Welcome to Term 2

This is a waiata we are learning this term and it seems appropriate to put it in this welcome post.

Molly's Poem

Listening to the rain

I'm sitting here in the sunroom

Listening to the rain

Writing, writing scratchy pencil

Listening to the rain

The treehouse is soaking the flowers are drenched

Listening to the rain

The badmington net is swaying in the wind

Listening to the rain

The clouds are here the sun is gone

Listening to the rain

Beanos littered across the floor

Listening to the rain

The voices of adults, jabbering, jabbering

Listening to the rain

Droplets of water running past me

Listening to the rain

Pattering, pattering on the roof

Listening to the rain

A little red robin hops along past

Listening to the rain

By Molly

WOW- flowers

This WOW! event was found by Emily.

  In 1936 a simple flower parade became the oldest and most celebrated flower show in all of Europe. Zundert in the Netherlands has hosted the show since it started and the town looks after an average of 50 000 visitors who come to look at the displays.

The creators use dahlias for the displays and they build gravity defying sculptures. The shows occur the first Sunday in September each year. Each float uses six to eight million dahlias.

Hello from England!!!!

Molly's Blog

Okay this is kind of strange seeing as I'm the other side of the world from Room 11 but here goes... The flight over was HUGE! We had to stop at Christchurch, Sydney, Bangkok, Dubai and then landed at Heathrow airport in Sussex. I thought I saw Adam’s dad on one flight because Adam said he left the same day as us and went to the same places, which is a bit of a coincidence.
It’s very sunny today but the day before yesterday we had snow! Unfortunately that was the day we all went shopping so we got a bit chilly. I'm currently at my grandparents house after seeing the other grandparents and cousins. We had a huge clean up of the garden yesterday [as we do every time we come here] and a huge bonfire on the dirt field. It was a bit strange having a bonfire because you're not allowed to have them in NZ.

We're going up to London tomorrow and we're going to an absolutely huge toyshop, which used to be the biggest in the world! We're trying to buy birthday presents for Mum and Dad because their birthdays are very soon.  On the way back from England we are stopping in Bangkok for a couple of days for my dad’s birthday, we've been joking around a bit saying we'll get him an elephant for a birthday present.

For some schoolwork and for a bit of fun I'm writing a story.

People Savers

On Wednesday the 6th of March we did an interesting activity:

People Savers! For those of you who don't know what the People Savers course is it's when a medic from the Red Cross comes and teaches us what to do in times of extreme emergency for example ....

. Car crashes

. Fires

. Burns

. Choking

In each of these we were taught to be calm and help in any way possible.
To remember what we had to do in an emergency we can use Drs ABC

Danger

Response

Send for help

Airway

Breathing

Circulation 

Art competition

Hi,
Room 11 are having an art competition!
you can enter your art by e-mailing us a photo or sending your art in for us to post. You must have proof that it is your artwork otherwise you will not be entered in to the competition a parents signature will be fine. We will put all art on the Room 11's blog so you can vote by putting a comment saying who's you like. You may only vote once, any votes with no name will not be counted.

There are mystery prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd . We need all your entries in by June 25th. We will accept any kind of art from graffiti to clay. You must be 4 to 14 to enter, no older or younger. Teachers can tell their students but can not do it for them or under there name. Please abide by the rules and have fun creating your masterpiece. Send your art to Room 11 as a photo or the art.The staff will vote as well.You can only put in one piece of art. You can not vote for yourself. look for a art competition update to find the art to vote.

entry 1

entry 2

entry 3

entry 4

entry 5

                                                                                                                                                                               

Sneak preview of our camp ...

We are busy working on on our letters of thanks to make sure everyone who helped us with our camp knows that their efforts were appreciated. Once these are finished we will add more posts about our camp experiences.  Until then take a peak at the photos in this slideshow.

Divisibility Rules

We have been talking about prime numbers, composite numbers and factors.  When working on these ideas we found that students who knew the rules of divisibility were able to work out the factors of any given number or whether a number was prime or composite faster than those who didn't know the rules.

Check out the movies or read the info on these websites to clear up the Divisibility Rules Mystery and beat the others to the answers!

Divisibility rules for 3 and 9

Rules for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10

Another movie with examples at this website

Can you find rules for 7 and 8?????

Mandala art.

 

 

 

  Mandala Art

 Room 11 were chosen to put some artwork in the staffroom.
The steps that got us there were :

all the mandala's together.

1. Find out what the task meant.
2. Plan what we were going to do and use.  That's where we hit a problem - what were we going to do?
3. So that's also where we had to put another step.
4. Collect different ideas of what we could put in the staffroom. Luckily Mrs Hosie found examples of mandala art that we all liked.
5. At art time we had to list at least eight things that represented us.
6. We had to draw around a CD 4 times and then draw four drafts of our own mandala pattern. Each had to have in it at least one thing that represents us in symbols and drawings not words.
7. Next we had to choose one of the drafts that we had drawn and then draw it onto a piece of white card.
8. Mrs Hosie bought some watercolor pencils and we used them to add colour to bring our designs to life.  (Later some people experimented with just black and white designs and they looked cool too.)  

Putting it on paper.

Stage 4 and 5

                        

Alfie's awesome artwork.

painting in action.

Stage 4

Finished mandala! 

Swimming Sports

                                  Swimming Sports

Last Friday the Year 5 to 8 students went to the Riwaka School pool for our swimming sports.

It was a really hot day so hitting the water was a really cool way to start the day. Everyone competed in at least two events.  We had a lot of fun and surprises with several new improved timings being recorded. 

For most people their favourite part of the day was the Teacher on a Chair race where each House had their House teacher sitting on a chair with 4 of the strongest/tallest Year 8s pulling them through the water to the other end. There has never been a year when a teacher hasn`t cheated! We had a special person competing in the Teacher on a Chair race this year. Instead of Mr Clearwater - Mr Clearwater`s twin sister Simone, wearing a stunning green swim suit made an appearance.

Mr Clearwater's twin sister, Simone.

Teacher on a chair?  Define 'on'.

By Sophie

Camp preparation

Split Apple Rock

Wow the start of the year has flown past and already camp is four days away! Room 11 is going to Totaranui.This week we have been preparing for camp with the people saving course by Red Cross which will be a big help if we get into trouble while at camp. We also have done a catwalk in our raincoats and tramping shoes today which was really fun. At camp we will be  kayaking, abseiling, walking to Separation point, on the last night we will be building our own bivouacs and sleeping in them on the lawn outside the homestead and lots more cool stuff.Totaranui is a 1km long beach in the Able Tasman. It is where the Ngai Tahu tribe first landed in New Zealand. It used to be a farming settlement owned by the Pratt and Gibb families but the Gibb family homestead was burnt in a fire. The Pratt family homestead has been changed into a education learning centre. When Nelson had that big rain last year and we had big flooding- the road between  Wainui bay and Totaranui was damaged by the slips and the road stayed closed over the Christmas holidays - the only way to access Totaranui was by boat. We will have lots of fun over in Totaranui and we hope if you go over there you will too.

Lego house!

You guys may know James May from Top Gear but did you ever think he would attempt to make a full scale lego house? 
This is big enough to walk in, even live in, although I don't think a lego bed would be very comfy!
We decided that this came into the Wow! category for achievement.

Reuben

WOW!

One of the Habits of Mind we are focussing on is responding with wonderment and awe. We are looking out for things that make us go "Wow!" 
Check this out...

This is Alain Robert a French rock
 and urban building climber.  He has climbed many high 
buildings including the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera
 House and the Cheung Kong Centre.  But thats not all - he does it with only a 
pair of climbing shoes and a smalll bag of chalk! 
This made me, Emily, go "WOW!"

Art, Art and More Art!

This week Room 11 has been working on art quite a lot.


Balloon Art
Balloon Art is a fun art idea which Mrs Hosie found on the Internet while searching for an art idea to display in the staffroom. Balloon art makes it look like you are floating into a far away galaxy or in some cases- Shooting through the sky faster than the speed of light. In our balloons we wrote our goals for the term.


Mandala Art

Mandala is a Sanskrit (which is the official language of the state of Uttarakhand, in northern India) word which means circle.
Mandala Art has a spiritual  and ritual  significance in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Our Mandala Art is made out of lots of patterns or things that are special to us. Some of us still haven`t  finished our Mandala Art but as soon as we have all finished our art it will be displayed in the staffroom.


By Sophie

Welcome back

What a great start to the year. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the class of 2013 today and meeting those of you who were able to come into the classroom today.  It feels good to be back. Things that made me go 'aah' were: seeing the students sitting at their desks chatting 15 minutes before the bell was due to ring for class; noting that most students were attempting to share their ideas, opinions and answers during discussions (we discussed the concept of people not contributing being  'baggage' that the rest of the class had to carry); appreciating the efforts and creative results of their work; enjoying our 'snowball' fight (yes, in summer!) and learning about the students' likes and dislikes as we tried to guess who had written on each snowball; seeing 6 students voluntarily come into class to complete unfinished work at lunchtime!

We are in the process of setting up our class economy at present.  The students will be asking advice as to what to put on their job description and asking you to write a short referee's report for them. Once their applications are completed, I will go through and appoint students to jobs appropriate to their interests and abilities to carry them out.  They are very excited about the prospect of earning money and being able to take part in the two auctions (mid and end of year).
Once the job vacancies have been filled this blog will be updated by a journalist and photographer. I am sure their posts will be much more interesting than this one!
Ka kite ano
Teressa

The Penultimate Day of 2012

What a great way to end the year: Secret Santa first thing, farewell assembly after morning tea, the Amazing Race and the grand finale, the water fight!  There are no photos of the water fight as we do not have a water proof camera, which is a shame as there would have been some funny shots I am sure.

Enjoy the video clip.

Prom Night - End of Year Disco

What a great night.

Whenua Iti - Education Outside the Classroom

The class had a great time pushing their physical and emotional boundaries as they faced challenges that involved heights and trusting your team to keep you safe.

Enterprising students - PrEP was a blast!

What a great way to learn about financial literacy and being in business.