A Glimpse into Child Labour

In order to get the feel of what it may be like to be a child who HAS to work in difficult conditions, for long hours and for very little pay, the kids in Year 3 and 4 carried out 5 different 'child labour' activities.

The students were asked to 'put themselves into the shoes' of less fortunate children who are forced into labour, while the teachers took the role of the bossy manager in charge of quality control.

Here's a quick clip of children sorting grains of rice.

Here's one children washing clothed by hand.

From our inquiries, we've found that children how have to work are not able to go to school to get an education and a brighter, more rewarding future.

These kids are carrying water for their families.  They have no shoes and have to travel a long way so they can't go to school very often.

We're looking forward to helping some less fortunate children in Cambodia and the Green Gecko  Project.  Help us raise money to buy them what they need to get a good education and stay off the streets.   

COME TO THE ART AUCTION - 6.30pm, Friday, 2nd December.

Silent Art Auction

Art Auction is Looming

COME ALONG TO SUPPORT AND CELEBRATE

Spread the word, bring your friends and family.

2nd December

Friday 6pm - 7.30pm

 

The artworks are varied and really looking fantasic.  The art is very meaningful as all the kids have been involved and ready to hang on your wall.

Maths - Old School Style

In the past 2 weeks we've been adding 2 digit numbers using the 'Old School Style' WORKING FORM.  The kids have shown sound place value knowledge of hundreds, tens and ones so we were able to learn this quick was of adding.

 These three boys rolled two dice, wrote down the number, rolled again and added them together.  They repeated this for 5 minutes, adding the next 2-digit number they rolled to make a CUMULATIVE TOTAL.

 Working together to get the correct answer.

At the end, we had mini competitions - great fun and excellent practice.  WELL DONE GUYS!

Child Labout PMI

Positives   Minus   Interesting

That's what the kids in Room 10 have had to think about when they've read different stories of children working in different conditions around the world.

Come in and check out our posters.  Here's a glimpse at few posters we made using 'Pages' on the laptops.

  By Eden

 

By Olivia

 By Rosie

GREEN GECKO PROJECT : Kim Suan's Story

Our Social Inquiry topic this term is about Child Labour. We will be learning that children all around the world have to do different amounts and kinds of work for many different reasons.
Many children have to work full time to help their families and miss out on education and learning but there are ways to increase their options and break the child labour cycle.

To make a difference and get involved, we will be having an art auction in Week 6 to raise money for The Green Gecko Project in Cambodia. http://www.greengeckoproject.org/

Check out this Video: The Beginning of The Green Gecko Home School in Cambodia

Planet Painting for the Wearable Arts Show

Over the last week, Room 10 have helped out the Senior students by creating and painting props to hang up on the stage and runway at the World of Wearablearts (WOW) Show happening this week.   The kids got to research the planets and paint cooperatively using their learnt painting techniques.

The Show is set in 2100 with Astronauts looking back at an EXHAUSTED EARTH.  The Astronauts are sent on a mission through time to find what needs to be done to save planet Earth from misuse and pollution.

Check them out, and come and see the show - it's amazing.

Calander Art

Here's our CALANDER ART for this year.   We drew and painted Eastbourne's LANDSCAPES and copied NIGEL BROWN's use of text in the boarder to show OUR RELATIONSHIP TO OUR LAND.    Each child's artwork also has at least one other child's work from the classroom.  The kids put a lot of themselvels into these works so would make great gifts.

Be great to get lots of orders so we can buy lots of quality learning equipment.

Check them out.

Our Report Writing Process - MADE UP DINOs

 Analyze other reports to SET OUR OWN SUCCESS CRITERIA.

Research, brainstorm and group ideas for our paragraphs.

 

Draft our paragraphs, focusing on the Success Criteria.

Self assess against the Success Criteria.

 

Edit, conference, revise and publish.

Come in a check out our reports on OUR MADE UP DINOSAURS - they're OUTRAGEOUS!

A Scientific look at the Age of Earth

As part of our inquiry into dinosaurs the students in Room 10 rolled out a 47 metre long strip of paper which represented the 4.7 billion year old Earth (according to most Scientists) from the Big Bang to today. 

Our scale was 1cm = 1 million years in time.

 Students got to place key events in history 

Big Bang, first oxygen, first life, first bird, first dinosaur, dinosaur extinction, first humans.

We found that 65cm (65 million years) from start of the time was when the Dinosaurs became extinct and just over 2 metres (225 million years) from the start was when the first dinosaurs were walking the planet (Scientists believe they lived for about 160 million years).
 

About 5 metres (500 million years)  from 'today' was when the first life appeared in the oceans.

And only 1 millimetre (100,000 years) from the start was when the first humans are believed to have existed!!!

47 metres (4,700,000,000) from the start of our time line Scientists believe the Earth began to form after a Big Bang. 

 

We got to discuss what life would have looked like at different times in the Earth's history and used books and our knowledge to help us draw life through the ages.

IT WAS VERY POWERFUL!!! - TRY IT AT HOME.

Gardening with the Lions

Today, 10 students from Muritai School received $300 worth of gardening equipment from the Eastbourne Lions Club.  They spent the afternoon eating, drinking tea and gardening with the Lions.

 

Not these lions!!! 

These Lions

 

 Here's a few of the tools that were donated.

They were given trowels, spades, pitch forks, a dozen pairs of gloves, seeds, vegetable plants, flowers and a seed raising kit.

 

Together, they weeded, composted and planted the new plants. 

Here's them in action.

HUGE THANKS FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!!!

Rubbish Duty - ANTI LITTER BUGS

To help Muritai School keep tidy, Room 10 was put in charge of monitoring and picking up litter around the school.   From now on, each room will be able to take turns to be in charge of monitoring rubbish around the playground.

When it was Room 10's turn, the kids from made up a system where their cooperative group was in charge for one day of the week and then the class did a whole school sweep later in the week.  

It was a bit scary HOW MUCH WE FOUND - 6 FULL PLASTIC BAGS OF LITTER!!! 

To encourage kids to pick up their own and other people's rubbish a few children in Room 10 have made a plan.

HERE IS IT:

The class on rubbish monitoring gets to spot kids that are picking up rubbish around the school.  They write their names on a piece of paper and put them in the Anti-Litter-Bug Box which will live in the office.

At Assembly, Tom and Xander will draw one person's name out of the Anti-Litter-Bug Box and let them choose a LUCKY DIP prize .

HOPEFULLY OUR SCHOOL WILL BE MORE ENJOYABLE TO BE IN!!!

Week 1

What a big week in Room 10.

Here's a quick glimpse at what we've been up to so far in Term 3 - the Dinosaur Inquiry Term.

 Bar graphing and converting fractions to percentages about the top 10 most deadly dinosaurs.

 Researching and mind-mapping different deadly dinosaurs.

 Printmaking in visual art.

 Collecting seaweed for the compost - plants need a balanced diet too!

 Cooperatively creating a multi-layered dinosaur print.

Statistics - Bar Graphs and Percentages

In Maths for the last 2 weeks, Room 10 have learnt how to carry out their own statistical investigation. This entailed: Coming up with a suitable question to investigate, collecting data, tallying up, bar graphing and calculating percentages using calculators to show what they had found out.

Check out the children's investigations.

Rocket Testing - Round 1

During this Term the Year 3 and 4 children have been learning all about flight. We have been experimenting and learning about the four forces of flight; THRUST, LIFT, WEIGHT and DRAG. To finish our unit of learning we designed our own rockets out of a plastic bottle. The plastic bottles fit perfectly on a home made rocket launcher which creates the THRUST for the rockets.

Last Friday we fired our rockets for the first time in a Scientific Fair Test. Rosie's went so far that it is still stuck 3 quarters of the way up a huge Norfolk Pine on Muritai Road.   We measured it went 52 metres, but because it curved in the air and headed toward the Senior School, it could have gone a lot further if it went straight.  CHECK OUT OUR MOVIE CLIPS

Next we are going to modify our rockets to try to make them fly further and more aerodynamically.

Rocket Science is coming to a DRAMATIC End

After 8 weeks of learning and experimenting with the four forces of flight: thrust, lift, weight and drag, students in Year 3 and 4 are designing, creating and testing their very own rockets. 

Here's one design described.

And another design...

To give the rockets the thrust they need, we are using a rocket launcher which is basically a steel tube connected to a powerful bike pump. 

Here's a explanation of how we will get thrust.

Next week we will be test firing our rockets, attempting to make them fly a distance of up to 60 metres.

Science of Flight

Testing Spinners

How can we make our spinner stay in the air the longest???

How can we fair test it to find out???\\

Looking for Leaves

Some the of the Year 4 Gardeners (Rosa, Eden, Zoe and Rochelle ) have been inquiring into:  

How do you make COMPOST? 

Compost is very important in a vege garden.  It is something you add to soil for plants to eat so they grow big and strong...and yummy.  

They found out that some of the main ingredients in compost are:

Dry leaves, green leaves, grass clippings and food scraps.   

PROBLEM!!!  We have lots of food scraps but not enough leaves or grass clippings.  Where oh where could we find leaves??? ......................................... ???????

Finally, after much deliberation, these kids thought of Mark the caretaker who seems to have a lot of leaves at his disposal everyday.

So, the gardeners sat down with him in the library,  joined forces and made a plan for Mark to put the leaves and any grass clippings from around the school into the food scrap bin or directly into the compost bin.  Now we can make loads of compost to feed the plants.

GREAT WORK KIDS - GOOD SOLUTION!!!

2011 Year 3 and 4 Cross Country

At last the Year 3s and 4s got to run their Cross Country. The kids have been training for the last 7 weeks, running laps of the school each morning with the aim to be the best runners they can be.

Mr Skilton organised an excellent and varied track.  The children got to run around Bishop's Park, over the sand dunes, down the beach and back through the park past the roaring crowd.  There certainly some very strong runners and everyone impressed the crowd with their efforts and perserverence.

WELL DONE TO ALL YEAR 3s and 4s FOR GIVING IT YOUR ALL!!!

Observational Drawing

We've started a rountine of doing a 10 minute observational drawing once a week.  First we choose an interesting object to draw, like a piece of fruit or your hand, and look hard at lines and shade you see.  Then we do a 10 second continuous line - blind drawing, a 30 second blind drawing and then a 2 minute line and shade drawing.  The rule of thumb is to only make lines on your page when you are looking at the object.  You can look down, but only to see where your pencil is.

Paper Plane Madness

The Unit on Flight is well off the ground.  

 

Last week we formally tested our best two paper planes in the hall.  To make it a FAIR TEST, we threw them: 

• from the same spot, 
• in the same direction, 
• with the same thrust and 
• at the same angle.  

We tested each dart 3 times so we got a reliable result.  We measured our throws using a long tape and measured to the nearest 10cm or tenth of a metre.

Lachlan took the longest throw award with a massive 12.6 metres.

 

Jia Wei took the most resilient scientist award; never giving up when his plane flew -1 metres.  He went on to modify his dart and flew over 6 metres.

Next, we will be designing our rockets using a 2L fizzy drink bottle.  We'll be using all we have learnt about aerodynamics - thrust, lift, weitght and drag.