Technology Challenge

This term we are exploring the concept of change. One if the concepts we have chosen to investigate is "Disasters". The children were presented with the challenge of creating a diorama depicting the scene of a disaster, creating a model of an active volcano, or making a survival kit. They had six weeks to complete this homework task and were encouraged to enlist the support of their parents to help them. They presented their creations to the class on Friday and explained what they had made, how they had made them, and what they had learnt about the disaster they have been researching. As is always the case with these sorts of challenges, the standard of work that the children produced was extremely high. Well done everyone!

Cross Country

On 13 August, the Milton Area Schools Cross Country was held at Tokoiti School. The track was a 2km course around their school field and some neighbouring paddocks. The junior children had a much smaller track of about half a kilometre. It was a wintry day and the grounds were muddy but that’s all part of a cross country event. The Years 3, 4, 5, and 6’s who finished in the first five of their races get to go down to the South Otago champs. After their race, the children were very puffed and hot with all the effort they put in. By the time the older children finished their races they were very cold and wet! There were lots heaps of parents and family members there to watch their children. Every child should be very proud of themselves for competing so well and congratulations to those who qualified for the South Otago champs.

Clutha Clued Up Kids

On 31 July the Year 6 students from Milton Primary joined students from all over the Clutha district at the recreation centre in Balclutha for the Clutha Clued Up Kids workshop. There were 10 different stations for the small groups of children to rotate around. One activity was to ride a bike around a course. It had stop signs, some cones and even a ramp. In another activity we learnt about survival in the bush and how to build a bivouac. The other activities we did during the morning were dog safety, firearms safety, beach safety, fire safety, what to do in an earthquake, how to check a helmet, and we even did one about how your brain works and how to relax. Most people don’t realise how important these keeping ourselves safe tips are but if we remember what we did here it could truly save a life one day.

Hockey Tournament

A mild, sunny morning greeted all of the enthusiastic students who were participating in the annual hockey tournament that was held at Milton Primary School on Wednesday 3 July. A large number of teams from St Mary’s, Waiwera South, Waitahuna, Catlins, Lawrence, Waihola, Kaitangita, and Clutha Valley came over to challenge Milton Primary School.  M.P.S had seven teams entered but unfortunately none of them made it into the semis. Some children got hurt in the games (mostly from being accidentally hit by an opponent’s stick), but they kept playing and we all had to work together to get goals and try to stop the other team from scoring. In the end Clutha Valley beat St Mary’s in a thrilling final that went into overtime. We loved having the students from the high school reffing us. It was a long and hard day but we all thought it was definitely a lot of fun!

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.