Google Earth and Google Mars

We have been using Google Earth and Google Mars to help us learn about the planets Earth and Mars for our Inquiry topic 
"There's no Place like Home"

Yesterday we did a comparison of the terrain on Earth and Mars. This means we used the visual images from Google Earth to compare and contrast the ground or land on Earth with that on Mars.

Here are some posters to show you what we thought. Click on any picture to see our ideas bigger.

If you want to have a play with using Google Earth or Google Mars at home click here to download it!

21 Awesome Mathletes

Week 9 was a fantastic week for the brilliant Mathletes in 
Room 4.

ALL of us reached our goal of 1000 points on Mathletics this week!

Usually we have been very, very, very close with Room 4 usually achieving 19-20 certificates for achieving over 1000 points. This week we ALL did it!

Great team work Room 4. You have learned lots and gained so many points. Way to make us all proud :)

Happy Matariki

Matariki is the name of seven stars in the sky. They are also the Seven Sisters.
They sparkle. You can get a chance to see Marariki if you get up at 6am in the morning. Matariki comes up every May/June. It celebrates the Maori New Year.

We watched a Matariki myth movie. At the start of the movie the sky was black there was no stars. Tamarereti went out fishing in his waka. He caught 3 fish but then the wind died down and he fell asleep. The wind carried him to the shore. He made a fire and cooked his fish. Tamarereti saw some rocks that were glowing. He got into his waka and threw them into the sky. They became stars.

Room 4 Mathletics Stars

It has been a huge week for all the amazing Mathletes in Room 4.

Firstly, Campbell made it to the front page of Mathletics as one of the whole of NZ's top 50 in the World Hall of Fame!!

Then, we discovered that our whole class was one of the TOP 50 classes for Mathletics in all of New Zealand. We had 50,089 points!!!!

Keep up all the fantastic maths learning Room 4 :)

Can you spot Room 4 above? Not sure why it says we are year 3s but it is certainly our class!

Amazing Space Artwork Pt 2

Here are the rest of our amazing space artworks.
Enjoy :)


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Amazing Space Artwork

Room 4 have finally finished their amazing space artwork that we've all been working on for weeks and weeks!

To complete our artwork we:

• researched in space books
• planned our artwork in our sketching books
• sketched our artwork in pencil
• coloured in pastel - checking we were using the correct colours
• outlined in white pastel
• added glitter
• posed for digital photos
• glued on our digital photos

Check out the amazing results below...

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Our Space Poetry Recital Invitation

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We would like to invite you to our Class Space Poetry Recital.

When:    Wednesday 16th June
Time:      2pm
Where:   Room 4, Waiuku Primary School.

We hope you can make it. We look forward to seeing you there.

From Room 4

We're going to Mars!

That's right... all of Room 4 are going to Mars in 2011... well, our names are anyway!

Today we visited a NASA website, it said that they were sending a new rover to Mars next year.

It is taking with it a special microchip with our names on it!

We went onto this website and filled out the form all by ourselves. Then it gave us a special number and made us a certificate of participation saying we were part of history!

We printed our certificates to take home. If you would like your name to go to Mars you can visit the same NASA website we went to here:
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/


Here is a copy of what our certificates look like (this is Rachel's one)

Good questions about Mars

We have been learning to ask good questions.
The questions are going to help us learn more about our Inquiry topic "There's no Place like Home"
Today we looked at this picture from Mars.

First we asked:
"What is that?"

"Why is that there?"

"What colour is that?"

We tried to find the answer using these questions BUT we couldn't.
We didn't have the words "face" or "Mars".

To ask a good question you have to have a Seven Servant question starter + a keyword.

The Seven Servant question starters are:

• How
• Where
• Why
• When
• Who
• Which
• What

Then we changed our questions to:
"What is the face on Mars made out of?"
"Why is the face on Mars?"
"What colour is the face on Mars?"

Answers we found out are:

• The face on Mars is made out of rock/stone (Tauryn)
• The face is on Mars because it made itself - it happened naturally (Lexie)
• The face on Mars is goldish redish and orangeish. (Jaidyn)
• The face is black and white in the photos because the satelite took the photo in black and white (Ryan)