Lan and Olga from Department of Conservation Talks to Us About our Waterways

Lan talks to us about what could be in our waterways

Lan and Olga try to find life in the stream!

Nice and shady here, I wonder what we find?

What a cool eel!

We shared our discoveries with the school after lunch!

We had a great day today. Lan Pham, from the Department of Conservation, came to talk to us about the importance looking after our waterways. She told the whole school about the species we could find in our local streams.Eels, bullies and koura (freshwater crayfish) live in healthy streams. Bloodworms and snails live in streams that are not so healthy. Otago is the hotspot area for the native NZ galaxiids. They were called this because of the star like pattern on them. Room 1 was really lucky because we went down to the stream and watched Lan and Olga use electrical fishing equipment to find if we had lots of life on our waterways. The type of fish we found would tell us how healthy our waterways were. We were excited to find short finned eels, red finned bullies and koura. Lan was really excited and thought our stream was really healthy. After lunch we shared our findings with the school. We hope to work with our school neighbours and plant areas of the waterway that have no shade. This will prevent the weeds and give more shade to the stream which will encourage freshwater fish and plants.

Expert Geologist Talks to us about Mapping the Ocean Floor

Today Rosa's Dad, Richard, came to talk to us. He is a geologist who has worked with scientists when they go out and explore the deep sea. His job was to map the oceans. They used ships with eco sounders to measure and map the oceans.They now map them in 3D.He showed us what the bottom of ocean looked like. It is very bumpy and just like the land surface above water! He showed us photos of fish that have adapted to survive in extreme conditions like the deep sea. Ocean explorers use special boat, Tangaroa,that has a lot of expensive equipment on board to take them to places like Antartica. They also use smaller boats to get into smaller places. They need to wear special clothing to protect them. He said there are a lot of things still to discover about the ocean.

Marine Aquarium Visit

On Monday 11th March Room1 went to the Portobello Marine Aquarium to learn about the MM2 project ( marine metre square) At the moment we are writng recounts about our trip. Watch this space for the best recounts to be published!

Book Character Dress Up Dsy

On Friday 8th March our school held a dress up day as part of our our Scholastic Book Week. This is Room 1 dressed as their favourite book character. We enjoyed seeing all of the other classes as well. Tessa

Marine Biologist Visits Our School

Katrina ( aka Phoebes Mum) came to talk to us today about seaweed and phytoplankton. She is a marine biologist who studies seaweed and algae. Her husband ( aka Phillip aka Phoebes Dad)studies phytoplankton in the open ocean but he was sick today. We learnt there are three different colours of seaweed- green, red and brown. Seaweed is very important because it produces 50% of our oxygen. You might think you don't eat seaweed but it is in ice cream, toothpaste and of course sushi, just to name a few. Seaweed is very important for our marine life. Seaworms, sea snails, fish and other small creatures feed from seaweed. One type of seaweed c.Flexulosum has over 1000 creatures living in it. In fact seaweed indirectly feeds the whole food chain.There are over 330 different types of seaweed in NZ and half of these are not found anywhere else in the world. Katrina also talked about Phillips work with phytoplankton.You can only see phytoplankton in a microscope. Phytoplankton is floating algae. It is also called dytom. Some have glass shells with holes in it so they can breathe. Phillip goes on a special research boat with other scientists. The boat is designed to go through ice.

PALs Games

The children who went to the PALs ( Physical Activity Leaders) training morning have been teaching their classmates how to play some of the games. We have really enjoyed playing Dead Ant and Jail Break!

Buddy Reading With Room 3

We have enjoyed buddy reading each Friday with the awesome Room 3's. They are great readers and we are looking forward to sharing our learning with them and learning from them.

The Fabulous Room 1

Room 1 is an awesome class! Here we are under the bell tower at our school.