Willowbank

  Willowbank primary school  24 East Chatton Road   Maitland R.D 3  GORE 9773

Phone/Fax: (03) 207 1876 Email: willowbank@woosh.co.nz media type="file" key="Willowbank.wmv"

Term One was a very busy term at Willowbank School. Our Integrated Inquiry topic was on research and our Key Understandings were around what a researcher does, why people research, how to research effectively and the various tools we can use when we research.

We had several people from our community come and talk to us about the research they do as part of their jobs, we visited the Gore Library, and we had Mr Creighton come and show us how to use a digital camera and the internet correctly to name just a few activities.

At the end of the term we decided that we wanted to show our parents what we had been up to all term so we held a 'Students as Teachers' day. We had stations around the school and we spent ten minutes at each station showing our parents a new skill we had learnt. The stations were: 1. How to download pictures from Google Images to use in research findings/presentations. 2. Using the TKI website to show our parents other schools websites and share with them ideas that we want to include in our own. 3. How to take a GOOD digital photo and download them onto the computer to use as evidence as part of our research presentations. 4. How to create a graph on Microsoft Excel and use that as evidence as part of our research presentations. 5. How to crop photos.

The Ensign came out and wrote an article about our day. We had a great time and our parents learnt a lot!



**This term we are building a vegetable garden - this is part of our Integrated Inquiry focus for the term.** **We decided in term three what we wanted to learn about and focus our time on. In the end we decided that we wanted to know where our food comes from and why food is important.** **We were very grateful for the grant from HeHa which we used to buy gardening gloves, tools, buckets, plants etc. Blue Mountain Lumber donated the wood which was great because it meant that we had** **extra money to buy some wire to put over our vegetables to keep the rabbits out!** **Have a look at the photos below to see what we achieved in the first two weeks of term four!**
 * __ Term Four __**


 * First of all we decided where we wanted the vegetable gardens to go and how big we wanted them to be.** [[image:Building_the_vege_garden_002.jpg width="339" height="255" caption="Building_the_vege_garden_002.jpg"]]


 * Then Mr Chittock helped some of the seniors cut the wood and build the vegetable gardens.** [[image:Building_the_vege_garden_005.jpg width="335" height="220" caption="Building_the_vege_garden_005.jpg"]] [[image:Building_the_vege_garden_018.jpg width="323" height="225" caption="Building_the_vege_garden_018.jpg"]]


 * Then some of the dads came and filled the gardens with dirt.** [[image:Putting_dirt_into_the_vege_gardens_011.jpg width="311" height="202" caption="Putting_dirt_into_the_vege_gardens_011.jpg"]]


 * Then some of our mums came and helped us plant the vegetables.**




 * Then the gardens were finished and now we have to wait for the vegetables to grow.**


 * We also planted potatoes and tomato plants too.**




 * For the rest of term four we are going to learn about seed germination, food miles, best growing conditions for vegetables, what gets planted when, is fresh best etc.

We have a very busy term ahead!**