The Olympic Games

In reading we have been learning to skim and scan. We read the articles first and then practised skimming and scanning. Skimming is reading quickly in order to get a general overview of the material. Scanning is reading quickly in order to find specific facts. The facts we needed to find were about the Olympic Games. We found some very interesting facts. Did you know that there is actually a fourth medal?

Read Jakob A's fact file. Just click on the picture and it will take you to some facts, then click on the picture of the house and it will take you back 'home' so you can click on another button.

We have also been creating our own Olympic mascots. We looked at the current mascots and mascots of the past and decided to create one just in case the Olympics ever came to New Zealand. We used a new google tool called Chrome Canvas. For most of us, it was the first time we have used it.

Have you ever used Chrome Canvas? What did you create?

Here's Camille's NZ Olympic Mascot.

Gamefroot

For the past couple of weeks we have turbo-charged our coding and really challenged ourselves into programming our own games using Gamefroot. We have been posting our progress on our blogs to get feedback to work on before going on to the next segment or challenge. It was interesting to read as some people said some of the games were too challenging - that led to a great discussion about if they were too easy would you play them? Some of us decided we wanted our games to be challenging to teach people about perseverance. They did this by choosing not to act on some of the advice about offering 'lives' - if you failed the attempt, you just have to start again.

Our task was to make sure our 'player' stayed on the screen and did not fall off. We also had to make our 'player' move forwards, backwards, up and down. Some people extended themselves by adding immovable objects, levels and sound. You can read about how we did this by reading our individual blogs.

Check out these games and leave some positive feedback for the learner.

Kylah

Baxter

Michael

James