Specialism: Enrichment Year 7 & 8 Transpower Neighbourhood Engineers Visit

On Friday 6 May our Year 7 & 8 Enrichment Class met Micah our visiting neighbourhood engineer. Micah works near the airport for Hadyn and Rollet and is currently the site engineer for the Sistema Factory build in Mangere.

Micah started by introducing himself and explaining what a site engineer does

Our students asked lots of questions-

Do you have to be accurate?, How do you know your building will be built in time? what happens if your time estimation is wrong?

Other questions were asked- Why do you put metal in concrete?

What happens if you miss out something?

Then we toured the school to look for a suitable space for our project- 

an outdoor learning space for the school!

Micah gave the students some homework-Write a brief- what are we doing? What do we want?, How many people do we want to use the space? What is the purpose of the space?

Our students chose the space between the junior and senior school- they chose it because it is easy to get to for the whole school- the slope can be sat on, it is used to watch sports and events- issues Micah asked the team to think about were the posts and the trees

Thanks Micah- our students are looking forward to your next visit- 

but we need to do our homework first!

Specialism: Enrichment- Principals Morning Tea

At the end of Term 1 our Year 6 and 8 enrichment students planned the Principals Morning Tea for all staff at Robertson Road School- we worked to a budget and to our skill levels

Year 6 planned the sweet dishes and made them in teams

our Year 6's also helped our year 8's to make the savoury dishes too 

meat and potato pies with hand made pastry

helping prepare for potato salad

icing some cakes

topping our pies with potato

bacon and egg rolls

sandwiches and sushi

quiches

pies and rolls

some of our enrichment students

well done!- what an achievement

now we eat..

Specialism: Year 8 Enrichment

Year 8 enrichment is an opportunity to take our cooking skills to the next level-

to cook things we might never have the opportunity to- to gain an insight into what our limitations are...

meringue 

separating eggs

to make a pavlova

cooking it at a low temperature, for a long time, to ensure it cooks correctly

layers- caramel crunch

making the biscuit base- leaving it to set

making the caramel from scratch- adding it to the base and leaving it to set

rainbow cake

baking different coloured layers

sandwiching them together

we got to try things that we wanted to cook- our limitations were the time we had and whether we could visualise the end result-this was crucial to the outcome being of a high standard

Specialism: Year 8 Sushi

Our Year 8's have been putting all their skills together to make sushi-

 the ideal litter-less lunch...

wash the rice

then boil it in a pot

measure the ingredients for the sushi vinegar

stir until dissolved

pour the vinegar on the cooked rice and mix in carefully

process the ingredients- long and thin if possible

have a variety of proteins and veggies- make sure you have some crunch...

with wet hands place the rice on the nori- leave a gap

add fillings

include gooey bits

put water on the nori then roll- use a rolling mat or tea towel

cut with a wet knife

eat with soy sauce,

pickled ginger,

or take the wasabi challenge...

Specialism: Year 7 In or on toast

Year 7's have been continuing the theme of a healthy breakfast

looking at bread/toast as the basis of our breakfast

butter the slices of bread

then add either a topping or a filling

sweet fillings like apple and jam

savoury fillings like tomato puree and cheese

some chose to put toppings on instead of fillings

then they were either cooked in a sandwich maker

or in the oven

we learned that a sandwich maker seals the bread around the edges and some can even cut the sandwich in half. Sealing the bread stops the fillings from spilling out and keeps the heat in for longer. The sandwich maker cooks the bread on both sides at the same time- however if a disadvantage of using a sandwich maker is that you cannot see your filling/s- so you may not know what you are eating...

our students now also understand how to balance our breakfasts by having a carbohydrate and some protein- baked beans are great because they cover two food groups- protein and fibre- with bread they make the breakfast balanced- our students know that using wholewheat bread will add more fibre to the outcome too...