Te Reo Maori

Circle Time

On Monday the 24^th of September a special teacher from England came to Bledisloe School to teach the teachers about how to improve their teaching of circle time. Her name was Mrs Jenny Mosley and travels all around the world to teach circle time.

 

Room 13 were lucky enough to have her in our classroom for over an hour taking us for circle time. She played some fun games with us like keeping a puppet seal moving around a parachute, which was held by all of us. To get the seal to move we had to gently lift out arms up and tip it to the side, the point of the activity was for us to work together.

Another activity she did with us was we sat in a circle and shared one thing we would change about school. We weren’t allowed to pass or mention names. Once we had been around the circle, she selected 3 people to develop their ideas. They told us about the details of their issues and then one persons issue was selected.

This students issue was: when people walk away from games when they don’t get their own way. The class then offered suggestions, directed at the person with the issues, she had to thank them for their suggestion and let them know if she thought it would work. These solutions have been tried out and some of them have solved the issue.

Mrs Mosley asked us ‘who do you think makes this class a great place to be?’ You could nominate someone and explain why; you couldn’t nominate your best friend. Once someone was nominated the class had to decide whether they agreed. If the person received enough votes they would receive a class certificate.

The people who received the certificates were

Nicole: For being an inclusive member of our class

Liam: For being nice and friendly to everyone.

Shakira: For getting on with everyone.

The last activity that she did with us was a calming activity. We all had to close our eyes and pretend we were on a beach, and the sand was diamonds and other jewels. After a while she starting moving her instrument which made a soothing sound, it sounded like water washing over stones.

We really appreciated our time with Jenny Mosley, she has an amazing character. We were lucky to have her in our class.

Mrs Colliss was very proud of us because we shared our ideas, had great manners and were respectful. She was especially proud when Mrs Mosley and the other visiting teachers complimented the class and Mrs Mosley said that they were one of the best classes that she had been in. How awesome are we!

In fact Mrs Colliss was so proud of us that night she made us marshmallow coconut balls for lunch on Tuesday!

By Ian, Nicole, Humo, Caleb and Sam.

A cool financial literacy website

In maths at the moment most classes are doing financial literacy. This links in to what we are doing in PrEP - more about that later.

Yesterday in the Room 13 maths class, we played this really cool financial literacy online game. We had to choose a job, pay bills, complete challenges, all while trying to reach a savings goal.

It was great fun and included heaps of learning.

http://www.mysavingsquest.com/

A busy few days

Weslandia - Creating our own Civilisation.
By Ian 

On 18^th September, we were assigned to create our own civilisation with hints from the book Weslandia. First we had to think of a stable food crop or natural resource which your civilisation will be based on. Some resources include a Candy Island, wooshberry, tropical trees and lyra, a fruit from Teleperion. For ⅔ of the day we did this (while the interschool cross country squad was away running). Then we think of all the products and things we can make from the resources.

 

 

The Auction

On Tuesday the 18^th of September, Room 13 had an auction. The items up for auction were; bend and twist pencils, blow pens, tennis balls, All Black tattoos, Aquarium pass, the par 2 golf pass, gel pens and glow in the dark necklaces. Tommy won the bend and twist pencils for 150 bleds.

Te Manawa won the blow pens for 420 bleds.

Maxine and Kassie won the tennis balls for 335 bleds.

Michael won the All Black tattoos for 150 bleds.

Kimberley won the Aquarium pass for 120 bleds.

Shakira won the par 2 golf pass for 250 bleds.

Fallon won the gel pens for 350.

Angala won the glow in the dark necklaces for 240 bleds.

The grand total of bleds spent was 2,015 bleds!

WOW that’s a lot of bleds!

By Ocean and Tommy.

Interschool cross country

All schools gathered from the Napier area to compete in a challenging running race. At the regular school cross country the top 6 from year 3 up were chosen. All Bledisloe students tried their hardest to get an awesome placing from all the hard work they practised at school. The most challenging part of the race was running up the hill. After everything was finished all the schools and parents sat down for prize giving where the winners were announced. Bledisloe came 5^th overall and all the students were really proud.

By Maxine and Fallon

 

 

Dog Safety

During the past a few days, Bledisloe School have had a wonderful time meeting a dog control man called Sam. He brought along his dogs. While he was here he taught us about keeping safe around dogs. 

Some of his main messages were:

-If you are eating something and a threatening dog comes up to you, drop the food.

-If a dog is alone, leave it alone.

-To understand they sniff your hand; keep your hand in a fist because your fingers look like sausages.

-Ask the owner if you can pat the dog.

-Keep your face out of their face.

We found it useful because now everyone knows how to act around unknown dogs.

 

A long awaited update...

Dr Seuss PowerPoint’s

By Ocean and Angala

At the end of the Availll reading program we did an activity based on the 48 hours movie challenge. We picked a partner and then choose a favourite Dr Seuss book. To get started we read the book, secondly we had to pick a page and then draw it on an A3 piece of paper. Then we coloured it in. We made a PowerPoint, recorded our voices, so it was like a mini movie. When we watched the end product some of us knew we had to make some changes if we did it again. Now the pictures are displayed on the wall looking stunning!

Link to the Dr Seuss PowerPoint video

 

Update of learning letters

By Caitlyn

On the 10^th of September 2012 we started writing letters to our parents about our learning since we had our interviews. We get to tell our mum and dad how much we have improved since our interview and tell them 2 of the things we have done that we are really proud of.

Magazine

By Shakira and Troy

We are coming to the end of writing our magazines. There is a big difference between the amounts that has been done. We have a big list of things it must include and a deadline of the end of term. When we are finished they will be presented in the school library and hopefully on our blog.

Afterschool Soccer

By Pasa and Kassie

On Thursday’s after school the boys and girls soccer teams play at Park Island. On Thursday the 13^th September we played our last games. The girls played against Westshore Beach Girls and the boys played against Onekawa. Both teams won their games because of their awesome skills.
Go Bledisloe!

 ‘Olympic Foldie Things’

By Kathryn

The Olympic Foldie things are all about the Olympics, of course! You had to write about 2 athletes in the two larger segments. In the medium segments, you wrote about the ancient Olympics, London 2012, a country and a sport or event. In the eight little segments you wrote interesting Olympic facts. They were fun and look really cool!

 

Life Education

By Tyler and Humo

Are you man enough for the quest? On Friday the 14^th room 13 went to see Harold the Giraffe. We had a quest to save one of our dearest knights, Sir Possumalot, our imaginary friend from the ruler of Nearby (Mrs Colliss). We needed to find three gems, in order to find them we had to answer riddles and learn facts. The gems were hidden in three towers but guarding the towers were a wizard, a dragon and a skeleton. We used our knowledge to defeat them. We were all lords and ladies but Ben was our prince and Maxine was our Princess, you think it was imaginary but was it. We finish our quest next time we visit the Life Education Van.

Keeping Ourselves Safe.

By Ben and Ian

Throughout this week this week we have been learning about Keeping Ourselves Safe. It teaches us what abuse it and how we can be protected. Abuse can be Physical, Emotional, Cyber, Neglect, Sexual and Family Violence. It is an interesting topic to learn about but we hope these situations don’t happen to us!

Geometry Maths

By Shirley and Samantha

On Friday, we did something in maths that is similar to art. This work includes interesting lines, one set of parallel lines and shading in alternate regions. It was “Fun Friday” and we decided to do something with an arty twist to our regular maths. Our geometry arts are going on display and they are going to look awesome!

 

Afterschool Rugby

By Felix

Every Wednesday the rugby boys have been facing other school from around Napier. So far we’ve only lost one game, and won all the others. Our first game was very muddy and so slippery that most of the players fell over onto their backs. Lucky the weather has cleared up and we have enjoyed playing on nice, dry fields. Next week is our last game of the season.

Competitive Schools Play for the Shield.

By Shakira, Angala, Janna, Nicole, Samantha, Fallon and Foni.

All the schools in Taradale came together at Bledisloe School on Friday the 31^st of August to compete in 4 different sports. The reason all the schools got together was to compete to win the spooner shield, individual sport trophy’s and fair play awards.

Spooner Shield involves 4 sports rugby, soccer, netball and hockey. Miss Mill’s spooner team had great success, “we came 3^rd out of all” she said happily.

Before prize giving all schools got a surprise visit by Westley Gough, the bronze medallist for track cycling from this year’s Olympics. He showed his bronze medal and told us about his experience at this year’s Olympics. We were all amazed by seeing the real bronze medal.

 

Horrible Fall Leads to Badly Sprained Ankle

By Kimberley, Ben, Ian, Caleb, Kassie, Maxine, Felix and Troy

Our teacher Mrs Colliss fell down the stairs in front of Room 13 and 14, 2 weeks ago on Monday 20^th August. She sprained her ankle very badly and it swelled up. She was getting some tests from the photocopier room. What an epic fail!

“This looks damn puffy” said the nurse of Hastings Hospital, “the chances are very likely you have badly sprained your ankle or maybe even broken your ankle.”

Mrs Colliss had to change the position of her foot so she could see the T.V. Mrs Colliss had to take Ocean’s crutches just to get out to Mrs Titter’s car. Mrs Titter drove to the doctors in Taradale. Mrs Colliss was told to go to the Hastings Hospital, so ambulance came and picked her up. Mrs Colliss had to wait for 2-3 hours for her ankle to be checked, lucky it wasn’t broken!

Olympic Learners!!!

By Te Manawa, Pasa, Caitlyn, Shirley, Tommy, Liam, Sam and Tyler.

In the last few weeks the seniors at Bledisloe School have been doing topic swaps. We rotated from room to room. The reason we did it was to learn about Olympic athletes, past and present.

Some of the New Zealand athlete’s that we looked at were Mahe Drysdale, Yvette Williams and Barbara Kendall. The different Athletes from other countries are Jesse Owens, Oscar Pistorious, Mahamad Ali and Nadia Comenci. Shirley from Room 13 told us “She really enjoyed using the laptops to search for information.”

We watched some YouTube videos, gymnastics bloopers in room 11 and Jesse Owens running in Room 12. We also watched some old footage of the Yvette Williams doing the long jump and she broke the world record!!! We watched Mahe Drysdale come third in rowing even when he had a tummy bug, now that is persistence!

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.