Science Roadshow

This week some students went and visited the Science Roadshow. The Science Roadshow was lots of fun, the children got to trial a whole range of different experiments as well as try to figure out the reasons why certain things worked the way they do.

Paige and Michelle trying to figure out how this experiment with rotational gravity worked. 

Jasraj and Aomi

Codi and Ethyn 

Even the teachers learnt lots too. 

 Codey, Aomi and Jasraj

And we sat down to learn about some different topics, such as how muscles work.

Aomi even won a pen with a caliper attached, which is used to measure the distance between two sides of an object.

Reminder: Science Fair projects should be coming together now, they are due next Friday.

Cultural Festival

On Wednesday the 9th of April our school had a Cultural Festival to celebrate the diversity here at Howick Intermediate. About 3-4 weeks before that our school started sending each student to a culture they chose to learn more about to practice. Every weekday  at 12:00pm the students will go off to their practice around the schools. 
Some groups had whanau of students come in and some teachers worked together. On the day of our dress rehersal at 11:00am all the students got dressed-up, makeup on and dance moves ready to perform in front of the rest of the school and staff. As each Cultural festival group went by Mrs Koroua directed them and helped them to be a bit more pleasant. It was really interesting watching the dances and seeing what each group had came up with. On the night of Cultural festival everyone was ready to perform and the hall just kept getting fuller and fuller.
The night was great nobody wanted it to end and the dances were full of energy.

By Portia Baylis

Yr 8 girls self-defence course

On Monday the 31st of March the year 8 girls from Room's 19, 20 and 21 took part in a self-defence course that teaches young girls how to keep themselves and their bodies safe. We went straight after assembly to the multi-purpose room where Rana our self-defence teacher was waiting. To start off she introduced herself and we all got to know who and what we will be working on. We set down the ground rules and we talked about being safe, and "confidentiality".

First we learnt our stance, we spread our legs apart and one in front of the other with the back one slightly angled out yelling "BACK OFF".

Then we started with kicks practicing on foam pads such as:
-shin kick: you bring out your knee up and flick your legs lick a whip of a towel with your toes flexed to hit the shin
-knee kick: similar to the shin kick but higher and stronger to the knee
-ballerina kick: you point your toes and swing your leg to the groin and hit with the top of your foot
-stamp: if they're behind stamp back on to the top of their foot using their heel braking their foot bones also front
-knee to groin: if their close grab their waist or shoulders, bring them closer and pop your knee into their groin turning your head for safety

On Tuesday we moved on to punches. To do a proper punch your fingers must be folded over with your thumb ON TOP of your fingers securing them tight with your wrist strong.
The punches we did were:
-nose: punch the nose to make it bleed
-neck: aim for the Adams apple and punch real hard
-guts: punch towards and just above the bellybutton
-nuts: punch to the nuts
-hammer: with the side of your fist punch to the side or on top of the nose

Types of elbowing:these practically explain themselves
elbow to:
-guts
-nose
-chest
-nuts: bob down and elbow down there.

Remember don't be afraid to confront them publicly by telling them off !!!

Overall we had a great time, lots of fun, and at the end of the course we received a certificate, pencil, wrist band and poster.

Da Food Fighters - Food Technology

Today for the whole first and second block we were in fantasticchnology with Miss Watson, to cook up a storm.
The group that I was made Spaghetti Bolognese, in this group was Portia, Ethyn, Roger and I (Lara). The other groups were making baked potatoes and healthy hamburgers. In the first block we chopped vegetables, added ingredients and started to cook the food. Whilst we were at morning tea Mrs Watson let the food slowly cook on medium-low. In second block we served up and ate ,then well the worst part... CLEANED!!

Gordina and Michelle chopping onions "electrically"

 

Our group hand chopping carrots and onions, and the onions definitely made us cry

 Waaaaa!

 

 They had made the patties and they were ready to cook! YUMMY

 

 We had to stand there for ages stirring 'round and round and ROUND!

 

Gordina, Codey and Shreya chopped and mixed onions and cheese ''''CHEEESE''''

 

  The Spaghetti Bolognese was so good and served 7 people.

 

 Hamburgers were a treat that topped the day.

 

 "Stuffed, Baked potatoes. Delicious!"

 

 "Yum! These are really tasty" says Michelle  

 

It's like we are one big happy family at dinner.

 

"No! don't take a photo of me" -Ethyn

       "It's of the food" -Lara          

 ''Oh'' -Ethyn  

*A big thanks to Miss Watson for the fantasic photos.*

Community Contacts - Da Food Fighters

On Thursday 13th March our advertising group and nutrition group met up with a chef named John, who has worked at lots different restaurants. He told us about his restaurant and gave us some tips on how to make healthier lunches. we had lots of questions to ask and he was impressed with what we had come up with. We had a great time learning about his job.
Now here's where you can help us! We would really like to make another community contact, if you know someone who works in a fast food franchise or knows about nutrition and would be interested in speaking to the majority of our class please email our class teacher at paigeb@howickint.school.nz

Swimming Sports

On Friday we had Swimming sports, we were very lucky with the weather as we had such a fantastic day.

The day began with our whanau chants, Cooper's chant was pretty impressive and went well with their Hulk theme and the Ngata whanau all looked pretty in pink. It was great to see all of the teachers dressed up ready for the day ahead.

This was then followed by some fun events such as barrel and rope races, before we got into the competitive swimming races.

Well Done Mansfield, the winning whanau and Congratulations to Brittany, Portia and Neil who have been selected for SEZ swimming.

Swimming Sports by Slidely Slideshow

Da Food Fighters Survey

Da Food Fighters have had a go at using Survey Monkey to create an online survey around False Advertising. If you have 5 minutes they would love it if you could click here to take survey.

This website will also help the students to analyse their data as well as collect information from the wider community.

Thanks

Da Food Fighters

We are the Food Fighters group from Room 19 at Howick Intermediate School.

Our HOT question this term is to identify fast food restaurants that use advertising to appeal to customers; investigate the popular burgers nutritional values to promote conscious consumerism.

This term we have decided to create a blog as part of our social action. We are also going to create a healthy burger with less calories than your everyday McDonalds Big Mac, to do this we are going to compare and contrast home cooked burgers with the fast food franchise burgers in order to understand which burger would be the best to eat.

Visit our blog at http://dafoodfightersofroom19his.blogspot.co.nz/

We were inspired by Martha Paynes' Blog Never Seconds

Research

In Room 19 we have been putting our research skills into use at the library.

To research we know that we must first plan what we would like to find out about, to do this we have been using a KWHL Chart.

This chart shows what we know, what we want to know, how we found out the information, and what we have learnt. By using this we are able to spend our time researching effectively.

Goodbye to our Korean Students

At the start of the year we had a few homestays come from Korea to learn more about our culture.
There were approximately 35 homestays in our school, about 3 or 4 split in each class. In our classroom we had 4 their names were Tom, Han-bin, Louis and Simon, we were very impressed with how well they spoke English. They were in New Zealand for a month but were at our school for only 3 weeks. They were very nice and loved spending time with us Kiwi's. They talked about their lifes back in Korea very often. They became good friends to us and to see them go left a tear on our faces :'(
On the last day they were here they left us all a nice little fold up note in our desk which described how they felt about us :)

by: Portia and Lara.

Award of Merit - Week Two

The first Merit Award for Room 19 went to Portia for her positive attitude and willingness to step up to a leadership roll within our classroom.

Well Done Portia!