problem.  We made escalators, elevators, slides,  stairs, tunnels, ramps and Royce even made a plane for the Prince to fly up and rescue Rapunzel!

Ryla made some lovely clothing options for Rapunzel.

The boys were so hard to create their invention.

Oliver H and his group decided to act out the story of Rapunzel, the one that they had put in the right order from EXPLORE.  Mrs Lunn helped Oliver made a lovely Rapunzel wig.

After Mika finished with his group, he helped Mrs Lunn make a 1 metre tall tower for Rapunzel.  We needed this to see if we met the success criteria during the REFLECT part of the process.

We each got a chance to share our inventions with the class.  We were able to shared what we had made, how we had made it and whether or not it had met the success criteria.

  Mika was very helpful checking if it was the right height.

The boys shared their play with us...

 Rapunzel told us that she would look on the blog to see our ideas.  We hope you find something useful Rapunzel!

Love from Piako Rua

MAKE IT MONDAY - RUBBISH ROBOT CHALLENGE

The kids at Riverdale have been littering in the playground quite a bit lately.  

We decided something HAS to be done!

Keira and Holly H came up with the Rubbish Robot Challenge.  

They presented us with the challenge today...

The girls showed us a video about all the plastic and styrofoam that ends up in the oceans.

We WONDERED what we could do to help with the rubbish around the school.  We spent some time with our group brainstorming all our ideas on what we needed to know to make our robot and to met the success criteria.

Next we went through to EXPLORE.  This is were we find out all the answers to our questions.  The teachers had also set up the Bee-Bots for us to practise our coding.

In EXPLORE, we watched videos on Ocean Pollution.

After we EXPLORED and had gathered all the information we needed, we went to meet Mrs Kenyon at the REFLECT Checkpoint.  We had to prove that we are ready to move into the ACT phase.



Now here comes the messy part... ACT!  We love this bit!  It's time to make our robots.  First we make a plan and list all the materials that we will need and then we set to work.

Here are a few of our finished Rubbish Robots...

In the afternoon we assess our Rubbish Robots against the success criteria.  Our teachers are so impressed with how honest we are when we are assessing our robots. 

BEYBLADE CHALLENGE

Today Connor and Dominic challenged the children to make a Beyblade.  They came up with the success criteria all by themselves.  We were very impressed with how confidently Dominic explained to the children what they needed to do.

The Lighthouse keeper challenge

After being read the story "Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch" the children were challenged too build a way of getting food from a boat to the lighthouse without leaving the boat.
They needed to be able to explain the way the design worked and assess against a set of success criteria.
They were allowed to use any material they could find in the classroom including blocks, lego, paper, mobilo.
They could choose who to work with.
Here are some of the groups at work!

These girls worked out a way to check their boat was one meter away from the lighthouse!