Wearable Art

This week we have been polishing up the routines and putting the final touches on our Wearable Art outfits - they are looking incredible!

There will be four performances of "Reboot 2100" next week. We have two shows on Tuesday; a matinee at 1pm and an evening show at 7pm. On Wednesday and Thursday the shows will be at 7pm.

Everyone is welcome! Tickets are available the office.

The photos below show a very small selection of the outfits that will be on display during the show.

Wearable Art Making Week

In class this week the students have been working on their wearable art design.
The results look incredible!
Thank you to all the wonderful parents, grandparents, cousins and friends who gave up their time to come in and help with construction.

RWC Opening Day

Calendar Art

This week we have been busy putting the finishing touches on our calendar art.

We started off by looking at the artwork of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He was an Austrian artist who had a fear of straight lines and a love of colour, which makes his artwork really interesting.

Each student chose a piece of his art they liked and then picked a tiny part of it to enlarge. The next step was painting bright and beautiful colours. Finally we touched up our creations with pastel and went over the lines with bold black to make them stand out.

Below are some photos of us hard at work painting our masterpieces. The finished products are on display in Room 15 - they are all bold, bright and beautiful, and would look incredible as calendars, cards or diaries.

Check out the next generation of poets and authors in action...

We have been working on making boring sentences more interesting by adding descriptive details and thinking carefully about our choice of words.

We started with a boring sentence...

'The dragon flew across the sky.'

After Room 15 employed their lyrical skills the sentence had been transformed...

Bob, the fat, flabby dragon, slowly glided across the sunset down by the ocean, heading for a crash landing.
Louis

Emerald dragons soared through waves and sky, darting around fluffy white clouds and sparkling with mischief.
Jasmine

An elegant dragon flew gracefully across the calm sky.
Liam M.

As the gleaming emerald scales of a majestic dragon moved across the field of soft pink and gold lights that was the sunset, the horizon was slowly put into shadow.
Ella

The dark green dragon stupidly flew into a movie set.
Liam F.

A gorgeous green dragon shined like jade as it flew through a cloudless sky.
The flame red dragon flew along the horizon with the fiery colours of sunset behind him.
An elegant dragon the colour of snow stood out as it flew through the dark night sky.
Isobel

The wise, kind dragon flew gently and joyfully across the moonlit sky.
Charlotte W.

Zooming across the sky at full speed, the aqua coloured dragon breathed pink marshmallows down on people who looked like ants.
Ruby

Zig-Zag Zoom! A young, black dragon flashed through the soft fluffy clouds way up in the magical sky.
Julius

Like a rocket the small black dragon streaked across the midnight sky.
Charlotte B.

The dragon was shooting across the night sky, red with anger and rage.
Henry B.

The amazing green dragon flew down from the moonlit sky.
Grace O.

Quickly the crazy emerald sea-dragon zoomed like lightening across the slowly darkening sky and splashed into the sea towards its den.
Meike

It was midnight and the moon shone brightly through the clouds as a gentle, jade dragon glided gracefully through the pale moonlit night.
Freya

The young dragons emerald scales flashed and glittered in the moonlight as he zigzagged drunkenly through the night after an evening's partying.
Lauren

Suddenly the fierce dragon spun like a whirlpool through the unwanted sky.
Harrison

The grumpy, old, red dragon went zooming across the lush green grass heading for a landing.
Mathieson

One giant, beastly dragon gently glided while camouflaged with the beautiful blue sky.
Henry H.

The dumb blue dragon flew into an old tree on a rainy day.
Megan

Lily, the little dragon, silently followed her mother across the stormy sky toward their den.
Grace A.

The big, fat, ugly and stupid dragon soared across the dark black sky.
Fraser

Only a quick red wisp of colour could be seen as the majestic dragon took flight.
Mia

As the dragon sped across the dark winter sky, thunder crashed in his ears.
Emeline

Witches!

During Literacy Room 15 has been focusing on using descriptive language to add detail and interest to our writing. This week we are going to work on writing a character description for a witch.
As a warm up, to get in a witchy frame of mind, we have been exploring the famous scene where three witches brew up a "charm of powerful trouble" in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'.
Some of the language Shakespeare used was difficult to understand and to pronounce, but we talked about what the words meant and then practiced several times using cackling, witch-like, voices. Finally we added suitably dramatic, witchy, movements to enhance our lines. Finally we put everything together.

Check out the spine chilling class performance below.

Snow

There was no way we could sit inside the classroom when it was snowing outside!

The play ground looked like this at 3.30 this afternoon... 

Wearable Art Training Day

Today the year five and six syndicate had a training day in preparation for our Wearable Art show later this term.

Working in small groups students were challenged to create a piece of wearable art using only a limited amount of materials.

Each group was given the same number of paperclips, string, sticky tape, newspaper, cardboard, caution tape and a few other goodies to work with and had several hours to work together to create their art work.

A few junior classes joined us in the afternoon to see the finished products on display in our wearable art show.

We all had lots of fun creating our pieces of art and seeing what other groups made. We also learned some valuable skills and techniques that will help when it comes to creating an individual piece of art later on.

You can see how we progressed from planning to construction to presentation in the photos below.

TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE

Which team can raise their flag the highest off the ground using only straws and tape? We had great fun finding out and we learned a lot about construction and the importance of planning before beginning to build.

Liam M., Grace A., Isobel - Saturn

Jasmine, Henry H. and Lauren - Neptune

Peaceful Pluto - Marten and Mathieson

Come to Mars! By Harrison, Fraser and Liam F.

CROSS COUNTRY

Today was the school Cross Country event at Williams Park. Well done to everyone who took part. All the students in Room 15 made a huge effort. It looks like Muritai School will be sending a very strong team to the Zone Cross Country event this year. It was lovely to see so many parents there to show support. A great morning was had by all. Check out some of our photos below.

Photos courtesy of Megan, Room 15s photographer of the week.

MATARIKI

Matariki is close at hand. The Seven Sisters (also known as the Pleiades star cluster) have reappeared in the night sky. If you happen to be up on a clear pre-dawn morning you can spot the Sisters low in the North-East sky.

Matariki falls on the day of the first New Moon after the Sisters return. This year Matariki is on Saturday the 4th of June.

You may be interested to know that Carter Observatory has teamed up with Capital E to celebrate Matariki this year. On Sunday the 5th of June Carter Observatory is hosting a Matariki Family Day. It looks like loads of fun. Children are free, Adults $18. Further information can be found at
http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2011/jun/wellington/capital-at-carter-matariki-family-day

Happy Matariki from everyone in Room 15!

Interactive Sky Map

Follow the link below to check out a very cool interactive sky map we've been exploring in Room 15. See 20 million stars!


http://www.planet-science.com/categories/extras/planet-science-loves/2011/05/interactive-sky-map.aspx

The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas!

We love this song in Room 15. It's catchy and educational at the same time.

Moon and Tide

This week Room 15 has been exploring the affect of the Moon on life on Earth. For homework we have been keeping a "Phases of the Moon" observation chart. There was a brilliant full moon visable in the sky last night. There was also an extremely high tide yesterday evening causing waves to break over Marine Drive. What do these two phenomena have to do with each other you ask? Check out the clip below... or ask a Room 15 student to fill you in.

Annie Hayward visits Muritai School

We were extremely lucky to have local artist Annie Hayward come and visit us last Friday. Annie talked to us about her life as an artist and how she plans and composes her art work. We loved seeing the beautiful paintings she bought in to show us and listening to Annie talk about how she was inspired to create them. After listening to Annie speak many of the students in Room 15 spent lunch time creating lovely, whimsical, Annie Hayward inspired sketches. Thank you so much for the entertaining and interesting talk Annie!

CARTER OBSERVATORY AND SHRINKING THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Last Monday we took a trip into Wellington to visit Carter Observatory. We had a great time checking out the telescope, watching the planetarium show and learning about the universe through the interactive displays.

Back at school we teamed up with Room 14 to create a scale model of the Solar System across the field to help us understand the distance between objects. We got a big surprise when we compared our estimates with the actual distances between the planets. Our model helped us understand relative distance, however it didn't show differences between the size of objects in the Solar System. If you are curious why our model didn't show relative size ask one of the students from Room 14 or 15 to explain.