Inquiry Learning

Our Flight and Innovation 'Wanderings' 
(Term 2, 2015)

"How does a helicopter stay in the air?" - asked by Nepia.
"How does a jet plane's engine work?" - asked by Shania.
"How do you fly a hot air balloon?"  - asked by Shelby.
"How do they keep or fix the planes when they've finished moving people?"  - asked by Colsey.
"How long can planes fly for?" - asked by Lahrenzo.
"How do firework rockets fly?" - asked by Onyx.
"Why did the Wright brothers want to invent the first plane?" - asked by Lyric.
"Why is a space rocket bigger than an aeroplane?" - asked by Fatu.
"Why do aeroplanes need an engine?" - asked by Denzel.
"Why doesn't gravity stop planes from flying up so high?" - asked by Chaye. 


Our Flight and Innovation Research
(Term 2, 2015)

In Whanakitanga Tahi, we have been learning about Matariki over the past fortnight. We found out that, as part of the celebrations for this, people may choose to make and fly kites!

So, this morning, we used the PCs in Amua Whare ICT, and we went on to Google to find some "How To" answers about this for our upcoming Innovation Day activities. 

As part of our latest ICT lesson around "Learn, Create, Share" activities, we were learning how to create an Email to share our selected websites (i.e.: by copying and pasting the website address hyperlink into the body of the Email). We then Emailed our chosen answer websites to our classroom teacher, so that we could use these to inform our technology activities.

We had two questions to ask - the first one was "How do you make a kite?" and the second question was "How do you make a parachute?". Here are some of the websites we chose to share by Email when looking for our answers to these online:

Shelby shared 
Why Make Your Own Kite?

Detroit shared 
How To Make A Kite

Shania shared 
How To Make A Diamond Kite

Krystal, Fatu and Nevaeh shared 
How To Build Kites To Suit YOU

Denzel and Lahrenzo shared 
Make Your Own Kite!

Athens shared 
How To Build A Plastic Parachute

E1 are looking forward to using their findings to co-construct instructions together using what we have found out to write an explanation, once we have had the chance to create our own kites (and maybe even parachutes!) in Whanakitanga Whare during wider Innovation Day activities tomorrow!

Learning: Our Topic Inquiry 'Wanderings'
(Term 3, 2015)

WALHT create our own 'wanderings' for our new topic.
Inquiry Topic: Fabric, Fibres and Fashion.
This afternoon in class, we brainstormed ideas together about our Term 3 Inquiry Learning topic. We asked ourselves: What do we want to know? And here are the 'wanderings' we came up with... 

What are our school uniforms made out of?  Nepia & Colsey
What are jackets made out of? What makes them waterproof? Denzel
How do we do a fashion show? Fatu
How do we find out about fashion show stuff? Onyx
How do we walk down the stage? Colsey
How do we print a t-shirt? Colsey
How does the t-shirt design process work? Lyric
Are police jackets and hats made out of denim? Colsey and Nepia
How do you make hats out of denim? Nepia
What kind of art do they use to make fashion designs? Nevaeh
How do you design and make:
- a mask? Athens & Onyx
- jewellery? Krystal & Jazarehus
- leather and denim jackets / chino pants? Fatu
- a dress and a mask (for a ball)? Shania & Shelby

...As you can tell from our ideas, we're ALL really looking forward to creating items for our upcoming whole school fashion show here at Red hill school later this term!


Creating: The Next Step in Our Topic Inquiry
(Term 3, 2015)

Earlier this week, we watched a video on "How to Make a Papier Mache Mask", which was shared with us by our teacher. It was selected in response to a couple of the Inquiry Questions our class came up with for our "Fabrics, Fibres and Fashion" topic this term. (You can watch the video here if you would like to see it, too). 

Ms Osborne suggested we could use a "reduce, re-use, recycle" approach to creating an item for our fashion show later this month - by using materials we have around us in our community, such as old newspapers, plastic milk containers and home made flour and water glue... 

...to make ourselves an African "Igbo Ijele" styled mask that we could then personalise to reflect the vibrant and exciting culture around us! Now that we have made our papier mache bases for our masks, we will use some of our design ideas that we made to paint these to match.

Our next step will be to ask ourselves: what reusable or recyclable materials do we have available around us? How could we use some of these to decorate our masks to reflect our own unique cultural 'fashion' ideas?