So, what do you want to know about us?

As part of next Term's Topic, Room 1 are going to be creating movies and presentations about Meadowbank School. We were wondering if you UK guys would like to help us plan this project, by telling us what it is you would like to know? Maybe a list of questions? Your Head Teacher might have a few to ask! He may like to know if things he remembers from NZ schools 30 years ago are still happening?
New Zealand is a strange and exciting place! It looks and sounds a little bit like England, but there are lots of wonderful and suprising differences!
We will be starting this project on week 2 of Term 3 (23rd July, when you lot are all sitting around at home!) so any ideas you have, could you get them to us before you break up for your lovely long holiday?
We are looking forward to hearing from you all!
Mrs Jackson (Who used to live in Cumbria, but is now hanging off the bottom of the planet!)

Clapping Games

Throughout term 2 students in the middle school (yrs 3 and 4) have been investigating different playground games from around the world and the past. Below are recordings of clapping games from the past and from different cultures. The students of room 1 researched and recorded these examples. They recorded them using Audacity. Click on the links below to listen to them.

New Zealand 30 years ago.

Head Teacher, Philip Smith, has been reminiscing about his time in New Zealand. A search through his loft soon found the following slides. Enjoy!

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Old Blog Stats

In the short amount of time that we were at Wordpress we had 510 visitors to our site, here is the map for old times sake. How long will it take us to get over 1000 visitors on our new blog site?

About Meadowbank

About Woodford

Chatterbox

Use this post to post comments to your friends. This area is more informal, so you can chat about other things like TV and what you do after school. Remember you still have to be polite and respectful at all times. Every comment that you post has to be approved by a teacher at Woodford Junior or at Meadowbank.

War Poem from Woodford

Year 4 have been exploring forms of poetry this term. We studied Japanese Art and poetry forms of Haiku, Tanka and Cinquain, all of which have particular syllable patterns. World War Two was the focus for writing list poems. We combined our favourite images from Japan with music and our own poems using Windows Move Maker. We experimented with timings, video and music effects to create what we thought was an interesting “movie poem”. The following Movie was created by Matthew Philpotts and is an effective record of World War Two! More examples to come!

Competition!

To celebrate the launch of Tohatoha between Woodford Junior School in Plymouth and Meadowbank Primary School in Auckland, we would like you, the children, to design a header for the joint weBlog site. You must design a header which will show our union across / around the world. The best images from each school will be uploaded to the Weblog for a vote so that you choose the best image, which you think should represent our partnership.

The image should be 847 x 200 pixels or be about 20cm by 5cm in size. Images can be hand drawn or produced with a graphics program. All entries should be returned to Mrs Hardie (by July 13th) or Mr Kinane.

Where in the World is Meadowbank?

The following is a short clip showing just where in the world we are! Now that we have moved to Blogspot we can show our video in all its glory! Thanks again to Dan Hess and the Stray Relay for the backing track!

Robotics at Meadowbank

We have a robotics G+T group at Meadowbank, it has only just started this term and the equipment is new to us. The students have to complete the challenge at the following wiki .

Do you have any RCX or NXT Lego sets at Woodford? We hope that you do, because one of the things that we are hoping to do with you is to create a joint robot that we can program collaboratively! (Maybe if you wish to take part in the Robozone challenge you could use this wiki as a starting point? Or maybe you could set up a challenge for us to complete?) The majority of our robo engineers are from year 4 and as you can see from the images below, there are quite a few girls in the group. This is because the focus of this project is not about building with Lego bricks but about problem solving especially being stuck. The students are celebrating every time that they get stuck, because when they are stuck they then have a problem to solve! To solve a problem they first have to identify the problem and break it down into smaller easier to solve problems. As the students solve each little piece of the puzzle they end up solving the bigger problem and then move on to find the next bigger challenge!

We will keep posting images and keep you posted of our progress as we move through term 3.

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The Alphabet Project

Our art G+T students have spent term 2 working with Mrs Jackson and with a little help from Mr Kinane, on a digital camera project. The idea originated from several books that we have in school, in addition, the students were shown the following flickr tool to help them really get into the idea. The students had to scour our school environment for environmental print. They had to find examples of letters or shapes in the environment that looked like a letter and then photograph them. Once the best ones were selected the students then had to edit them in a programme called The Gimp, which is a free download from the Internet. We hope that you like the slide show. It is our intention to now have these images printed up into a poster, we are looking into the costs first though.
We now intend to search the school grounds for different colours and hues to make an envrionmental colour wheel. We will be using the following flickr tool as an inspiration.

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Tohatoha

The purpose of this blog is to provide a space where ideas can flourish, where two schools Woodford Junior, Plympton, England and Meadowbank Primary, Auckland, New Zealand can share ideas, resources and cultures. Who knows, over time maybe we will be joined by other schools from other countries.
Tohatoha is a Maori word that means to spread abroad, distribute, disperse, spread. This is exactly what we want our students to do, to distribute learning abroad, to disperse their cultural knowledge and share in the knowledge of their peers from the other side of the world.