Winter Learning Journey - Spain

This week for Reading we had to do activity 10 on the Winter Learning Journey which was to make a video on a country of your choice. I chose Spain and used Powtoon.

What do you know about Spain?

Olympic Hockey

As the Olympics game has begun, we have started doing some learning around the Olympic Games.   I have chosen hockey as I play hockey and wanted to know what the professional league is about. We had to come up with 5 questions that we wanted to know and then research to find the answers. I mainly found most of my answers from one website which made it quite helpful. What sport are you most interested in for the Olympics? I am enjoying watching the swimming events.

Lamb And Rosemary Cannelloni

In the school holidays, I made Chelsea Winter's Lamb and Rosemary Cannelloni all by myself. It took quite a while to make with prep time being 20-30 minutes and cooking time 40 minutes, it is the sort of dish you need to have quite a lot of time for. I made it dairy free by omitting the creme fraiche for a white sauce on top (containing flour, soy milk, margarine and Dijon mustard). The pesto and sweet chilli bread was a side dish we added because we had some leftover loaf that needed using up. This is the second time I have made this dish and will definitely make it again and again. What dinner dishes have you managed to master on your own?

Oaty Caramel & Chocolate Slice

Last Thursday, my Mum and I decided to make the Oaty Caramel & Chocolate Slice from Nadia Lim's Comfort Food cookbook. 

It took the morning to make it as you had to cook the different layers and then let it set in the fridge for 2 hours once assembling it together. 

This recipe had a lot of butter/margarine (160g), golden syrup (1/4 cup), condensed milk and 250g of dark chocolate which made it a treat that you would not make often. To balance out all this sugar, we used 10 mushy dates with 1 cup oats and 1 cup of thread coconut for the base (with 100 grams of melted butter/margarine). 

The best part was being able to eat it as we made the caramel slice dairy free. We managed to find some coconut condensed milk from the supermarket, swapped the butter for margarine and then used dark 72% chocolate instead of milk chocolate. 

The slice has been a real hit with whoever has sampled it, you only need a little square as it is rich but so delicious!

What do you enjoy making?

WLJ Activity 12

These holidays I have only done one of the Winter Learning Journey activities due to wanting to read. The activity was to make an informative decision on whether you want to live in Burkina Faso or Verkhoyansk. I did a pro's and con's chart to help make my decision.

I definitely think I would rather live in Verkhoyansk as although it is extremely cold, the people are a  lot safer to be around. 

Where would you want to live out of Gold Coast and Mooloolaba? 

Goal Completed!

So in a previous blog post called 'Lion", I talked about our school having a wide reading awards program where you can earn badges for reading a certain amount of books in specific genres. 

There are 3 badges you can earn; Bronze, Silver and Gold. 

To get your badges..

• Bronze - read 10 books, write 1 book review
• Silver - read 25 books, write 1 book review
• Gold - read 50 books, write 1 book review

I had already completed Bronze last school holidays and my aim was get my Silver at the end of term 2. 

So that is exactly what I have done. From week 2 of term 2 through to the first Tuesday of the July school holidays, I have read 25 books and written 1 book review about one of the books. Yay! 

My next goal is to get my Gold by week 4 of term 4. 

This means I will have to read 50 books and write 1 book review. Do you think I can achieve this goal? 

I have already written the 1 book review for the Gold on a book called 'Waiting For Anya' by Michael Morpurgo.

Take a look at my boo review down below.

Matariki Star Facts

 Our focus for Reading on the last week of Term 2 is... Matariki!

I read an article from the Te Papa site, then created a visual on all the facts I learnt about Matariki on google slides. I have also added audio to each slide so click on circle next to the title for audio. 

On one of the slides, there is some text, talking about how to look for the Matariki cluster. I am terrible with finding the different constellations and clusters. What are your skills on finding star clusters and constellations?

Problem Solving Strategies

I have been working on this activity for 3 weeks now!

For the majority of Term 2, we have been doing a lot of problem solving activities in maths. We have been working out questions from the Otago Maths Problem Solving Challenge worksheets from 2000, a long time ago! Our focus has been to use strategies like: Guess and Check and Act It Out to work out these problems.    So for the end of term, Mrs Wing wanted us to create a DLO (Digital Learning Object) to teach others about these strategies and also to remind us of these strategies if we forget them in the future. 

I have created my DLO on Powtoon, which at the time of starting this, I did not know much about. You may have seen already that I have done 2 Powtoon videos, this is because the video's can only be 3 minutes or shorter, but mine is like 6 minutes! Have you used Powtoon before?

As well as using Powtoon, I have also used Google Drawing and Screencastify.

I hope you can understand my way of explaining these 5 strategies. Have you heard of the Otago Maths  Problem Solving Challenge before?