Visiting Author

Last week a visiting author named Raymond Huber came to the school to talk to the senior classes. He has had over twenty books published and he showed some of these to the students. After that, he led a workshop with the children in which he explained how he goes about writing a story and introduced the children to some new planning techniques. He was impressed with some of the students' writing and gave them some feedback about what they had done well and some suggestions about other ways of improving their writing. He showed us how he goes about editing his work and explained the importance of writing a good introduction which sets the scene for the story. It was a very interesting session and the children were enthusiastic about trying to use what they had learnt in their own writing.

Global Classroom Update

Throughout the year the children in Room 8 have maintained a penpal relationship with children from a class at Excelsior Elementary near Sacramento in California, U.S.A.

We recently completed a collaborative investigation of the gold rush with the children engaged in face to face discussions with their American buddies using google hangouts. It was very interesting to be doing this in real time even though it was 9.00am on Thursday here and 2pm Wednesday afternoon there! This will be our last interaction with them for a while as their school year is now over and they won’t start again until they return from their summer break in mid August. We will look forward to catching up with them again then.

Board Games

We have been learning about the importance of rules in any community in order for things to run smoothly.

For the last few weeks our challenge has been to design our own original board game. One of the most important tasks has been to write a set of rules that can be easily understood so that people can play the game without having to be shown how to do it.

Wheel-a-thon

On Wednesday 22 May we had our first ever Wheel-a-thon to help raise money for the purchase of some new school bikes for children to use on our new bike track. Miss Keene, with the help of our student leaders, did a tremendous job of organising a variety of different activities to entertain and educate the children in a fun filled programme that ran from morning interval until the end of the day. At one of the stations the children learnt about bike safety and how to stay safe on the roads. Mr Wilson demonstrated some bike maintenance skills and the student leaders ran some fun activities like relays and novelty races. There was also a delicious sausage sizzle for lunch. Many children gained sponsorship for riding as many laps around the bike track as they could and there were prizes for the best decorated bike and helmet. This was a very successful and enjoyable fundraising and we would like to thank all of our wonderful sponsors.

Anti Bullying Week

This week we have been doing a series of activities to help us gain a greater understanding of what bullying is, how to deal with it, and how to prevent it from happening. In one activity we traced around one of our hands and then wrote on each finger the name of someone who could help us if we were being bullied. In another activity we drew a picture of ourselves, swapped it with a partner who then screwed it up. When we were told to try to flatten out the creases we realised that no matter how hard we tried, the creases could still be seen. This reminded us that the effects of bullying cannot be removed just by saying you are sorry. Finally, we sat in a circle and tossed a ball of string to someone else in the class while paying them a compliment. We ended up with an interconnected web of string to remind us that we all have a support network to help us whenever we need someone to talk to or help us.

Pitcher Plants

Last week Mrs Kaye brought along a pitcher plant for us to investigate. Pitcher plants are several different carnivorous plants which have special types of leaves which trap the insects that these plants feed on. After close observation and a class discussion about them, we carried out some research to find out more about pitcher plants and recorded our findings on an observation worksheet.

Art Gallery/Toitu Trip

On Wednesday 10 April Rooms 7 and 8 went to the Art Gallery and Toitu on a bus trip. Room 7 went to the art gallery first and Room 8 went to Toitu. At Toitu we discussed what life was like in early New Zealand and what it was like to travel on a boat for four months from the other side of the world. We watched a slideshow about what Dunedin looked like when it was first settled and then we went on a treasure hunt to find out interesting facts about the gold rush days. At the Art Gallery we watched a movie about life for the Chinese settlers in the gold rush days and we discussed some of the art works in the gallery about gold. Finally we created a wonderful mural about the gold rush for our classroom wall. Some examples of our work have been posted on the Art Gallery’s website. It was a very enjoyable day!