Presentation Day for Shade

As you can see this is our Tagxedo.

 

On Friday, Mark, Debi and Kaela Rush came to our school to meet the year 7's and 8. We showed them our presentation and we talked to them about our school and how they can help us to create shade over our playground.  Here's our Prezi presentation.

We felt our presentation went good because they agreed with us most of the time.  We thought the pikelets were a nice touch and we enjoyed making them to calm down our nerves.  

They were really kind and were a great audience.  We did pretty well in representing our school and really enjoyed the experience.  It was exciting to be able to talk with such successful business people!

(Click photo to enlarge:  Here's us giving the presentation and taking everyone on a tour of the school.  We were so proud and even popped some sparkling grape juice to celebrate!)

By Fatima and Hana

Piping Hot Pikelets

Today the year 7 and 8 students made pikelets in preparation for our guests arriving.

We followed the recipe in the Edmonds Cookbook (a real Kiwi favourite!) and worked together to make the tight deadline perfectly.  After four batches we were well and truely ready to tuck into them... the pikelets were delicious, even if we do say so ourselves.

Click to enlarge (collage made with Picasa)

Notice the yellow goop?  We whipped the cream in the bottle (Miss H didn't think to bring a beater, whoops!) by separating it into two lots - when we shook the bottle for two long we found ourselves with butter!!

The leaders involved will update you on all the exciting details from our presentation (hopefully on Monday.)

A visit from a Biologist!

On Friday, during the second block, Annette came over to share her insect presentation with us. Annette is a biologist from the University of Auckland and she spends a lot of time studying insects.

First she shared a Powerpoint about what types of insects live in different areas and told us how to classify if a creature is an insect or not. We learnt that insects always have 6 legs, 2 antanae and 3 body parts (head, abdomen and thorax) - which means that spiders aren't even insects! We also learnt that bugs are a certain type of insect, which means that not all insects are bugs! All of these creatures though are called invertebrates because they don't have a backbone, instead they have an exoskeleton (their 'bones' are on the outside instead of being on the inside, like the are with humans and animals.) We asked lots of good questions were able to answer some of the ones she asked us.

Then, we were tested on our knowledge. Annette gave us little containers that had creatures inside them. We had to decide whether the creatures were insects or just invertebrates, and note down special characteristics (exactly what they were.) Some of the insects were saw were alive! There was a big selection, including a monarch butterfly, a white-tailed spider (NZ's main poisonous spider), an earwig and baby cockroaches. We had fun trying to recognise what they were but some of us were creeped out by the live insects - especially the spider!

We were also shown a little bottle filled with alcohol and lots of dead invertebrates. These are known as pitfall traps. They are placed in the ground and the invertebrates fall into the trap over a period of days, and show the scientists the insects that are in the area. The pitfall trap that Annette showed us came from Motatapu Island and had lots of scary spiders (called arachnids.)

She also showed us a collection of insects that she'd caught and found herself, and that she'd pinned herself in a wooden box. They were all labeled and looked amazing.

We really enjoyed having Annette along to Learning Hub 3 and hope she comes back again. It was great to hear from a real biologist and it was clear that she knew a lot about invertebrates!

By Craig and Ben

Insects with Annette! on PhotoPeach

School sports uniform presentation

In term 2 Hub 3 started doing P.E and we had to get changed, we did not have a school sports uniform, so we brought our own old clothes. Damien, Fatima and Dani one day thought that we should have a school sports uniform. So Miss Holland suggested that we do a P.M.I presentation and present it to the Friends of Stonefields School, the Board of Trustee's and Miss Martin (she's our principal) Then after that, Miss Martin asked us if we would like to be in the design process of the school sports uniform! We were definitely going to say yes!

We were so excited, we were so privileged that we could help make the school sports uniform happen and be the first learners to present at the FOSS (Friends of Stonefields School) meeting! That night at the meeting, we presented our Prezi and everyone agreed with us. We should have a sports uniform because of a lot of reasons but our favourite reason is that it will represent our school at races, will look much more smart and will be more comfortable because not all of us have enough good exercise clothing at home.

We got to look at some sample uniforms and are going to be involved in helping to design the uniform and decide which one we get.

We think we need shirts with sleeves for sun protection (and most of FOSS agreed with us) but some people think short sleeves look sportier. What do you think is the best option? and why do you think that?

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

See ya!

Fatima and Dani

PMI about sports uniform on Prezi