Finding the Line of Symmetry

Wow, it's term FOUR already!

We've started learning about TRANSFORMATION.  We had a think about what that might mean.  Tom and Tigue mentioned the words moving and changing.  Deacon mentioned the Transformers and that they change into different things.  Well done guys.  Between you, you put your prior knowledge to great use to work out something new.  What a team!

The first stage is learning about symmetry.  This is when something is exactly the same on both sides of the line just as though there is a mirror on the line.

We looked at lots of different things and put them on the right chart.  You can see our charts hanging up in Room 4.  Mr Graham was putting up some new lines for displaying our learning in Room 4 so we looked at him to see if he was symmetrical.  Koby held the metre rule up to show the middle of Mr Graham and we looked carefully at each side of the line.  What do you think?

At first glance he does have a line of symmetry like most other people.  He has an eye, an ear, an arm and a leg on each side of the line.  BUT his left pocket has a black patch and the right pocket doesn't AND his right shirt sleeve is hanging down but his left shirt sleeve isn't.  Sorry Mr Graham, you are not symmetrical today.

Here are some photos of us exploring some pictures and letters to see if they have a line of symmetry.  Some things have more than one line of symmetry.  See if you can spot them.

Clocks look like they should be symmetrical but Tigue found out that some are not because the numbers are different on each side of the line.

Luke wasn't caught out by the tricky letter 'B'.  When he put the stick on the line, he found out that the lower curve is fatter than the upper curve.  Well done Luke.

Isaiah drew in the line on the bunch of balloons and discovered that they are slightly different on each side.

Steven looked very carefully on each side of his stick line to work out whether this image was symmetrical.

Koby carefully lined up the stick down the middle of the little letter 'i' and found out that it was symmetrical after all!

After we finished, we got together with a learning buddy to share the pictures we had chosen and showed the lines of symmetry if there were any.

Tom and Charlotte are sharing their learning.

We'll be learning more about lines of symmetry this coming Friday.  I wonder where we might see symmetrical patterns around school?

Ka kite ano

Room 4

An electric last day in Term 3

There was an awful lot happening last Friday. Hopefully you were able to come and see us wearing our kabuto hats and waving our koi carb kites at the cultural expo.  Some of us were wearing Kimonos too and we looked particularly gorgeous! Unfortunately, with all the excitement, we forgot to take any photos.  Oooops, sorry!  But here are a couple of photos taken while we were creating the hats and kites.

We were so very lucky that Miho was able to bring some kimonos for some of us to wear but, of course, there were many of us that weren't able to wear one.  Steven had learned so much about kimonos when he researched Japanese clothing so Miho very kindly brought a kimono today for Steven to try on. 

He looks pretty cool!  Sora used his expert knowledge to help Steven get dressed.  Thanks Sora.

The electric part of the day happened after lunch.  We learned why birds can stand on high voltage power cables without getting zapped and we learned about how static electricity attracts and repels things.  (Attract means to make something come nearer and repel means to make something move away)  

Then ...


We had a huge amount of fun creating lots of static electricity ourselves.  We wondered if our new hair styles would attract lots of attention as we left school!!

We managed to create so much static electricity that we made the balloons stick to our hair by themselves!

It looks like Lindsay is being pushed over by the balloon!

"Caleb, there seems to be something stuck to your head!"

"Goodness me Tom, your hair seems to have grabbed your balloon!"

Salesi had a little knot in his hair after all the static electricity got to it.

Briah's balloon is staying on the narrow ledge by itself.

Luke's balloon is stuck too AND it is glowing because the sun is shining through it. Cool!

See you again next term.


Room 4.

カエル Frogs!

Konnichiwa.   こんにちは。Hello

We've had such a great week with our inquiry into Japanese culture and celebrations. 

We found out lots about schools in Japan, including that school in Japan usually starts at 8 o'clock in the morning!  We've been making koi kites (Japanese carp) used to celebrate Children's Day.  They are hanging in the classroom and look just fantastic!! 

Sora's mother, Miho, came to visit and taught us how to make frogs  カエル  and a special type of hat called a kabuto  兜, 冑

We also learned how to write our names in Japanese.  It was kind of challenging writing down the page instead of from left to right the way we usually do it. But such fun and we're very proud of our learning.

We have lots and lots of photos so you can see what fun we had.  But we're not showing you the finished products yet!!  We hope you will come next Friday afternoon to see us at Bradford's Fabulous Cultural Expo so you can see them first hand.  We will put photos on the blog after that though, just in case you can't make it on Friday.

Our thanks to Cairo from Room 5 for taking the photos and to Nat from Room 6, Mel (Deacon's mum) and Leanne who helped us heaps with the tricky folds.  Plus extra special thanks to Miho for all her hard work to prepare for our learning and teaching us.

Here's a sneaky peek ...

Look at how hard we are concentrating on the instructions!

You can certainly tell where Miho is standing because we're all looking straight at her!

  

Sayonara    さよなら。     Good-bye

Some things are more likely than others ...

We've been learning about probability.  That's when we work out that some things are more likely to happen than others.    Last week we learned some words to show how likely we think it is that something will happen.  The first three words were certain, impossible and possible.

If it's Monday today, then it is CERTAIN to be Tuesday tomorrow.  It's IMPOSSIBLE that it will be Friday tomorrow (Unfortunately!!)  

If I throw a normal dice with 1 - 6 dot patterns on it, it is POSSIBLE that I might throw a 4. Then we talked about two more words, unlikely and probably.  After some investigation and discussion we put the words in order with the word that meant MOST likely to happen at the top down to LEAST likely at the bottom.

This is how we ordered the words.

CERTAIN

PROBABLE

POSSIBLE

UNLIKELY

IMPOSSIBLE

Have a go at working out which of these words go with the following statements.

1. Someone at Bradford will leave an item of clothing in the library on Tuesday.
2. Someone in Room 4 will have an apple for lunch on Tuesday.
3. Everyone in Room 4 will have an apple for lunch on Tuesday.
4. It will rain on Wednesday.
5. Mrs Mitchell-Bain will wear boots on Wednesday.
6. A cat will come to school on Friday.
7. A monkey will come to school on Friday.
8. It will snow on Thursday.
9. Someone in Room 5 will bring a scooter to school on Thursday.

This week we put some of our new words to good use by playing some cool games.   

We played Bunny Hop where you toss a coin and move your counter according to whether the coin comes up heads of tails.

On Friday we learned two more games.  They are fun to play but they aren't very fair!  This one is called Doubles.  You play in pairs and take turns throwing dice.  If the two dice show the same number (Doubles) Player B takes 5 cubes from Player A.  If the dice show different numbers (Not Doubles) then Player A takes just 1 cube from Player B.   Which player do you think is MORE LIKELY to win?  The winner is the player with the most cubes after 20 throws of the dice.  So we got to practise some learning from last term (counting with tally marks) at the same time.  Aren't we clever!

It looks rather like Josh is about to win.  But you just never know.  It's only PROBABLE.  Not CERTAIN.

Another fun game is Duck Racing.  No, we didn't have feathery creatures waddling around the classroom!  This game involves taking turns to pick numbers from 2 to 12.  Then you throw dice and move the 'duck' that is on that number.  The player that put their colour bean on the duck that makes it to the gate first is the winner.  

Which numbers do you think came up MORE OFTEN?  Is that fair?  
Have a look at the photos to see if your predictions are similar to some of the outcomes in Room 4.

Well Room 4, it's highly likely that I will see you again on Friday.  It's also possible that I might see you before then so keep your eyes open!!
Mrs B
 

Same but Different

We've been learning about a way of showing that things can have similarities and differences.  It's called a Venn diagram.  We made two Venn diagrams on Friday.  The first one was quite large. 

We went up onto the court and everyone was given a little picture.  Some of us got a picture of a kitten, some got a picture of a puppy and some of us got a picture of a kitten AND a puppy.  Can you work out who got which picture?

The Dodgy Duckling

After morning tea we read "The Dodgy Duckling" again.  It's a New Zealand version of the traditional tale, "The Ugly Duckling".  

In the Kiwiana version, the extra large egg turns out to be ... 

a Kiwi.  He's big and has floppy feet and a long, pointy beak.  He can't catch dragonflies like the ducklings and when he tries to learn to swim, he sinks to the bottom of the pond like a soggy kumara.  He is described as being as blind as a short tailed bat and gets teased and laughed at for being different.  
The poor old dodgy duckling wanders off and finds a dark cave for a long sleep.  When he wakes up, it's night time and he is so excited because he can see!  He spots another bird strolling past and finds out that he isn't a dodgy duckling after all.  He's a cracker looking kiwi!!

We used another Venn diagram to show that, while the kiwi and the ducklings had some differences, they had many similarities too.  

During the Olympics we learned a little bit about many different countries.  Now we're going to be learning lots about Japan which is a country that is very special to a student in Room 4 and his family.  We're looking forward to learning some more about being a New Zealander and some of the similarities and differences between living in New Zealand and living in Japan.

See you next week Room 4.  Don't forget to ask at home for help to email me when you find out the name for the line that goes all the way around the middle of the earth.  Ms Little has my email address.
Remember there's a wee prize for anyone that emails me with the right answer before next Friday the 24th ...
Mrs B :) 

100m Sprints

Last week we watched clips of Usain Bolt winning a gold medal in the 100m sprint.  So on Friday we had a go ourselves.

First we had to carry on learning about measurement.  All that knowledge about measuring using non-standard units like cubes and rods came in very useful as we learned how to measure things in centimetres (or cm as we now know we can write it). 

Then we discovered that there are 100 cm on the big school rulers and we found out that 100cm is also known as 1 metre (1 m).  That came in really useful too because we worked out that we would need to put the big school ruler down 100 times to workout how far to run for the 100m race. 

After lunch we wandered up to the top field and began by estimating where we thought 100m would be.  It was really tricky. 

Luke had a great plan.  He used really big steps and counted to 100. 

 

There's Luke standing on the right of the picture.

It was an awesome plan Luke.  It turns out that Luke's stride was about 50cm.  (Hmmm - that's something we could have fun checking!)  When we used the 1m rulers to measure the distance, we discovered that it was only 50m to nearly the end of the field. 

We considered our options.  Isaac suggested that we head towards the bank on the other side and measure another 50m around the field.  Great suggestion Isaac.  That would have been a great solution to our problem.  Trouble is that the ground is rather boggy over that way.  Luke suggested putting a marker down and running straight back to the start line.  So that's what we did. 

Really, really fast.  Well ... not quite so fast as Usain Bolt but we think we did pretty well. 

I wonder just how far we can stride.  Lets find out ...