Room 13 Feels Inside

We love this song.....



Looking forward to seeing you all at the Toymaker's Dream recital at the Twizel Event Centre on Saturday 8th December at 4pm.

Solar eclipse!

Wow, we had an amazing experience today. A partial eclipse of the sun. Mr potter brought a huge home made pinhole camera and Mrs Arkless had her special glasses to look through. I loved the gasps of amazement when you put the glasses on and looked up! We saw lots of crescent shapes as rays of sunlight came through trees and bushes. Mrs A's cardigan made a heap of these.
 I wonder who could find out why this was happening?
Another 13 years to wait for another one and 16 years for a total eclipse! Where will we all be and what will be doing by then I wonder!

This weeks Super Spellers

Well done to these students who learned their spellings really well because they got nearly all of them right, or even all of them!

 Remember: LOOK - SAY - COVER - WRITE- CHECK and 3x is the charm!

Chrome Weblab

Click here to visit the lab.

As part of our inquiry into "What is science?" we have been looking at Chrome Weblab.
See the magic of the web brought to life through 5 Chrome experiments open to the world online. Live from the Science Museum, London.

The sketchbot drew a picture in sand of two of our class, can you guess who they are?

Waitaki Valley Athletics.

We've been training hard for athletics for the last couple of weeks. It was the first time some of us had thrown a shot putt or discus.

Many thanks to all of our friends, parents and whanau who came along to support us on our athletics day. the weather was kind and the wind held off until later. There was lots of jumping, throwing and running going on during the day and our students made a great effort to be good hosts for our guest schools. Well done everyone.

Luca has made it through to the North Otago championships, way to throw Luca!

What is science? Inquiry

We had an awesome science investigation afternoon on Wednesday with a circus of activities base around the Physical and material world.
We were asked several questions to investigate as part of our tuning in to this inquiry.

Can we see sound?
Can you make a rainbow?
Can we see magnetic forces?
Can we make the light bulb light up?
Can we make a stone float?

Ask us about what we found out and why we thought these things happened.....

Can you think how these science processes are used in our world?

White Hat thinking

In our inquiry this term into the Nature of science we are using De Bono's thinking hats to help us with our thinking and learning.

Think White hat - Think paper - FACTS

We will be investigating the physical and material world, researching experiments and doing a few, hopefully leading to an online Science Fair.

Watch this space.

Toi Kowhaiwhai

We have been looking at traditional Toi Maori, especially kowhaiwhai patterns. We started with the koru, then the puhore and have moved on to the mangopare pattern. I wonder who will comment first and tell me what those three words mean.

Golfing naturals

Janelle from Golfing New Zealand came to school today to share her golfing skills. Some students will get the chance to visit the golf course tomorrow .

Harriet Potter - the story

We hope that you enjoy the multimedia storybook of our play - Harriet Potter and the Magic Ball of Oomble Dumble. We storyboarded the play and decided on freeze frames to capture the main events. Then we worked in teams to write the story with our freeze frames, finally we narrated the story using our expressive voices.

In memory of a dear friend.

It was with great sadness that we learned of our good friend Katie's unexpected death later that weekend. We are all deeply saddened and our thoughts go to her family. We miss her and will never forget her.

Harriet Potter

Many congratulations to our awesome cast of characters in their drama festival. Mr and Mrs A were very proud of you all as you were in character and acted your hearts out.

Junior Drama Festival

We had a great dress rehearsal today for our junior drama festival. We are keen to share our great characters, awesome acting and expressive voices with you. We hope you can come.

What?: Junior Drama Festival
Where?: Twizel Events Centre
When?: Friday 14th September 1.30 prompt start.
Who?:
Room 7 - Going on a bear hunt.
Room 13 - Harriet Potter and the Magic Ball of Oomble Dumble
Room 4 - The history of the Olympics
Room 5 - Maui changes shape.
How much?: Gold coin donation please.

Defend the cone

 We learnt a new game over the last couple of weeks in PE. It is called "Defend the cone" Mr A gave us the aim of the game and some rules to start with. We had to play the game and improve it. We came up with rules for gameplay and tactics to make it more fun and fairer. Well done Room 13 , some great sportspeople who know how to play fair!

Olympics Inquiry

We wrapped our Olympics inquiry up last week with a  "Told us, made us wonder review" We shared our information with each other and had to have a good look at each others research. We recorded one new fact  that we had learned and a question this made us ask. We then had some time to try and answer the best questions and improve our slideshow. Have a look at our slideshow below.

 

Room 13’s olympic inquiry from Twizel Area School

Cross Country practice

We have been practicing hard for the Waitaki Schools cross country races at Omarama soon. We have been building our stamina running around the field and the juniors went down to the river walkway to practice running on rougher ground with some hills too.

What time is it?

We have been learning to tell the time. Everyone should be able to tell, o'clock, half past, quarter to and past. Some people can tell the time to 5 minute intervals and others can even use digital time too.
So next time you need to know the time then ask us!!

We have looked at how early people used the sun to tell the time, we drew our shadows during the day. We found out that our shadow gets shorter and then longer again. We think this is because the sun appears to move in the sky. This is because the Earth is spinning. Do you know how long it takes to go around once? Ask us!

Our cross country champs

Well done to Kasey and Blossom in their excellent effort at the North Otago cross country races yesterday. Both girls did us proud and represented the school very well.

Ski trip cancelled today.

***************STOP PRESS***************** Our ski trip is cancelled today due to high winds. Postponement date will be in two weeks, a note will come home to advise. ***************STOP PRESS*****************

Tubing and Ice-skating

What an awesome day out we had at Tekapo Springs. The snow and ice were melting fast so we had to bring our class tube and skate forward. Thanks to our parent helpers who shared the driving to make sure we all got there safely.

Storytime for Room 7 and 9

We have been writing adventure stories based on the native animals we researched in term 1 and 2. We had to try and base our stories on fact and make them realistic but also could also give our characters a personality. Our target audience was a younger class so we had to be careful to not make them too scary!

Frog School - Room 13 Little Theatre Company

Kowhai reading group shared one of their stories from the Junior Journals that they had been practising.
"It was a cool play because I liked all of the actions that the frogs could do." commented Tessa.

Drama rehearsals

We are busy working with Mrs Allerston on our play - Harriet Potter and the Magic of Oomble Doomble, we had to practice and do an audition for the parts, it was hard choosing as there were so many students getting into character. We had to think about the character's actions and expression. We also had to think about stage directions such as being loud and facing the audience.



We look forward to sharing our play with you on the afternoon of Friday the 17th September at the Events Centre.

Mathletics result!

Brigette has achieved a top 3 spot in the whole of the school in Mathletics. Kia pai Brigette. Our school results show an average 32% increase in scores, total live Maths correct answers 196,384!
Thank you to all whanau for encouraging our students to take part regularly at home.
If you have any questions abouti using Mathletics at home to support your child's learning then please see me.

The Olympics

We have been enjoying our Olympics Inquiry, sharing the amazing efforts of athletes from all over the world. Go hard team New Zealand. As part of our Inquiry students took their learning home and had to find out a few facts about the Ancient Olympics and be able to share it.
This is a key skill: being able to make sense of information and explain or summarise it. In a world where IT bring so much information to our fingertips, being able to understand what we have found out is vital.

Arohatia te reo - Te wiki o te reo Maori

    Tena Koutou, Tena koutou, Tena koutou, katoa

Room 13 have celebrated te wiki o te reo Maori with heaps of language activities, word games, and learning our Mihi.

Haere Ra Kalani, Chi, Marama and Whanau

Back from the holidays with everyone bright eyed and bushy tailed and raring to go. Kalani and whanau are heading off to Timaru and so we had to say Haere Ra. Kalani is a very cheerful and keen member of class and will be sadly missed by us all, her Mum, Marama has worked incredibly hard within the school teaching students Te Reo Maori and Kapa Haka. Thank you and best wishes to you all.

End of term Striving Awards

A fantastic turnout of parents came to share our end of term assembly. We were treated to a funny play by the middle school drama options, with a scene from Wind in the Willows. The Kapa Haka group were awesome and a real asset to our school, it showed the amount of hard work and dedication put in by our students and their coaches especially Marama. Then we had a lovely group strum and song from the guitar option group. It showed the wide variety of skills and competencies developed in our school which can't be easily measured!

After all the entertainment it was down to the serious business of recognizing the efforts of our students this term. It wasn't too hard picking out those who had earned a mention this time but I was very disappointed not to be able to pick a boy from Room 13.
Come on guys you need to step it up and show you can put just as much effort into your learning as the girls!!!

News: Basketball Hoops

We have four new basketball hoops in the playground. They are all different heights so everyone can shoot a hoop! Our fantastic Home and School group with amazing support from the community made this happen. Thank you so much for your efforts.
"They are good sizes to shoot to." thought Mason.
"They are really fun to play with!" exclaimed Blossom.
"They are really handy to practice our netball shooting." pondered Ava and Lynlee.

Holiday Mathletics

These students have gone above and beyond to earn certificates during the holidays. Maybe that freezing fog and hoar frost made it a little easier to be sat at the computer!

Matariki Homework

In the Holidays Amie and Tessa did some Matariki homework.
 " It was awesome designing and planning my matariki poster" said Amie.
 " It was interesting finding out about Matariki" explained Tessa.

"Well done girls for taking your learning home and sharing with us." congratulated Mr Allerston.

Farewell Max

Max and his family have left New Zealand to go to Scotland. We shared a last morning tea with our friend Max.
"You were good on your scooter and BMX." said Mason.
"You were fun to be with in class." said Ava.
"He always played fair in games in class." remembered Ollie.

Sing-a-long with Room 13

As part of our end of term party we had a good sing with Singstar. there was heaps of fun and competition between several divas in our class.
" I love singstar because you get to sing and dance. " said Tessa
" I like singstar alot because you get to sing all sorts of song. "said Blossom.

Mathletes are go!

Yet more fantastic Mathletics effort with several students achieving Silver certificates as well. We are seeing a real boost in mental maths speeds and confidence. It will be really interesting at the end of year when we review everyone's progress.

Board Games on display

After a lot of hard work our board games were finished, tested, well and truly played and evaluated. Enjoy the display in the foyer as they are on their way home for the holidays.




" I played my game in the hoildays. My Mum rated it a 10 " Said Amie.
" I played my game with my mum and dad. My Mum thought it was cool and I beat my Dad by just 1! " said James.

Measuring in metres

 Last Friday we went into the playground with Mrs Allerston to measure the width , height and length of the playground equipment.

"We had to look at the tape measure really well to get it right," said Kalani and Blossom.

Measure twice, cut once! - "Measure carefully so we get it right," says Holly.

A once in a lifetime event, or maybe not?

Last week Mrs Arkless came to visit our classroom with some special news. The planet Venus was passing in between our planet and the sun, this will not happen again for over a hundred years! We had to use special safety glasses with very dark lenses to look at the sun safely. NEVER look at the sune with only your eyes, they will be damaged.We wondered if any of us would be alive when this happens again and whether we would remember today!

 

Snow Fun

We had a decent fall of snow last week so everyone got wrapped up and we went outside for a snowball fight. We also made some snow angels and look at ice crystals. Did you know that no two snowflakes are the same, they all have 6 sides or points but are all unique, just like us.

Reading online

We have just taken a year subscription to trial Sunshineonline, a reading resource with heaps of multimedia books and activities. When the headphones arrived we were the first class to try them out.

http://www.sunshineonline.com.au/

Collaborating with mental Maths strategies

We use our whiteboards often as a quick way of sharing our learning and thinking. We work together to use the best strategies for these problems

Jump Jam

Our year 6 students have been working hard learning the Jump Jam dances. They were great role models and teachers sharing their moves with the junior school. Thank you Room 5.

Superstar Mathletes

We use Mathletics to support our Maths lessons in class. We can practice skills learnt and also Mr A can help us with "just in time" learning, this is when we need it most just at the right time.

We wonder how parents feel about Mathletics?

Our board games

We used our inquiry on New Zealand Native Animals to give us ideas for a board game. We looked at games we had at home and designed our game with cards, instructions, counters, objects and a board. We worked really hard on our games and used the computers to help us. It was awesome playing the game, picking up cards and trying to get to the finish.

Awesome soccer skills fun!

Autumn Colours

We had a look at the work of Andy Goldsworthy. He uses only found natural things to make amazing artwork. We collected fallen leaves in beautiful autumn shades to make a feature. It didn't last long but we took pictures in our minds.

Shazaaaaam!

Playing Shazaam is awesome because we get to play in a group. We have to choose a Knight, Giant or a Wizard. We are learning to work as a team. We had to huddle up and whisper so the other team did not hear.

We love DEAR

Drop Everything And Read - our whole school does every day. We are able to read really well now and our reading is much more about learning comprehension strategies (understanding) rather than decoding (what the words say). Home readers should be read through by students twice over 2 or 3 nights and a quick quiz after Is a great way of checking understanding. Please make use of our great library too, reading for enjoyment.

Our super duper Mathletes

"Mathletics is lots of fun and I learned about length." said Lily.
"Mathletics will change your Maths and make it quicker." said Ava.
"I have learned about doubles on live Marhletics" said Blossom.

Watch out All Blacks

Last week Room 13 played rugby.we were practising our passing and kicking.
"Watch out the All Blacks because future All Blacks coming your way!" said Amie.
"Rugby is a fun sport." said Ollie
All of us are All Blacks fans and Caylen loves to talk about them.

New Zealand Sign Language Week

We have been finding out about New Zealand Sign Language. Katie knows some and showed us how to say, "My name is ...." we looked up how to finger spell our names.