Last week

For the last 3 days of last week we have been having an exciting Olympic gathering. We went to our Whanau classes – which are mixed classes with years 1 -6, they are the same groups year after year.

Every class did a study on a New Zealand Olympic athlete; examples are Mahe Drysdale, Emma Twigg, Andrea Hewitt.

At some point over the first two days every class went out to the ‘sports arena’ while we were there everyone did shotput, a 10m crawl or 30m sprint and a standing jump. This was a measurement activity because we had to time each other and measure the distances.

Each class did different activities depending on the teacher, some of the favourites were, making Olympic torches with card, paper and colouring pencils (room 8), making a model of the London Bridge which had to hold a little car (room 11), designing your own countries team uniform (room 8), making a photostory of the events (room 4), making flags of your home country, because they studied Nick Willis who was our flag bearer (room 8), in Room 13 we made puppets of athletes which had moving limbs.

In Room 4 they had a New Zealand hockey player who played at the Los Angeles, 1984 Olympics – who shared lots of interesting information, including a small toy of the mascot.

On Friday we were meant to have a whole school mini Olympics but due to the horrible weather we had to have a mini mini Olympics with our buddy classes on the courts. The activities included badminton, relays, shotput, hurdles, discuss, high jump and speed ladder, which were led by the year 6’s.

It was the best days we have had this term because we got to go to different classes and spend time with different people and teachers. But it is nice to be back to normal.

Written by Caleb, Humo, Troy and Nicole.

Week 3

Kia ora, Whanau days are coming up next week, for those people that don’t know, the whole school swaps around classes, so there are year 1 – 6’s in every room. When we are in those rooms we do heaps of activities, this time they are based around the Olympics. Last year every class looked at a different country. In the past Kimberley and Caleb have both really enjoyed having a variety of people to interact with, found it interesting to work with younger kids and the chance be a leader. On Friday we are finishing up with an Olympic themed day and a sausage sizzle, we just have to remember to bring our money.

In class we have been busy learning about the Olympics, from the mascots, to the history, to the current events, we have done it all. Congratulations to our medal winners. Go New Zealand!!!

This week we watched our next movie for AVAILLL it was The Water Horse. The movie is about a little kid who finds an egg which hatches into a colossal water horse, it grows really fast. The movie is about the connection he has with his new friend. The activities we did were the same as Meet the Robinson’s which was great because we knew how to do them and people were more accurate than last time. Next up is another Earth documentary.

The rain has meant that we have been trapped inside; we are getting sick of it. It also has meant we haven’t had a practice in the last 2 weeks for Spooner. All after school sport has been cancelled, such as soccer, rugby and hockey, we haven’t even had one game yet!

The flu has hit Room 13; every day we have had a couple of people away fighting the sickness. We hope everyone gets better soon.

This blog was proudly written by Kimberley and Caleb.

Week 2

We were shocked by the news of Margaret Mahy passing away on Monday. She was a famous New Zealand author of children’s book and poems. On Tuesday we read a copy of A Lion in The Meadow, both the 1969 version and then a version printed in 2007, we were surprised that they had different endings and that the new one was slightly longer. We compared the illustrations in both books, we found the original version was very basic, and only had one shade of each colour and the new version had heaps of detail, better graphics and shades of each colour. We read an interview about Maragret Mahy, an article about her life and then a newspaper article about her death. All of this information then helped us completed a quiz on her at the end of the day and will help in our magazine unit. The winning team was Caleb, Sam and Troy, they each got 6 bleds and a little pack of lollies.

 

Earlier in the week we got into groups of 3 and had to decide what the topic of our magazine was going to be. It had to have a connection to health and P.E.  Some groups decided really easily where as others took awhile to make their mind up. There is a huge range of themes, including fishing and hunting, Olympics, netball, rugby, soccer, cooking. When we had the COW on Wednesday we did a practice page ready for when we do our own magazines. They included an article on Margaret Mahy, a photo with a caption and an advertisment for one of the books she has written.

What a long week being stuck inside because of the horrible rain! Talk about Cabin Fever! Thank goodness at the end of the week we could get outside and stretch our legs! Hopefully it is fine on Monday so we can get practicing for Spooner.

This week for Availll we have been watching a documentary DVD called Earth – The Power of the Planet. The section we have watched for this weeks activities was called Rare Earth. We found out heaps of weird facts, like how earth collided with its twin Theia and in billions of years the moon will not be with us. We have focused on Key Words and how they help us retell information, these skills are going to be super handy when we get researching for our Olympic unit!

We have looked at the different sports that will be at the 2012 olympics, we learnt that these were different from events, e.g. Athletics is the sport, but 100m sprint is the event. We also matched the symbols to the sports.

By Troy, Foni and Caleb

Term 3 Week 1

The clock is ticking down to the 2012 London Olympics. Over the holidays we were given the task to research a country each, these were countries that we hadn’t really heard of, some of the names sounded strange and unusual. With this information we have collated it onto a sheet summarising that country, next week we are sharing the country information with the class and then this will become part of our Olympic display. Next up we will be looking at the history behind the Olympics.

Spooner fever has arrived; we are striving to be the best in the upcoming interschool competition.  This week we have been organising the teams. The sports are soccer boys and girls, hockey, netball and rugby 10’s. Some teams have had to have trials because so many people wanted to be in the teams. We have begun practising, leading up to the week 6 competition.

The 3 R’s – resilience, respect and responsibility have been a focus this week, these expectations are part of the new school emblem so we have spent time talking about them and what they mean to us. There is now a new reward system during break times, if you are caught using the 3 R’s you get a slip which then gets recorded on the chart, if you get 5 you get a certificate and then when you reach 10 you get a moosie or a juicey, and then when you get even more you get a special school badge!  The 3 R’s are now displayed in murals around the school and in every classroom.

When you hear this you may think that we have been slack but no! This week we have watched the movie Meet the Robinsons. It is about a kid whose dream is to become an inventor. Every day we have watched a part of the movie with subtitles and done reading activities based around it. Some of the activities are, finding the longest word in the subtitle and making as many words out of that word in a minute, identifying synonyms in the subtitles plus many more. We can’t wait for the next movie next week.

The Real Art Roadshow came to school which was full of different art by different artists. All up the art was worth 1 million dollars, including one painting which was worth $400,000! It is owned by a lady in Wanaka. It was amazing to see a huge range of different types of art. It really showed the unique ideas and how everyone has a different view as to what good art is. The whole truck was worth $2.5 million. What an amazing opportunity to have an art gallery on our court. We were lucky enough to visit the truck multiple times and hear all about the meanings behind the different pieces of art.

 Bang, bang, bang at the door!

‘Rei’s here!’ someone called out.

On Tuesday we did some paper painting, otherwise known as collage with paper with Rei a visiting art teacher. She showed us how to use ripped up magazines to create pictures. You had to pick simple object to do for example a sun, drink bottle or heart. You then had to hunt through magazines and find the correct colour for your object. The idea was to have little bits of colour not full images. The only way you could use a magazine picture was to rip it into small pieces and piece it back together. It was great to have a visit from someone so enthusiastic about art. We are still busy finishing these off and will post some pictures when they are done.

Contributors to this blog are Humo, Troy, Caleb, Sam, Kimberley and Angala.

Read-a-Thon

On Friday it was the last day of our Read-a-Thon so Bledisloe School had a dress-up day. 

You had to dress up as your favourite book character, or a goodie or a baddie.

Don't we look awesome!

Also on Friday we did some art based on the book 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' By Eric Carle.


First we dyed tissue paper, then drew our caterpillar on tracing paper. Next we had to cut out each segment, putting the tracing paper over the tissue paper and carefully cutting both layers. We then carefully glued them onto the page.

 Kimberley

Ian

Fallon

 Sam

Shakira

 Ocean

Wonder

Today we finished reading Wonder by R.J.Palacio. Mrs Colliss found a couple of interesting video clips which are about the book and a blog which has some images about different things mentioned in the book. Check them out.

Check out this blog...

http://www.helpreaderslovereading.com/search/label/R.%20J.%20Palacio

It breaks down each chapter of the book and has photos which explain the different things mentioned in that chapter. 

An Awesome Website

Today we visited this website…

www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Myst/

We used our forensic knowledge to collect the clues to solve the mystery. We worked with a partner so we had to co-operate, and agree on the decisions we made. You got points for correctly solving clues, but also lost points if you made the wrong choice! It was important to carefully read the information.

Let us know if you play it, and tell us what your score is.

We've been busy :)

Wonder

We are reading a book called ‘Wonder.’ It is written by R.J. Palacio. It is about a boy called August Pullman. We love this book, it is very emotional. One of the things we really enjoy about it is that it shows many characters points of view by having different sections written by different characters. We are getting close to the end, we will tell you more about it when we have finished.

We rate this book 10/10, we recommend it to ages 10 and up.

By Felix and Humo

Army Helmets

We have been making Anzac Army Helmets with Mrs Logan.

First we blew up a balloon and tied it up by ourselves. We used newspaper and newsprint to paper mache our balloons. Next we painted out balloons in camouflage colours and designs. Then we popped our balloons with a craft knife and we cut our paper mache into a shape of a helmet and we cut a brim along the edge. Finally we painted the inside of our helmets. Foni and Kimberley’s helmets we the role models for the rest of us. Now our helmets look superb!

Written by Shakira and Shirley.

The 3 R’s

As the crowd roared the Bledisloe Boy leaped across the room. He announced the 3 R’s competition, the 3 words are:

Respect                Resilience            Responsibility.

We only had a week to enter the challenge; it was to create an art piece using the 3 words. As the clock struck 3 on Friday the entry box was closed. Once the 64 entries were in they were judged. The 5 best were named the winners, 2 of the 5 people were from room 13!

By Angala and Kimberley

Netball

This term Netball is one of the sport options we can play. So far the games have gone well.

We have 3 different teams, 1 year 6 team coached by Mrs Harris, 1 year 5 team coached by Mrs Dingle and a year 5 & 6 team coached by Mrs Colliss.

We have been trying super hard to win our games.

Every morning tea we have been on the courts practicing our goal shooting ready for the upcoming Thursday game.

We try very hard to keep the ball out of the oppositions goal circle.

Let’s hope we win this weeks game.

Written by Kassie and Caitlyn.

Rippa Rugby

After school on Wednesday some of us play rippa rugby against other schools.

We have been winning all our games so far but we have only lost one game. One of our games has been cancelled because it was too cold.

Some schools have showed us that we are very good at fair play!

We only have 3 more games so hopefully we win!

By Tommy and Michael.

Unicycles

At mornings tea and lunchtimes the year 5 and 6’s can use the unicycles.

Some people are pretty good, but get a bit flash and try to do tricks, and fall off.

Other people are still learning and cling onto the building.

They are great fun once you figure out how to do it.

By Pasa and Te Manawa

Visit from Room 6

On Friday the 1^st of June, room 6 kindly decided to come share their work with us, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Repair.

They asked us amazing questions as part of their survey.

The questions included…

·       What we do to recycle at home?

·       What the 4 R’s mean?

They then told us interesting facts about the 4 R’s that they had learnt in class.

Written by Tyler and Troy.

Fitness

Room 13 are so warm. A heard of elephants come stomping as fast as they can through the cloak bay. We know to race outside to line up. The star of the day is at the front of the line. We race off to the courts to do an exhausting ten minutes of fitness.

Push-ups – this is the trickiest one of them all. It is extremely hard to do this right. You need big muscles to do this and this is just the start of the hard, cruel fitness.

Climbing net – this is quite hard, it is a challenge to climb fast and accurately. We have to race to get over. This is fun, we only have 45 seconds to do it.

Burpies – This is nearly impossible to do because of the stench of the ‘stink bomb’ tree but we have to do it and it hurts your bare feet.

By Sam and Caleb.

Read-a-thon

Read-a-thon is about reading all kinds of books. People sponsor or donate money to you and the money goes to the library so they can buy more books. Last week we set goals on the reading wheel. A reading wheel is a piece of paper with a wheel and different books that you read. E.g. magazines, comics, history and adventure. We will let you know how much we raise.

By Nicole and Janna.

Read my Lips

Last week we did an experiment called read my lips. That’s when you put lipstick on and print it onto a piece of paper. (Even the boys had to do it!)

Once we had lipstick on our lips we pressed our lips onto a piece of paper. This left a print of our lips on the paper.

We could see the different patterns our lips left. Kathryn’s one was a branching groove and Samantha’s was long vertical grooves. It was lots of fun.

Written by Samantha and Kathryn. 

Ink Experiment

Last week we started an experiement called True Colour. First we had to write down the steps for the process. The steps were, we had  a piece of paper and drew a little dot with 4 different brands of black felts and 4 different coloured pens, and dipped them into a jar.

The things we learnt were that when you dip the piece of paper in the water with permanent dot on it, it wouldn’t rise up with the water. But with the other brands of felts they would go up the paper and separate into different colour.

We really enjoyed this because it is good to try something new.

By Fallon and Maxine.

Spot the Difference

Last week we did a forensic activity called spot the difference.

We had to spot the difference between different types of handwritien.

The police use this to solve crimes such as wills so they can tell who really wrote things, and people can’t trick each other.

By Foni.

An update for our readers...

Forensics

Hello, this is Sam and I am reporting to you on forensics. We are well underway for this topic. We have been doing fingerprints and looking at the different types like whorl and arch, we have also looked at the ridge characteristics which make them all different.

Hello, here are some facts about hair. Plucked hair from the head has a white bit at the end but combed hair does not. Although from a distance hair may look similar, when you look at it with a magnifying glass can see differences. We found this out by comparing our hair others in the class. By Troy

Look at Me – At the start of this topic we looked at the different characteristics people have in our class. Most people in our class are right handed and not many people have hairy knuckles. By Te Manawa

We had a visit from a police officer and he showed us the finger print kit that they use to solve crimes. He then used it to take some finger prints of people in the class, this was different to what we did in class because he lifted the prints off the window. By Felix

Tackle Friday

On 25^th May a group of people are doing tackle Friday. You need to bring an old rugby jersey and a mouth guard. You also have to have permission from your parents. We can’t wait.  Tommy

Te Reo Maori

With Hoani we’ve been working with verbs. When we had the COW (computers on wheels) we got given a verb and had to search it up on the online Maori dictionary to get the translation. Mrs Colliss took a picture of us doing that verb. Then we created a sentence in Maori saying that we were doing the verb. We created an image including the photo the sentence and a Maori border. They are now on display in our room. Written by Kimberley and Shirley.

Soccer Field Day

This is coming up in a couple of weeks. We go to Park Island and play a lot of games against other teams. We are really excited about it! By Caleb.

Literacy Circles

Room 13 has started doing Literacy Circles for reading. We chose our groups that we would be working with; they have between 4 and 6 people in them. One person in the group asked us what types of books we were interested in and then went with Mrs Colliss to collect them.

The books that the five groups are reading are…

Pig Heart Boy

There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom

Killer Energy

Evolve or Die

Lost Riders

Each person in the group has a different role of work they are to complete. The roles are:

Connector,

Passage Picker,

Illustrator,

Summariser,

Word Master and

Discussion Director.

We rotate around these roles.

Each time we meet we have to have read the allocated pages (that we decide) and complete the work related to the role. The discussion director leads the group in a discussion about the book and then gets everyone to share what they have done.

An outing, some finished art and our visitors

This is our amazing art. We got the idea of the artist James Rizzi, we looked at some of the paintings that he had done. We talked about not coping exactly what he had done but using the same style. His style was bright, bold colours, buildings that we taking up most of the page and they had symbols and faces on them. When we starting dong our one we had the choice of doing a day or night sky, and we had to do 3-6 buildings. After the pencil we used black pastel to outline them, making sure we didn’t smudge it. Next up was the paint, we used bright colours which were slightly watered down. There were heaps of bright colours we could choose from. We called them Crazy Buildings! Don’t they look cool!

By Kathryn and Samantha.

Today we had the Strike team come to Bledisloe School. They had a huge metal framework (which they made themselves) with lots of drums attached. They played them fast, very fast! They called some children from the audience to come up and play a type of Samoan drum. Near the end of the performance they turned off the lights…Suddenly they started to play with fire, they used spray bottles to spray fire sticks in time with the music, it went everywhere, lucky no one got hurt. They have trained for years in this and told us not to try it at home. We were all very lucky that the PTA paid for them to come and visit our school. Thank you!

Written by Willie and Sam.

http://www.amplifier.co.nz/release/53768/sketches.html Check out this link. You can listen to music by Strike!

Yesterday we went to the Kiwi Sport Day at Park Island. We were in 8 teams of 10 and every team played 3 games. The sports were Soccer, Hockey and T-Ball. There were hundreds of kids from different schools. Team 5 won all 3 games, other teams had varying success. Shirley’s highlight of the day was when she eyed up the ball, ran towards and caught it, getting the batter from Porritt out! Michael scored 4 goals in hockey, which surprised him because he didn’t think he was very good, turns out he is! It was a great afternoon we can’t wait for Soccer Field day in a few weeks.

Written by Michael and Shirley.

The Great Cupcake Auction

Yesterday we had the amazing cupcake auction. Mrs Colliss made wonderful cupcakes, however there were only 12. All morning people were gazing at them, dreaming about the delicious sweet taste. Unfortunately not everyone was going to be able to eat one. When the clock struck 12.10 it was auction time. Whoever had the highest bid got the cupcake; we used our bleds to make the purchases. The highest selling cupcake was the one with a chocolate bar on top – it went for 710 Bleds. Felix got a bargain with the first cupcake in the auction – the chocolate flower which sold for just 68 Bleds. Once the payment was paid you got to enjoy your cupcake. Others looked on with jealousy, hopefully next time they will have enough bleds to buy one.  All 12 cupcakes sold for a total of 3187 Bleds. The banker is now rich!

Our first few days back!

We have had a good start to the term. We are all relaxed after a great holiday and ready for a busy term of action.

We have decided to start a new thing in Room 13; this is the STAR OF THE DAY! Each day one special person is chosen randomly to sit at the sparkly desk next to Mrs Colliss’. The Star of the Day gets to be the messenger, yabba catcher, be Mrs Colliss helper and get special stationary to use throughout the day. As well as a tasty morning tea of a gingerbreadman. So far Maxine, Tommy, Nicole, Tyler, Pasa have all had a go, who will be next???

Last week Rooms 11-14 did a maths unit on measurement. It was called ‘The Great Measurement’. Some of the activities we did were using little containers and water to find out how much water a bucket held, we made gloop using corn flour and water, and did a whole bunch of word problems. Every group had a little booklet and had to get each task marked off as they completed it. It was fantastic, Pasa really enjoyed doing the activity with the buckets and water and Kimberley measuring the ingredients to make gloop and letting it slide through her fingers.  By Pasa

Next Tuesday the senior school are going to Park Island to do Kiwi Sport. We have to play 3 different sports these are: soccer, T-ball and hockey. We have been put into 8 teams; these teams are also used for fitness circuit everyday. It should be a good day, hopefully it is warmer than today! By Kimberley

We are starting a new art project, it involves us drawing crazy buildings, which have faces on them and use every bright colour. We are using black pastel and watered down acrylic paint. They are based on the artist James Rizzi. We’ll put some photos on when we have finished. By Foni and Caleb

Wednesday the 2^nd of May some of us are playing our first game of Rippa  Rugby. We are playing Reignier at our school. We will tell you how we got on next entry of the blog. By Tommy and Michael

Forensic Science. Hello, next week we are starting our new topic, it is called Forensic Science. We are so excited because it sounds interesting, and we haven’t even started. We can’t wait for next week. By Humo and Felix

Kia ora, in week 1 Room 13 started writing about one special thing that happened in our holiday. We had to brainstorm our holidays and only select one tiny part then brainstorm this and then finally write about it. We did this because good writers write a lot about a little. We have really enjoyed writing about our holiday and look forward to doing more. By Tyler and Shirley.

Our last week of term 1.

Lego avatars

 We created Lego avatars on the computers. On this website http://reasonablyclever.com/mini/flash/minifig.swf

You could choose a variety of clothes and accessories for your Lego avatar. Once we created our avatars, we had to screen capture them, copy them into our learning journal and then crop them so we could only see our avatar.

Here is what they look like.

By Tommy and Humo.

Fantastic Mr Fox written by Roald Dahl

Ladies and gentlemen, our reading group, Mike Teavee, has been reading the most fantastic book…. FANTASTIC MR FOX!! For the past two weeks we read it, it was about when these three crooks Bean, Bunce and Boggis wanting to kill Mr Fox because Mr Fox keeps stealing food from their farms. At the end of the story had a dinner feast. We all loved the book.  By Willow, Samantha and Shirley.

Te Reo Maori

At Bledisloe School every Wednesday a tutor named Hoani comes to our classrooms and teaches us Te Reo Maori. We learn the culture of Maori, the language and the stories. At lunchtime a special group of children go to the hall to sing songs and do chants. The Kapa Haka group performs and do shows to represent our school we are very proud and we hope to go very far with our Te Reo Maori. 

By Ocean and Sam                  

Volley Ball

Over the past term we have been playing volleyball on Wednesday’s. We have two teams and they are coached by Mrs Harris and Miss Mills. In the games we have 3 different shots we use.

1-    Is the set where we have to get the ball to the other side creating a rainbow to the other side.

2-    Is the forearm pass, which we have to bend down low and we put our hands on top of each other and hit the ball with our forearm.

3-    The last shot is the spike we open our hands and hit the ball over the net. The spiker is also the target if another player from our team gets it to us and we spike it over and we get a bonus point.

We are playing really well and are really proud of our hard work and commitment.

By Kassie and Maxine.

Charlie and the

Charlie and the chocolate factory POP UP BOOK! This book was really funny because everyone laughed and enjoyed the humour of the book.  The book had amazing popup pictures and cool put out bits. Also we looked at these little songs. The funniest little song was this one about Augustus Gloop Augustus Gloop .The song went a little like this….

Augustus Gloop Augustus Gloop…

The great big greedy  nincompoop!

How long could we allow this beast

To gore and guzzle, feed and feast

On everything he wanted to?

Great Scott! It simply wouldn’t do!

Funny huh?

By Te Manawa and Felix. 

     

Term 1 Review

What a term it was a start to start all school years! The main highlight was camp of course (apart from the fact that we were dead tired when we got back home.) Also our class is now looking beautiful with our art up on our walls from the treaty posters to the Gavin Bishop art, our classroom is a masterpiece. We are nearing the end of our Roald Dahl unit with us completing a Roald Dahl matrix.

By Ian and Willie

 Wow!! Our classroom is bright we have done so much art in term 1. Kimberley’s favourite art was the Kiwi Moon Art and her partner’s was the Treaty of Waitangi posters. We have just finished the poppy pictures they are looking great. We are working on exciting words, we get a boring word and think of exciting ones to use instead. We hope to do just as much art in term 2.   

By Kimberley and her partner.

Poppy Art

This week room 13 have done poppy pictures to remember the A.N.Z.A.C’s who died in World War 1, 2 in Gallipoli and other places around the world.

We did the pictures by starting with painting the green grass then the blue sky and the clouds, poppies with the black dots and stems. With the poppies, we did the poppies large at first and did little dots of red at the back. On the back Mrs Colliss numbered the back 1 to 29 and put them in order so they form 1 cool, big poppy picture they look great on the wall. ByBen and Michael.       

Basketball 2012.

           This year the year 5/6 Bledisloe Boomers had an awesome start to their games! The team had practised from a Monday to Friday. The team played at the Centennial Hall in Napier. Our coach Mrs Dingle was awfully proud of how well we played throughout the term. The students in Room 13 who played are Foni, Te Manawa and me, Tyler. We are stunned of how well we’ve played throughout the term.