Term 3 Week One

Welcome back everyone! We have all had a great break and are ready for the learning adventures ahead of us this term!

We are very sad this week to no longer have Bailey with us in our classroom as he and his family have moved on to Mataura - we wish Bailey all the best and will miss having him with us.

We are, however, very excited to have a new data projector - a short-throw projector - for our interactive whiteboard, thanks to the grant from the Mataura Licensing Trust for ICT in schools. The new projector is much brighter and the items on the board are clearer and easier to see - thanks MLT!!
This week has gone by quickly, aided by the public holiday of ANZAC Day on Wednesday. Many of us attended the Edendale ANZAC service at 8a.m. at which we joined the parade to represent the school, with the Student Council laying a wreath on our war memorial to honour those who served in war to protect us.

Our new novel is called 'Brave Bess' and is written by Kiwi author Susan Brocker, based on the true life story of a New Zealand horse that was sent to the Middle East to help during World War One. We are already amazed at the bravery and strength of character shown by these horses as they faced situations that were so unnatural to them - did you know the horses had to spend 7 weeks standing up when on the ships going over to Egypt?

Our release teacher for this term is Mrs Miller and we worked well with her on Thursday, looking at researching and presenting information on topics beginning with the letter R. There is a wide variety of subjects from red back spiders to the Roman colosseum. We used wikipedia and had to write our information in our words.

On Monday and Tuesday we painted flowers to practice our brushstroke techniques and our colour mixing and proportions. These look really awesome, with four being on display in the office.
Today we began the Always a Leader programme - a series of lessons that help us look at how we can be super-cool leaders and show great skills when working with other people. We learned that it is important first to like yourself, believe in yourself and to not compare ourselves to others as we are all so different and have different strengths and skills.

Remember you can check out a lot of our work on our YouTube channel (the latest additions are based on our Term One inquiry) and also on our individual blogs!!

Term One - X-factor X-pedition Camp

What a fantastic funtastic time we had last week at Camp Columba!!  Everyone met their goals and faced their challenges really well and we have many proud Kokako pupils who had a great time and learnt a few things about themselves and each other!

There are too many photos to post here but if you check out our YouTube channel or our individual blogs you might see some photostories about our X-periences!

Thanks HUGELY to our wonderful team of adult helpers - Mrs Read (who produced awesomely delicious meals for us), Mrs Lindsay, Miss Van den Beld, Mr Gay, Mr Geerlings and Mr Ferguson - thank you for giving us your time to stay overnight and help us out with all our adventures!

Thanks also to Treana Morton, the Adventure Southland Camp Columba instructor, who organised our programme and guided us with kayaking and the 10m abseiling wall.

Cheers to Mr White, Mrs Andrews, Mrs Tiller, Mr McKenzie, Mr Stuart and Mrs LeGray who all helped out with activities and/or transport.

Well done to all the Kokako pupils - you certainly showed you've got the X-factor when it comes to facing personal challenges and working with a team!

Hillary team (minus Hayden who was on the flying fox!)

Tasman team

Cook team

Term One - Soccer Tournament

We had a great day in Gore on Tuesday as we attended the Sport Southland Soccer Tournament to use our skills that we have learnt with Lucy each Tuesday at school.

We had three teams in the tournament and everyone played really well, with great improvement in skills throughout the day.

Thanks tonnes to Mrs Knapp, Mrs Gay and Mrs Ferguson for managing the teams, and also to Mrs Casserly and Mrs Harvey for providing transport.

Thanks Lucy for a great day - we had a lot of fun!

Term One Week Ten - Oh my gosh!

Oh my gosh! What has, or should we say what has NOT been happening in the past three weeks!

Apologies to our regular followers - to cut a long story short...

In Week Eight Mrs Coyle was on a two-day course in Wellington, fog came down in the late afternoon stranding Mrs Coyle, Mr McKenzie and about two thousand other passengers...Mrs Coyle and Mr McK had to spend an extra day in Wellington waiting for a flight to Christchurch, then a night in Christchurch before getting home on Friday! Only a day and a half later than expected! Thanks to Mrs Shepherd and Mrs Miller for running the class while Mrs Coyle was stuck!

Congrats to Sarah who was awarded the Senior MVP at celebration this week for applying the value of excellence.

Week Nine was our X-factor X-pedition to Camp Columba at Pukerau - two and a half days of X-cellent and X-traordinary efforts from all pupils - see this post and also keep an eye on our You Tube channel for photostories about it, as well as on our personal blogs!

Week Ten has also been a ripper! We will all be ready for our holiday break I can tell you!!

On Tuesday we attended the Sport Southland soccer tournament in Gore, where we had three teams putting into practice the skills we have been learning with Lucy on Tuesdays. It was really cool to have four games each and we all played really well - our skills improved immensely by the fourth game (and we were all pretty tired!)

On Wednesday we were thrilled to have two members of the Southern Steel team (great game on Monday night Steel!!) come along with Maureen from Road Safety Southland to share an important message about seatbelt safety in cars - check out this post to see more!

This was a cool way to end our inquiry - for which we have been busy finishing our individual 'asking further' research questions which we have presented as posters, photostories, PowerPoints or videos. You can see some of our work on our individual blogs.

Today is a half day as we head off for Easter and a well-deserved two week break! Have a good one everybody! Thanks for all the hard work this term - Kokako pupils rock!

Term One - Clicked Yet?

It was great to have the Clicked Yet roadshow here on Wednesday to teach us about the importance of ALWAYS wearing a seatbelt in the car to keep us safe (and because it is the law!)

Maureen from Road Safety Southland brought along Southern Steel players, Sheryl Scanlan and Hayley Saunders, to share the message and demonstrate the effect of a seatbelt in a collision or sudden stop by using the Southern Steel Super Seatbelt Slide machine...

Maureen, Sheryl and Hayley

Brittany waits for Hayley to start up the super slide

Sheryl helps Bailey check the seatbelt is flat and tight.