Awe-Inspiring Work by Year 9PLa

Year 9 has been learning about what makes living things alive, animal diets and adaptations that help living things survive. 

I have simultaneously been using the time to see how students learn during the Manaiakalani 'Learn,' which is a little passive but sometimes necessary to get content across. Students have listened, done research, watched videos, talked to each other, completed quizzes, played games, and commented on their learning. They have been keeping track of this in their Google Doc as a kind of learning log. 

However, students were getting a little bored with this. One brave student offered some quiet feedback to me and said there was "too much to learn" and we had been doing "too much writing," so we thought it would be a good idea to have a break from new content and 'Create' something that showed off how much they understood. Each student picked their favourite Mammal and set about creating a profile for them. 

We had some spectacular work produced. We let students choose what media they wanted to use to create... here is a freehand poster about Cats.

Most other students chose to use Google Presentations and two students chose to use Wix to create their own websites! 

Click the Garfield poster to be taken to all four great examples of student work, or click here to see a student-made site about lions, or here to learn about pandas from my class! 

Maybe I should try animation with this class of superstars one day soon... 

9PTt "Polluted Water" Puzzle

9PTt has been learning about separating mixtures and solutions using decanting, filtering and evaporating. There's only so much you can learn from listening to a teacher, so I decided to challenge them practically. 

I set up large beakers containing rocks, sand, salty water with blue food colouring and topped off the "polluted sample" with a layer of baby oil. Students had to work out how to separate the different parts of the sample to find out how much salt was in the water. 

Students decanted the salty liquid out of the beaker, leaving behind a heavy layer of rocks and sand. There was still some sand floating in the liquid, so students had to filter the liquid through a funnel and filter paper. 

Next students poured the salty liquid into a funnel while holding it closed with their thumb. They (mostly) waited patiently until all the oil rose to the top then let the water out from underneath, leaving the oil behind. 

I didn't quite trust that all the oil had been removed from the sample and didn't really feel like setting anything on fire today, so I collected back their samples and distributed a new one with only salt and water in it!

G opening the bunsen burner hole to get a blue flame

Students then evaporated off the water using an evaporating dish heated over a bunsen burner to find out how much salt was in the solution. There was a lot of engagement during this practical, and I feel that students benefitted a lot from being able to do the separation themselves.  

  Tomorrow the students are going to learn how to separate mixtures using chromatography and make some cool chromatography flowers while they're at it!

Tamaki College Heist

Last Wednesday Tamaki College were visited by the The Royal Family - no not Kate and Wills (although that would have also been very cool) - the Hip Hop Dance Crew! The performance was amazing to watch and the kids looooved it! 

All the credit goes to Jake in Year 13 for organising the campaign and motivating the entire school to participate in the MaiFM competition. 

I can't embed the video but follow the link to watch it here! 

Rotoroa Island Sanctuary

At the end of Term 1 the Year 12 and 13 biology students from Tamaki College were lucky enough to go on a field trip to Rotoroa Island. 

This amazing island used to be a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, but nowadays it is a newly established conservation site for native New Zealand wildlife. Read on to find out what the trip had in store for our students!

Students enjoyed the ferry trip over, especially using binoculars to look at gulls and blue penguins (korora) and working together to recreate that iconic scene from Titanic... Thankfully the ferry didn't meet the same fate as the Titanic, and we were able to get our first glimpse of the island. 

Once we were all on Rotoroa students walked to the 1860's schoolhouse - the road provided a really nice view of the island we would spend our day exploring! Our guide Greg then gave an honest talk about the realities of keeping Rotoroa pest-free. Students learned about the many different ways to trap and humanely kill possums, stoats, rats and weasels that can reach the island. 

Once the talk had finished, Greg produced some possum, stoat and ferret skins.  At first the students were grossed-out but then curiosity prevailed! They enjoyed taking selfies with the skins, passing them to each other and asking Greg lots of questions. After the talk 5 students said they would be happy to come and share what they learned about pest control with some of my Year 9 classes!

After morning tea we split into two groups and off we went to help Greg with some research. Students took turns setting up simple tubes with banana and pieces of paper that had a strip of ink down the middle. The banana tempts animals into the tube and the ink ensures animals leave prints all over the paper as they walk. Researchers can then use their knowledge of prints to tell which animal it was, whether it is a pest, and whether they should lay traps. Greg also showed us how watery gum from Harakeke flax can act as a natural second-skin to help heal burns and eczema. 

We then did a lot of walking (including up a huge hill) with Greg stopping along the way to show us different traps, a huge weta, traditional Maori plant uses, how to use a tracking radio, and letting students use tablets to help identify different animal prints. 

After lunch students got to use the radio tracker to find soft-toy animals that had transmitters on them (the toys had to be hidden off the ground or the cheeky Weka would have run off with them), practice banding bird-legs and using binoculars to read band patterns from a distance. 

It was a big day - lots of sun, lots of walking, lots of learning - and quite a few of the students fell asleep on the way home! I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I did and are looking forward to their next trip to Tiritiri Matangi! 

9PLa Superstar

Today was the last day of Term 1 and Kelly and I decided to give the top students in each class an easter egg and a certificate.

Viola is in 9PLa and she did so well in her test and coursework that she got an Excellence! 

We hope everyone has a nice break and comes back feeling refreshed for Term 2 :)

How long can 9PLa hold their breath?

Yesterday afternoon 9PLa had some fun learning to read stopwatches! 

Ms Bunce handed out the stopwatches and everyone quickly started playing with them. Two of the boys started to time how long they could hold their breath, so Ms Bunce quickly turned it into a whole-class competition.

Looking around the room I could see faces turning red and there were also students holding their hands in front of each others' nose and mouth to check that no one was cheating! 

You can check out the video from the class below. Unfortunately the real breath-holding competition had finished by the time I remembered I could film it, so this is a less-competitive repeat of the activity!

Year 11 Streaking and Culturing Bacteria

On Friday the Year 11 Science class took samples off surfaces around our classroom. 

Some students took samples off bench tops, others off keyboards or laptop screens, and some even decided to test the bacteria in their hair or on their hands. 

We wanted to test the effect of temperature on bacterial growth, so we placed a third of the plates in the fridge where it was cold, left a third at room temperature inside the Science room and placed a third inside a warm incubator. 

It is pretty clear from looking at the results which temperature these bacteria prefer to grow at! 

Take a look at the (pretty cool and gross) samples that grew over the weekend! 

This sample was placed in a fridge

This sample was left at room temperature

This sample was placed in a warm incubator

All plates were sealed with clear tape and students were instructed not to open them during class. Plates were incubated at a temperature lower than human body temperature.