Tanks in the car park!

We had some unexpected visitors this morning. Everyone was buzzing in class with two NZ Army APC's in the car park. We went to investigate and they were friendly. We got to have a sit in the driver's seat and they answered heaps of questions. Thanks guys for a great response to our students and Kia Kaha.

Ka Mate Haka for assembly

We have some really keen AB's fans in Room 13 so we have been finding out about the Haka that the AB's often start their matches with. This website is awesome and tells the story of Te Rauparaha and how he wrote this Haka.

Click here to visit this cool site

This Friday we are having a party for the end of a long term and also to farewell our good friends Jade and Arwen. Jade is jetting off with her family to Canada and will have to remember her bear bell and cougar hat! Arwen is off to the coast at Timaru with her family and is looking forward to swimming whatever the weather. Mrs Sweney had a little concert with them before they left to share their awesome playing with us. We then had a massive shared plate for morning tea. No-one ate much of their lunch!! Then it was onto Singstar for a sing-a-long. Mr A and mrs A were battling it out with some help, and Mrs A held onto her Singstar crown.

Dance Off with Room 9

Friday's Library Day

Every Friday we get to go to the library as a class and choose some new books. We have a class set which we can change and everybody has to choose two books, one for them and one for a friend. We have to use the "5 finger rule" when choosing. Anne Marie is always ready to help us, she makes the library bright and cheerful with cool displays and chooses new books for the library. Thanks Anne Marie from Room 13.

Tessellating Shapes

Over the last few weeks we have been working on tessellating shapes. This is where a shape can be repeated and joined together or joined with another shape and it leaves no gaps. Ms Douglas lent us some great connecting shapes and we designed and made a repeating pattern ourselves in coloured paper. Such concentration and careful cutting.

Lewis's Lizard

Last night I found a lizard under some wood on North West Arch Twizel. I called it Lucky, it is about
15 centimetres long. He has a really cool pattern, he has lots of shades of brown. His tail is fully brown, he looks camouflaged. It was really hard to catch him. I googled it, we think it is a skink. Here is a picture showing the different lizards. We looked at TeAra, the encyclopedia of New Zealand and found this chart:

Visit TeAra

Report by Lewis

Folk Dancing with Mrs A

Room13 did Folk Dancing with Mrs A. We did a dance called semia dergh.First we needed a boy and a girl.Then the girl had to put her hand out, then the boy had to do it, then again once more time.It was awesome!!

Reporters Arwen and Ava.

Conservation Week

Room 13 Little Theatre Company - The Santa Trap

Blue1 did a play about a Santa Trap.

A family of bad people who had not got christmas presents thought they were going to get good and cool presents by trapping santa.

 Think that they got good presents? Then think again.

They got spinach,broccoli,a thirty volume encyclopedia,a calculator,a room-tidying machine and ,cabbage,soap,clean socks and underwear.

One of the sister's called Sophie was nice and she got a dolly.

Starring

Arwen as Amy and Sophie Kyle as Dylan Joseph as Michael Ryan as Tania Tom as Santa.

Reporter: Tom

Pictures: Laelani

A Visitor just back from Canada

Jade's dad, Phil, came in and talked to us about what he did in Canada. He showed us lots of awesome pictures of the animals and landscapes of Canada where he was flying helicopters. We liked the wolf pictures and finding out how big they were. Arwen thought the glacier pictures were interesting.

William said, " I liked it because you showed us lots of pictures of Canada and the animals. I like bears and liked the pictures of them."

Thank you for sharing your Canada experience Phil.

Cross Country at Omarama

Children from the Waitaki Valley and the Mackenzie Basin met at Omarama on Friday for the annual cross country race. We were in age groups and the older kids had to run 2Km and even up a hill. We had to go around the yellow flags and down a chute to the finish.

"It was tiring but fun." said Laelani.

We had a little snack after the race then we went to Omarama School.

"The delicious sausages were yummy!" explained Sam and Caleb.

Thank you to Omarama School staff for organising this.

Snow Poems

After our visit to Ohau, Alpine Springs and some fun making a snowman on the field we thought about snow. We thought about: imagery, powerful verbs, interesting word choices, similes and metaphors, alliteration and onomatopaiea!! Can you spot examples of these in our poems?

Cross Country

We are busy training for the cross country local schools event at Omarama on the 16th Of September. We have been training on the track and trying to build our stamina. this week we're moving on to using the tracks near our beautiful Twizel River. Such an amazing place to stop for a breather.

Ice Skating and Snow tubing

Last week we managed to get a last minute skate and tube in at the awesome Alpine Springs Snow Park. Recent warm weather meant we had to book earlier than planned to catch the snow. Luckily our amazing crew of parents rallied round and we all got up there for an excellent days fun. Thanks to Alpine Springs for their Hot chocolates and fun on the tubing. We are working on putting together some mini-films to share our day with you. Check back soon.

Book week.

Mrs Nelson, our very own published author, organised several activities during our Book week celebrations. These included a bedtime story session with Milo's, teddys and PJ's and several awesome storytellers. We even got to dress up as our favorite characters on Friday. Can you guess who we are?

Skiing at Ohau

Our Class trip to Ohau skifield was a great success. We had several students try snowboarding for the first time and they were carving it up by the end of the day. The beginning skiers had pretty much mastered the pizza and managed to turn by the close of play and our more accomplished skiers had managed several runs down the Boulevard. It was great to see those with more experience helping and encouraging those who are just starting out. Zak and Mackenzie showed us some boarding skills and I managed not to injure myself despite doing the splits! Many thanks to those parents who gave up a day to help with transport, coaching and support at the lodge.
We have been working on movies using Windows MovieMaker, adding video and still pictures, transitions and some video effects. We also added our snow poems which we were very proud of.

 

Well, our class production came and went, last minute technical hitches prevented a film being made and unfortunately since we performed it we haven't had a day with every student well and in school for a repeat! Thanks to all the parents who supported with line- learning and were able to come and take part on the day.

Landscape Art Exhibition

Several of our pictures were chosen by Mrs Frost to go to the Artorama exhibition in Timaru, we are hoping to get the rest framed and onto our Virtual gallery, here. We hope that you enjoy them.

Millionaire Hot Seat

A last reminder to all parents and whanau who are invited to join us for our Millionaire Hot Seat quiz tomorrow at 11.45. We have been practising hard after last terms inquiry and scripting to share our learning with you and maybe win a million!

SADD Mufti

Well done those students who took the opportunity to support our senior students raising awareness about drink driving. They dressed in rainbow colours with a gold coin donation and had a sausage sizzle at lunch.

Landscape paintings.

We have been busy adding the final details to our landscape paintings this week.
We chose a landscape photograph from the internet and then used a cardboard window to choose a small part of it. We stuck this onto our paper and have had to use colour mixing to match shades and tones. We have talked about foregrounds, backgrounds, texture and perspective.
Some of our artwork is going to the Artorama exhibition, the rest will be on display next, drop in and enjoy our Impressionist Gallery.

Science fair experiments.

Room13 have been doing science experiments. We used a planning sheet to tell us what to do. I did a big science experiment that had 3 experiments on it. I liked the magic balloon best.
 Kyle looked at paper plane designs. Uncle Grants went the longest distance.
Well done to everyone who entered science fair projects.
A huge thank you to the parents who helped us.

Welcome back to Term 3

I hope that you have all had an awesome break. With plenty of sunshine and some fine days up on the skifields I hope that everyone has had time for some well earned R&R.
This term is a very busy one with a science fair, a class production to finish and rehearse, class ski trips and snow club.
Our class ski trip is provisionally booked for week 3, Thursday 18th August. I will get a letter out to you as soon as it is passed on to me. As usual we rely on the fantastic support from our skiing parents to be able to make this not only a great social and team building day but also with heaps of runs to improve our skiing skills. So if you are able to come along for the day and help out with the skiing or support us at the lodge with putting on gear and clothes then please let me know.

George and the Dragon

The whole school has been working really hard for our play this week. Many staff have been burning the midnight oil for weeks now to make sure everything is ready. We have had time to practise our songs and many thanks to parents for a great effort with our costumes. Break a leg guys!

Week 9 Super spellers

This week even more students made a fantastic effort to learn their spellings. Well done all of you.

Sneak preview

We were invited to have a sneak preview of Room 9's awesome play, The King's in Strife, He Needs a Wife. We used our speech rubric to give them heaps of comments on what they did well. It was awesome and we are looking forward to seeing it again at the junior assembly this Friday 11.45.

3D shapes

On Friday we made some 3d shapes with Mrs Allerston. We had to be with a partner. We made them with lollie sticks and playdough. Some people did some shapes that kept falling down. A Lot of people did cubes you needed a lot of playdough to hold it up. There was a lot of different colored lolly sticks and different coloured playdough.

Some turtle facts for you

Sarah and India are working hard with their Part 3 School journals. We saw a story about sea turtles and decided to make a factfile.

Our Speeches

We have been working hard on speeches this term. We have written several so far, these speeches are about things we are passionate about. We hope you enjoy them as we share our passions.

Here are speeches from Year 4 students; Sarah, Jacob, Jilun,Joseph, Ryan and Mackenzie.



Some more Year 4 students; Josh, Caleb, Zak, AJ, Tom and India.



Now for our Year 3 students; Kyle, Brooke, Sam, Laelani, Ryan and William.



And lucky last are Year 3 students; Arwen, Jack, Bailey, Lewis and Joshua.

Drama time.

Room 13 did some drama with Mrs A and we had to act as a character. First we had to draw our character who was a superhero or a villain. We could make up our own. We had to act out their special powers, we had to guess each others special names.

Reporters: Arwen and Ryan

SuperSpellers

Well done to this weeks superspellers who learnt all of their spellings and remembered them on the day!

We do the reading box blue after play time. Zak is on amber and reads the card and writes the answer on the sheet but you are not  allowed to write on the card's at all times.

Premiere of The Iron Man

We will be having screenings of our film all of this week after school, subject to demand! No tickets required, popcorn welcome! Just drop in after class and grab a chair.

Nature sing-a-long with Mrs A

Bee day

Fresh honey

 

Mr Sweney  came into school and showed us bee stuff. We got to stir some honey in a big container. Mr A got some honey so did Tom. Tom won the honey by telling Mr Sweney the maori name for NZ. We  saw how the bee hive stacked together. We got to hold the honey comb and it was heavy. It had a queen bee cell stuck to it. There was bits of honey cone in the honey. There was a bee flying aroud in room 6.We got to taste some honey. We stirred some honey in the big container it had bee leg and arms. Mr Sweney poured some honey into the little container.

A BIG thanks toMr Sweney for sharing.

Reporters: Lewis and India.

I like the library so much because we get to choose what we want to read .
We can only get out two books. if we let a book stay at home too long our parents will  have to pay A LOT of money. We get to choose choice reading books. At the back of the book there is a barcode the
libarian stamps.


Reporting and Pictures: Tom

Where would we like to visit?

We had to choose a brochure that had pictures of the place we would like to go. The brochures showed us things that we would like to do there and looked fun. Some of the places looked spectacular!

Reporter: Brooke Mackenzie

Practising our speeches

This is when Josh is practising his speech.

Josh's speech was about soccer.

Josh really like's soccer, he enjoys soccer too.

Josh's speech was interesting.

Report by Jilun.

SmokeFree School

Our seniors have been raising awareness for National Smokefree day on Monday. Mrs O'Carroll has been organising activities at lunchtimes to spread the message in a fun way to all members of our school.

crack the code

Caleb's mum comes in every monday to teach Religious Instruction. We had to crack a code. We had to figure it out because we had to count up and then write the letter we landed on under the number. There was a secret message!

Reporters: William and Joseph 

Room 13 Little Theatre Company - In Training



Blue 1 did a play.Called in training it was fun Joseph was the coach.We had to do five sit ups and five push ups and ten star jumps.It was fun and hard and we shared it to the class they liked it. 

We have been thinking about 'Where in the World ...?' we would like to visit or even live. We looked through lots of travel brochures and chose some special activities. We then had to work out which continent our chosen holiday place was in. There weren't any holidays in Africa. We wondered why?

Room 13 Little Theatre Company - The Bushwalk

Sarah and India did a play called the bushwalk. It was about two girls walking in the bush. There names were Mele and Rosie. Sarah was Mele and India was Rosie. It was about when Mele wanted to get home because she could not see any nature and she was tired. But Rosie said to sit down if she was tired but she said NO! We had to write it from a book ourselfs. The audience was very good. At the end of the play we asked the audience some questions.

Players: Sarah and India.

How to make a porotaka

Blue1 reading group had to make a porotaka. First we had to go and get some flax. Then we had to follow the instuctions. We had to do a lot of folding. It was really hard, Joseph was done first and then helped everyone else. We took a long time.

In Blue1 are Joseph, Ryan, Tom, Arwen, Kyle, Ryan N 

Laelani shares some special flags

My dad was born in Scotland. So he had two Scottish flags. Dad let me bring them to school to show them

By Laelani
.

Room 13's favorite games.

It was a wet afternoon and we played some games. We played Winking Murderer and Band Leader. Someone goes out in the hallway and then comes in. The band leader does actions and everyone copies them. The person who's it has to guess the bandleader.

Report and pictures: Ryan and Caleb

Room 13 Little Theatre Company

The play was about salesmen trying to sell mum things. They ended up buying stuff from mum instead. We asked the audience some questions too.

Players: Mackenzie, Lewis, Josh and Laelani

A little late....

I found a picture of one of the Mothers Day cards that the Brainiest 24 hand crafted for their special mums. I was amazed at how carefully you guys worked with finger-painting, and not, hopefully, all over each other! Some very thoughtful and touching poetry too, Well done Room 13.

Our class computers

Room 13 can use the computers for ICT learning and golden time on Friday. There is Miner Max and  Diamond Drop on 101 Kids Brainy Games.
There is a maths one and a spelling one. They are fun to use.

Report and photos by Kyle and AJ

Practising our speeches

We have been writing our speeches on our writing books.Then we went to the ict room with a buddy. When we got to the net book we had to go to movie maker.Then we had to get the webcam ready then unplug our netbooks. We had to practise our speech 2 times. We made a movie of our speech. We played it to the class and we thought about what we did well.

Report and Pictures by Josh V and Jack

Friday's Super Spellers

These people worked really hard to learn their spellings. They got nearly every single spelling right. Well done Super Spellers.

Maths People

We have been doing maths today. There were some tricky questions and some easy ones too. It's fun to check our work, if we get it right we get ticks and a stamp. Sometimes if we finish we can do some more, it's harder each time.

Reporter Mackenzie
Pictures: Lewis

Reading Box Blue

Our class Room13 does the reading box blue. There are 14 levels in colours. Lots of people are on Turquoise. There are cards we pick one each, Then we read the sentences.

After that we answer some questions. Then we get the answer card and check them. We also have a progress chart. If we colour it red it means we got less than 10 or if we get it between 10 and 14 we would colour it orange. Or if we got 15 or more we colour it green.
Reporter:Sarah
Pictures by Bailey

First day on the job

We were the first people to take pictures. We took lots of pictures and thought about our story. We had to put a picture on and write about it.
It's good to show other people our work.

Reporter: India
Photographer: Sam