This month has been very busy. What have we been up to and what are we proud of? You can read the answers on our individul blogs. We will be sharing our learning with our whānau during next weeks Student-Led Conferences.
What have you been learning about in June?
Callum from GetWi$e ASB came and spoke to us about Financial Literacy. That's when you are being smart (or wise) with your money.
These are some of the things he talked about:
He compared it to being an All Black - you need to practice.
Like rugby, what do you need? In rugby you need a ball. In Financial Literacy you need money! But HOW do we get it? Well, we earn it.
How can we earn it?
We can do chores (He called these “Da rules” = do your chores = free time). So how do we earn money if we don't get money from doing chores for our parents? We can do someone else's chores for money (extra chores). It means we have less free time but the flip side is we are earning!
These are the thing we can do to earn money:
Setting a goal
All Blacks - what is their goal? To win!
If they had no idea why they were playing in the first place, would they play as hard? Having a goal is about motivation.
Cash Goal - on a piece of paper we wrote:
C
A
S
H
C = Clear - Imagine the All Blacks Coach told his players they had to pass the ball through a hoop. The players have to practice their accuracy. If the coach said, “Throw the ball,” players could throw the ball anywhere. The instructions were not specific.
If he said, “Throw the ball into the hoop,” everyone could throw it at the same time.
If he said, “One at a time, throw the ball through the hoop," then he is being specific. We need to be specific with our goals.
What do you want to buy? Is it realistic?
A = Action Imagine the All Blacks again. What if the first player waits and does nothing. This achieves nothing.
We can do chores, neighbourhood jobs, run a business, sell stuff. We wrote what we are willing to do.
S = Save - how much money can you save in a week? $15 per week is the national average for children our age. Don’t get distracted and buy something else. If you see something you really want to buy you need to consider - Save or buy? Shout it! SAVE OR BUY? That’s what your brain does. It argues - 'If I buy the shiny object I will have less money. But I REALLY want it!'
H = How long? - How far away is your goal? (How far away is the hoop?)
If someone wants to buy a Lamborghini, it could cost $200,000. $200,000 divided by $15 is 13,334 weeks - that's 256 years. That’s an unrealistic cash goal. It's a bit like if the All Black coach said, "Throw the ball through the hoop?" Where's the hoop? In Peru?? We could also think, 'I could win the lottery.' Chances are 1 in 36,000,000. Tickets cost about $15. Try multiplying that by 36,000,000! (And you can’t drive anyway.)
If we wanted to buy a phone for $200, at $15 per week it would take 14 weeks to save. Now that's realistic!
How to run your own business
Is it - Product or Service?
On a piece of paper, we wrote:
S
S
S
Service - e.g. mowing lawns - $20 per lawn earns $60-$80 per weekend.
S - strengths - What product/service would people pay money for? What can I do? What am I good at? What do I enjoy doing?
We decided one thing we are good at e.g. good with animals, mowing lawns, gardening, baking
S - Solve - Product or service? Which one will I choose? We chose one of the things we are good at.
S - Start - We wrote down the small steps we need to do to start our business. What are the things I need to do to start my business? Where? When? What do I need? I will get supplies from...I will get some starting money from...
Shark Tank
After we had devised our plan, we presented it to The Shark Tank! A Shark Tank is when a person who has an idea for a business would approach the panel and present their business idea. They received constructive criticism from the panel who picked apart bits of the business and put it together in a workable format.
We stood in front of the class, presented our plan and then people asked us questions. It was really helpful as we hadn't thought of some of the things.
Read how Olivia S wrote her plan.
We have been studying Chicago artist, Tom Fedro. He creates art with zing and boundless humour. His art is innovative, creative and playful. He combines pop art collage and whimsical portraiture that has a rhythm all of its own. Bright colours, big features and bold lines that seem to be electrically charged represent an exciting way of seeing and experiencing the world through his eyes.
Our Learning Intention: WALT use painting techniques.
Success Criteria:
We have used:
Long brush strokes
Both sides of the paint brush
Bright colours
Bold lines
Tints and shades to show light direction
Have you ever used paints using success criteria like this?
We have continued learning about what makes a good explanation. Some people were learning how to use a diagram that had labels and an explanation. This helps the reader to understand what we are explaining. Other people were working on complex sentences. A complex sentence is when you put a phrase in a sentence, but you can move the phrase. You need to make sure it still makes sense though. Here is an example:
After I finished baking, I shared the cookies with my family.
I shared the cookies with my family, after I finished baking.
This makes our writing more interesting for the reader because we are using a variety of sentence types.
Here's a snapshot of some interesting explanantions. Did they achieve their learning intention and success criteria?
This week for reading we have been learning to infer. Inferring is when the author has not stated a fact, but has left clues. We had to look for the clues. For example, the author did not say Māui was mean but we thought he was because he deliberately put out everyone's fires and the people were very cold. We made character descriptions saying which character trait the Gods and Demigods had and why we thought that. Then we had to see the similarities and differences between Māori Gods or Demigods to Greek Gods. Prometheus is a Titan and not a God but we found a story about him and compared him to Māui.
Then we created our own God and gave him or her personality traits.
What kind of traits do you think Gods have? Why do you think that?
A lot of our tasks this week involve learning about Samoa. We have read articles about Samoa, started learning The Lord's Prayer in Samoan Language and made tapa cloths.
Here's some of the tasks...
This week for Cybersmart, we had to make a sprite. The website we used was Piskel.
Drawing the sprite was a bit tricky because doing the fine details was very challenging. It also took some students forever to find the copy and paste. Thankfully, our teacher guided us.
We enjoyed drawing our sprites and figuring out how to navigate Piskel even though it was a bit tricky.
It took us a few days to get to where we are right now and it'll probably take us a few more days just to complete the hair and shading.
Read Amelia's blog to see her creation.
