Thursday 27th July

Inquiry

Last Term our inquiry topic was ‘What makes a Kiwi Inventor?’ Today we presented our Going Further projects to the rest of the class. Some of the ways we presented these were slides and posters. Some even made a prototype of their inventions to support their presentation. It was great to see the time and effort that went into these projects.

George and Flynn looked at Handpieces. 

Courtney told us about the Gold Coast Theme parks. 

Emily showed us her poster on Bungy Jumping.

Hayden telling us about remote control cars. 

Esther did her presentation on bikes. 

Caitlyn looked into robots. 

Taylor sharing her findings of spaceships. 

James explaining his prototype he made for his invention of a citrus powered clock. 

Rylee told us about headphones.

Bree's presentation was all about cars. 

Nikita telling us all about the invention of T.Vs.

Kordelia made a slide about computers. 

Tristan sharing the slide about computers that he created with Arthur. 

Monday 19th June

Inquiry

Our inquiry topic this term is ‘What makes a Kiwi Inventor?’. This week we have been doing some Finding Out and Sorting Out activities. We watched an episode of Let’s Get Inventin’ where Josh made an invention to help him feed out on the farm more easily.

We then spent some time making our own inventions on the Let’s Get Inventin’ App on the iPads. It was really fun and awesome to see all the great ideas everyone came up with. The Middle Room students are very creative! Our next step will be choosing a topic for our individual Going Further projects.

 

The Hay Bale Launcher

Flynn having a go on the Let's Get Inventin' app

Caitlyn having fun on the app

Wednesday 7th June

Otago Museum Trip

Yesterday we journeyed to Dunedin to visit the Otago Museum. We were learning about inventions for our inquiry topic. Our class was split in two, with the Year fours going with the Junior Room and the Year fives going with the Senior Room.

One group worked with the Museum educator Emily to learn all about different inventions. We looked at a wooden plough that is 4000 years old, and then one that was built of metal. It was interesting to see the difference between the two inventions and why they were useful at the time.  We also split into smaller groups and went on a scavenger hunt to look for different inventions. It was cool to see all the great ideas that were being shared.

While one group was working with Emily the other group was exploring the Tropical Rain Forest which was so awesome! There were many colourful butterflies and we were even lucky enough to have them land on us! We also saw little birds called quails, goldfish, turtles and a couple of tarantulas. It was really hot in the forest and we learnt that the butterflies couldn’t go outside or they would die.

We also got to spend some time in Discovery World, where we played with the fantastic equipment and thought about inventions that we would like to make. Some of our favourite games were the mind-controlling game, table football, the distorting mirrors and the giant piano you get to stand on.

It was a fantastic day out and we learnt heaps about inventions for our inquiry topic!

Otago Museum Trip on PhotoPeach