Last post for 2012!

Christmas Greetings everyone!

Mrs C has finally found five minutes to sit down and do our final post for the year - and our final post as Kokako because next year we will be known as Team Kahu - a new year, a new name and a new team of bright and capable Year Five and Six pupils!!  You can see our new class blog here: Team Kahu Flying High!

We finished the year with our triathlon, concert and prizegiving, as well as a waterfight, swim and farewell lunch on the final day. You can see photos of these events at our Edendale Primary School facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EdendalePrimarySchool?ref=tn_tnmn

Wasn't our concert item a lot of fun?? Here is is again for those who would like to check it out!

Our final MVP of the year for Celebration Time was Josh H - well done Josh, you are a great role-model of persistence!

Our year ended with some sadness as we farewelled three teachers from the school - Mrs Dickison, Mrs Johansen and Miss de Groot - we wish them all the very best for their future plans and will miss having their smiley faces and great work ethics at the school.

We also farewelled the twenty-eight Kokako Year Six pupils - all will be excited to head off to their new colleges (but Mrs Coyle misses them already!) You can find the list of awards from our Year Six prizegiving at this page of our wikispace: http://room6eps.wikispaces.com/Awesome+Achievements%21

All of the Year Sixes were fantastic fun to work with - we really built up a team atmosphere and enjoyed our activities and challenges.  We had a great year together and all of us have wonderful memories to take away with us.


Mrs C is very proud of every pupil and encouraged everyone to go on to their new schools and make Edendale proud, their parents proud, and themselves proud. As it says on the classroom wall...Be someone you would be proud to know!

Term 4 Weeks 6-7

Hi again from all of the hard working Kokako pupils - thanks to those parents who were able to make it into our room this week to review our progress with our learning goals - most of us have achieved at least one, if not two, of our goals (or are very close to it!) so it was exciting to be able to show parents our ARB books and to show off the work that is displayed around the classroom!

Last week our very last VIP was Ira - we enjoyed seeing and discussing what you shared with us Ira.

Last week we also created our own artworks based on inspirations we have had based on subject/artist/technique.  These can be seen in this photostory:

For reading we have been practising some plays in groups; we will present these to the class on Friday.

On Monday, for our inquiry, we visited local artist and ex-pupil, Allesha Ballard at her exhibition "The Shifting Walls' in the old Four Square shop.  We viewed her work and talked about how she had created it.

On Tuesday we had a go at creating our own photo artwork using photos of old houses - these are the inspiration for poems that we began writing today, and we also took our own photos to use for a similar artwork to be titled 'School Days'.

We have started practising for our end of year concert items and look forward to the triathlon which is next Monday.

Have a good week!

Term Four - Week Five

We are halfway to the end of our last term as pupils of Edendale Primary School!  Most of us have had our visits to our new schools and that has helped build our excitement.  We still have a lot to do before we leave though!

Our MVP at celebration time was Renee - she always demonstrates such great self-control!

And the VIP display in our classroom was about Ricci!

This week some of us took part in the LMV Swimming Sports. What fantastic success we had there - our Year Six relay team (Hayden, Marina, Tom and Maria) won that event, with the Year 5 team and Year 4 team also winning their races.  That means Edendale School holds the LMV relay trophy for another year!

Everyone who swam did their very best and can be very pleased with their efforts -especially those who were able to place in their heat or in their final - will post the results once we get the confirmed list.

Our hurricane writing and art work has all been very popular on the school Facebook page, so head over there and check them out!

 We are really thrilled with our Keith Haring inspired pop art pictures: (you can also check them out on Facebook!)

This is the photostory that Maria put together for us in which we talk about our inspiration for our pen pot designs:

Those of us who did not go to the swimming worked with Mrs Jo and created art inspired by Paul Klee:

Term Four is well underway!

Oh boy! Week Four already and we, again, have been so action-packed that this is the first chance Mrs C has had to update the blog!


Shaz was one of our VIPs.

So was Josh L - the other two just like to get into any photo they can!

Our new inquiry is arts-based: "How do artists inspire me?" - so we began the term by working with clay, learning to attach pieces of clay to a base - we made two batches of pinch-pot creatures which are currently drying out in the cupboards and we look forward to painting them next week.

While 21 of us were visiting our new college for 2013 (Menzies) the seven of us left behind were able to have a go at making free-standing clay totem pole pieces for which we created lizards/tuatara to attach to the outside.  These are drying out at the moment and we will be interested to see if we did do our attaching correctly!

Our strand maths has a geometry (position) foucs so we have been working with compass directions - last week we created our own fantasy island maps - some were fun places to visit and some were quite dangerous!

Our writing has been focussed on descriptions - we began the term by writing about a classmate, then we wrote job descriptions for new friends, and currently we are working on pieces to accompany a painting titled After the Hurricane by Winslow Homer (1899) - fitting with the recent current event of Hurricane Sandy. 

Our stories are really fantastic so far, so keep an eye out for them to pop up in our personal blogs.

Our art moved from clay to portraits - we studied the work of Pablo Picasso and created our own self-portraits using digital photos and pastels.  These look AMAZING!

Now we are looking at the work of pop artist Kieth Haring and we will use this as inspiration for our fundraising calendar pictures.

This week is Pet Day, so we also created some painted and collaged pictures, using sheep photos as our inspiration.

Swimming has started and we are practising for the LMV Swimming Festival to be held later next week.

We created and entered two videos in the Share the Road safe cycling competition; neither video won a prize but we still think they are fantastic!

Many of our photos and videos can be seen on Facebook so look for us there too!

End of Term Three!

Gosh, the last week was so action-packed, and the half-day on Friday was busy with last-day activities that we did not get our blog done!

Our VIP this week was Caitlin!

And, catching up on a few other VIPs/MVPs that I've missed getting on screen!...



Joshua H

Keryn was an MVP for showing the value of Self-Responsibility

Kobie shares his VIP display

Maddy shares her VIP display

Rhianna earned MVP for showing the value of Honesty

And here she is with her VIP display.

We farewelled Miss Van den Beld and wished her thank you for the work she has done with us and wished her all the best for her teaching career, with a good luck cake and slice. We think she is a fantastic teacher and any school that hires her for next year will be making a good choice!

We also had the grand prizegiving for our Olympic Reading Challenge that has been running through the term - everyone in the class was aiming to earn a medal for their personal reading - there were a range of activities to complete after reading different types of books, each earning different points.

Medal-winners are shown below (every participant won a book as a prize):


DOUBLE GOLD medal winnners (earned 500 or more points)

GOLD medal winnners (earned around 400pts)

SILVER medallists (earned around 300points)

BRONZE medallists (earned around 200 points)

 

Have a happy, safe holidays everyone! Mrs C has been sorting spring cleaning her resource cupboards and shelves! Next on the agenda...planning our awesome learning activities for Term Four! See you then!