Mini Landfills

 

In our inquiry Reduce, Reuse, Recycle we have learnt that a lot of rubbish sent to landfills is made up of materials that can be recycled or reused. Landfills are filling up with materials that stay in the ground for hundreds of years which is not good for our environment.
Room 18 have made our own mini landfills so we can see for ourselves which materials decompose and those that do not.
We buried glass, plastic wrap, food scraps, plastic, paper and chip packets and made predictions which materials we think will breakdown the most, a little or not at all over the next 5 weeks.
We worked in our Kagan groups and we all agreed that the hardest part was lining the shoebox with tinfoil!
We are looking forward to digging up the the landfills in the next few weeks to see what goes on!

Trash to Fashion

With this terms middle school Inquiry focus on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle we will be holding a Trash to Fashion parade in week 10.

The task for the students is to start brainstorming ideas for a design with their family and collect materials to bring to school in week 9 (beginning Monday 1 July). At school they will make their creation.

Some ideas to SPARK our interest:

• ·      A hat made from a box with various other recyclables as decorations
• ·      A dress made from an adults top/plastic or paper rubbish bags
• ·      Carrier bags made from a box with string
• ·      Shoes made from milk bottles or small cardboard boxes

The designs must be durable enough to be worn and the emphasis is on recycled materials and reusing items to create fashion.  

PLEASE NOTE:  Students will be able to wear clothes (PE gear) under their design in the event of a fashion breakdown.

I will need some parent helpers to come in to help with our creations in Week 9 on the Wednesday and Thursday. If you are able to help could you please leave a note in your child's school diary.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Here is a clip of a song by Jack Johnson called "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." This is Middle School's inquiry topic for term two.

More photos of Perfect Plays

Perfect Plays

Today in Room 18 we had Performances of Perfect Plays!

Each reading group performed a play that they have been practising during the week.

During reading time we have discussed the actions of each character and how they would sound.

Well done Room 18, you are all amazing actors!

Carlos and Michael's Writing

In Written Language we are learning to write character descriptions.

To be successful we must paint a picture of our character in words by describing our character’s appearance, actions and speech.

Here are character descriptions of an Alien written by Michael and Carlos. 

Michael and Carlos both did an awesome job. See if you can picture in your mind what their Alien looks like.

The Horrific Alien

The Alien I met one day was 14 foot tall, evil eyes glared down at me from a bright green head. The Alien had one large fin on his oval head the fin was bright yellow and sharp. Another weird thing about him was that he didn‘t have a mouth, he had a beak and covering that beak were tentacles red as blood! But even though he looked strange no smell came to my nose. I edged closer but I still didn’t smell anything. To my surprise he started speaking but sadly I couldn’t make out a word he said but it sounded like “gurgle, blurgle". I looked behind him there was no ship but an escape pod had made a good sized tunnel but the Alien had gone! I wonder if we will ever meet again?

By Michael

The Day I Met Slimer

Slimer's body is blue with spikes on his elbows. He has colourful dots underneath the spikes and he has three arms. Slimer's face is oval and he has a pointed chin. His nose is just two little dots and he has no hair. His eyes are as orange as a mandarin and his eyes are oval. Slimer's skin is red, grey, blue, pink, yellow, green and black. He has pointed teeth like a vampire and black lips. If Slimer gets angry he will spew slime all over you. Slimer's voice is deep and static and he has no smell.

By Carlos

Holly's Holiday Highlight

In writing we are learning to use paragraphs.

Holly wrote an interesting story about her holiday highlight using paragraphs correctly.

The Amazing Maze 'n Maize

It was the Monday of the second week of the holidays, I woke up,"I wonder what we should do today?" I thought to myself. Then it struck me, I instantly remembered that my sister and I were going to go to the Amazing Maze with Pigeon Mountain Bizzy Bodz. To be honest, I wasn't very excited about going because Mum signed us both up without us knowing. It was a bit of a pain.

I was walking out of my room when I realised my Mum had gone to work already, so my Dad had to drop us off. My Dad owns a company and he had an important meeting, so I got dropped off at Devon's house for a while before the holiday programme started. I just hung around in Devon's room with her and before we knew it, we were at the holiday programme. We arrived when all the others were getting ready to walk out the door and jump onto the bus. The bus trip was about an hour and a half, but I managed to amuse myself. After a while, we arrived at Spookers Theme Park, where the Amazing Maze had been built. We had to walk through a long, winding path to reach the area where there where things like climbing walls and waterslides. But we were mainly there for the high, long, winding maze.

We sat down, anxious to walk straight through the shining, silver gates. Finally, my group was up. We walked forward, grabbed a light blue flag, just in case we got lost and we ran into the maze, excited to find our way to some interesting sights. We walked round and round in circles for a few minutes and finally found our way to a rather long bridge. We zoomed up the steps, walked over and found a path leading to a huge can with lots of flags in it, we had found the way out! It sounds like it was easy to get out, but trust me, it wasn't! It took us at least a good forty five minutes to get out. We were stuck walking in the same path a couple of times and we walked into thousands of dead ends. I was just relieved to get out. It was very frustrating.

I ate lunch and went and played on the inflatable climbing wall, a mini maze and an inflatable alien space ship. That took about an hour and then I was allowed to go on a water slide. It was really long, fast and slippery. They got an old toilet, painted it yellow, and made it look like the waterslide was run in toilet water! It was very believable! I went on a couple of times, got a score of eight and went and got changed. Then we walked back the long trail and hopped on the bus to head home.

I enjoyed the Amazing Maze n Maize. It wasn't what I expected. It was way more fun than imaginable. I really want to go one day with my whole family.

By Holly