The One And Only Marble Challenge

 This week in Te Ngahere we have been doing something called The Marble Challenge and while we were doing the marble challenge we have been learning how to use The Scientific Method  In The Marble Challenge you had to build a ramp that could send a marble accurately at 110cm.  After that you can test the ramp, you can chose to modify the ramp.  After you made the ramp you had to build instructions for the ramp so if it was two pieces you would have to put how to build the ramp in instructions.  When you did those things you let someone else test your instructions.  After you have done everything you wait for competition day.  Even though it was a simple and easy process my team Amber and Alana did not succeed BUT our team did not fail either because we got 11 points and some teams got 0 so we stay grateful.

After the challenge we reflected on the marble run we made and our team. We thought our ramp did good because of how fast the marble went but maybe it went too fast.  We thought we needed to make our instructions better because when we put our ramp down for competition day we had no instructions for building and our ramp was two pieces so the testers had to make the ramps themselves.  We thought our ramp wasn't really successful because the testers had to build it because we forgot about the instructions and our marble kept on rolling past the places were you get a point.  If we had the chance to change or modify the ramp we would make the ramp stepper and we could of made taped it all together.

Have you ever made a ramp for a marble before?

The Very Scientific Roadshow

In Te Ngahere we have been learning about science. There was a Science Roadshow about science at BOI Collage (A.K.A Bay Of Islands College).  So first we took our bus to BOI Collage at 12:00.  Next we went into the school hall to see the BOI College about to leave.  When they left after the starting show the scientists said we could have some time to check out the interactive displays.  Before we went we had to get into groups and my group was Aaron and Jacob, my classmates. After some displays we saw a quiz about electricity so we tried the quiz and it was actually very awesome and you actual can learn some stuff from it.  From the electricity quiz I learned that DC stands for direct current and AC stands for alternate current. 

I am sure my favorite exhibit was called “Pepper's Ghost”.  In Pepper’s Ghost you can flip a switch and then look in the box and in the chair you will find a invisible skeleton.  You can figure out how they did this by reading the info card on top of the box or you can open the lid of the box to see what unravels.  Apparently they used a very shiny skeleton and a mirror to reflect the skeletons shine to the chair.  The reason I like this exhibit is because it is simple and interesting.  

At the end there was another show and that show introduced something called fair testing.  Fair testing is when you test your hypothesis and if your test fails you change ONE variable at a time.  Fair testing would definitely help with future science projects because instead of removing more than one variable you can remove only one so you don’t remove a variable that is good by accident.

Do like like science?

The Silent movie Called Wing

 This week in Te Ngahere we have been learning about using language features to set our mood and atmosphere.  We had to write and describe a scene of a movie called Wing.  The thing is the movie was silent so we had to watch without sound and we had to write what happened in a certain scene (besides the first scene) WITHOUT SOUND.  So first they introduced the year 6’s to the movie because we haven’t seen the movie but the year 7 and 8’s already watched it for their writing.

We watched the movie and it was quite interesting especially since it had no sound.  So next we went on a doc and we started planning.  One of the language features we had to use was a concrete noun and that is when there is a noun that can be described with the five senses, and the other language feature I wanted to talk about was a vivid adjective and that is when you make an adjective more interesting like if you replace very loud with deafening.  It was fun writing but I was away most of the week so I did not complete much.  I think I was good at the writing generally.  I think I should get better at describing what I write about.

Have you watched Wing before?