PBS Holiday Blogging Challenge - created for our learners by our learners!

Our wonderful student leaders were challenged to create and manage our own mini holiday blogging challenge. They have done an amazing job by creating activities that will take our holiday bloggers on a virtual tour around Auckland. There was a wealth of rich discussion as tasks were created and a lot collaborative problem solving to decide who will be responsible for which role in helping to manage the commenting and feedback. 

This challenge has been put in place to grow our leaders and strengthen our literacy skills. To make managing this task easier we have created a spreadsheet where bloggers will post the links to their blog posts and record which blogs they have commented on. 

This morning AJ and Mia introduced the challenge to those who have chosen to take part. What impressed me was the engagement of the audience and the clarity of the instruction. We have borrowed the points system from the Woolf Fisher Summer/Winter Learning Journey that runs over the December and July holidays, so will be giving out prizes to our own holiday blogging challenge champions (and managers). 

Anyone who would like to copy and repurpose this resource is most welcome. Link

What was the suffrage movement?

Since woman's rights was a big issue in the olden days our reading topic this term related . We watched a youtube video about the suffragette movement and wrote a 25 word summary on "what was the suffragette movement". . I found this quite hard because it isn't a skill that I have mastered (summary) but talking to my group helped me make my connection.

Landfills by Mia, Zahra, Nazella and Fifita

Mia, Zahra, Nazella and Fifita chose to share their learning by creating a short movie with a powerful message that makes you think about what happens inside our landfills if Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are overlooked. Fabulous work girls!

Kokako facts by Mia

To show our understanding of the Kokako Bird we made an info-graphic about it. We also added images to show the appearance of the bird.  Did you know that the Kokako bird prefers to leap then fly. I also didn't know that that it was a native bird to New Zealand. 

Growing our Leadership by Mia

In this weeks leadership lesson we continued to work on our team building.  We got faced a challenge  that involved working as a team. So we got into groups of 4 then got given 5 rubber bands and 10 cups. It sounded odd but it kept me thinking.  We had to make a carrier with the 5 rubber bands because we had to stack the cups into a pyramid. But we had to work as a team and collaborate to complete because I learnt that a successful team  works with each other, learns from each other and helps with each other.  Since we are starting to grow leaders I figured that we had to start working as a team. 

Making and informed opinion by Mia

This week we have been learning to consider both side of a provocation so that we can make an informed opinion.  Our question we had to make an opinion on was " Should host countries spend so much money on building the Olympic venues? ". Well being honest I thought that you didn't have to spend tons of money just on multiple Olympic venues because this money can be used for better things like hospitals, homeless and many more. See if the Olympic's are over what are they going to do with it.  To prove my point I added evidence to my blog with images and attributed it.  I also added in other peoples opinion because I have just realized that everyone has a opinion you don't always have the same. 

Collaborative Home Learning

A superb example of collaborative home learning by Mia and Sajiha. They have thought carefully throughout to make sure their readers can make a connection to their information.