Week 9 term 1 2017

Another busy week which started with the Parumoana Athletics competition.  Ruma Pukeko did well and a few placed in their various events.  Everyone had lots of fun so a great day all in all.  We also had our first Runanga o Paremata meeting with some interesting ideas and insights into the proposed changes by the Ministry of Education.

Here are some photos from our Jump Jam session on Thursday when it was too wet to go for a run.

Our lovely caretaker Eli is retiring this week so we decided to put together a page to remember his contributions to our school.  We were quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Mostly we have been busy finalising details for our camp next week.  Very exciting!!!!!

Week 8 term one 2017

What a busy week!  On Monday the senior council were busy getting ready for crazy hair day - our day to promote awareness of Epilepsy.

Tuesday we went to Wellington for the Capital E Festival of the Arts.  It was a wonderful day out with three great 'shows' to see.  We started at the St James Theatre watching Un Roi Arthur - an opera about King Arthur.  This was a bit hard to follow sometimes because it was a mixture of French and English, but they had some really interesting techniques to tell their story.  Overall quite entertaining.
After this show, we went to the City Art Gallery to watch the Young and Cinematic films.  These films were made by students and were really interesting.  Probably our favourite film was Emiline, about a girl who couldn't put her arms down.  It was very cute and show empathy and resilience.  The final show we saw was Mata and the Mysterious Musical Maunga which was at the Marae in Te Papa.  This was a story about a boy who wanted to be famous and the journey he went through as he gain insight and understanding about himself and what was really important to him.  It was a wonderful story and very well told.

Wednesday we were expecting to have Run Jump Throw day.  Unfortunately it was postponed until next term.

Thursday we had our Crazy Hair day and everyone looked amazing with their different hairstyles.  The senior council ran a catwalk and played music for people to prance about to.  They also had a face painting station where people could add colour to their faces to match their amazing hair.

It has been a great week and we've had lots of fun.  The council will put together a video to show all the crazy hair pictures so none to show here - sorry.

Collaboration

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at collaboration.  We looked at a rubric provided by New Pedagogies for Deeper Learning (NPDL) program - it's three pages long!!!!!  We decided to simplify it and put it in our words.  In doing so, we realised we weren't that great at collaborating ... YET!

Once we had managed to write our own version of the rubric, we decided to share Room 7's idea and create a visual representation of our ideas.  We've all got different ideas of how to present the rubrics, but they are all pretty amazing.

Throughout this process, we have already developed our collaboration skills - so it has already been a worthwhile exercise.

Three legged races

During team sport, we have been practising a range of Athletics skills, such as shot put, high jump and long jump.  We have had a go at three-legged races - just for fun.  These races require team-work and communication skills, as well as consideration for our team-mates.

Co-operative games

For P.E we had a go at untangling the knot.  The boys were in one group and the girls in the other.  We all put our right hands in and grabbed someone else's hand, then put our left hands in and did the same.  Then we had to work out how to get untangled.

The girls managed to do it faster than the boys, but the boys showed amazing persistence and kept going into morning tea to make sure they finished the task.  Very impressive!

Week 6 Term one

Monday Sally got to work with the new senior council. They had lots of fun storyboarding and filming their introduction movie.  She then spent some time editing until they were all happy to share it with the rest of the school.

Wednesday we had Athletics trials and were particularly impressed with how well the students in room 8 did.  We had lots of firsts, seconds, and thirds, and everyone came back buzzing from a great day out.

We also worked really well on our collaboration activity.  Having worked out some pretty detailed rubrics, we are now starting on developing some visual representations to show where we are at with our collaboration.  The great thing about this is that we will be able to assess our collaborative skills alongside our academic brilliance.

On Thursday we had a lovely run along the Camborne Walkway.  It is such a peaceful and beautiful place to run, but Sally's favourite part was seeing the teams looking after each other and supporting one another during their run.