Friday, August 24, 2012

Term 3 Week Six

Kia ora all! What a great spell of weather we have been having - so many sunny days help make our mood a lot brighter and our enthusiasm continues!

Exciting times this week as we held auditions for the main roles in our upcoming Senior Production of Murphy's Marvellous Time Machine.  There were many well-rehearsed young actors and narrators putting themselves forward for the roles available and Mrs Coyle had to hold a few call-backs to help with making the right decisions.

The cast list will be announced this afternoon and that will then mean a busy week ahead as the main actors begin to learn their lines!  We already have singing practice underway and are looking forward to putting everything on show for you on Wednesday 19th September - keep that date free in your diaries!
Jake was our VIP for the week.
This week we began writing explanations about the water cycle - our pieces are coming along nicely, with a lot of use of rhetorical questions as the introductions to get the readers interested in our information!

We are getting ready for our bus trip (next Friday) to the Waituna Lagoon and Wetlands by reading about the area as part of our reading activities - we will be interested to see how this environmental area has an impact on the land and water cycle, and how we impact upon it.

This week we will comment on what we are looking forward to with the Senior Production (or our thoughts about it so far).

Have a good weekend, Room Kokako

Friday, August 17, 2012

Term 3 Week 5

Hi again!

Another week has flown by and we are all ready for the weekend.

This week we have released another episode of Take Two News - this time about our school value of honesty.  It is really good and includes interviews of pupils from other classrooms:


For writing we wrote recounts sharing our experience of a time when we felt success - we have stories about skiing, camp challenges, sports and other activities for you to read on our personal blogs.

We enjoyed miniball again with Callum on Tuesday and also met up with the Year 13s from Menzies College for an afternoon of cooperative games.

We have started putting our names down for the roles we would like to audition for in our Senior Production - singing rehearsals will begin next week!

Well done to the Rippa Rugby team on Sunday for representing our school and showing great enthusiasm and teamwork.  We didn't get a win but did have a lot of fun! Thanks to Caleb Young and Nathan Bee from Menzies College for coaching us.


With Mrs Miller yesterday we used salt dough to make some creations that we will paint when she is here next time. Some of us made our initials, while others made little creatures or objects.  It will be cool to see how they look when they are finished!

Have a good weekend everyone!
Nich was our VIP this week!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Term 3 Week 4 the alternative version (the one where the kids have dictated what to write!)

If we get 2000 hits on our blog we are going to have a hotdog partayyyy people!!!!
Tyla was this week's VIP
Kieran and Josh L have been so naughty this week that they are going to have to come to school on Saturdays for the next three weeks. Considering Sundays as well.

JACOB IS SO CUTE! Mrs C misses him in the weekends.

Brittany wishes to point out that she is awesome - we want to point out we are ALL awesome! But Rhianna is the most awesomemest (apparently) (according to herself) (but we would agree, mostly, sometimes, if she's nice to us) (?)

Our netballers are fantastic - the LMVteam got fifth!!
The soccer players have great footwork skills.
The rugby players are just rough and tough and do enough for a mallowpuff.
Everyone else is just good looking in general - supermodel material you know!

Maria is not sitting still, as usual.

Apparently Devil Burger make the best chocolate smoothies - thick thick thick as! Mrs C has decided she will have to check that out.

Danny C! Nonu nonu nonu!!

Jacob agrees that he is cute.

Shaz keeps talking to herself...should we be worried?

Sarah does not know how to spell habitat - turns out Maddy does not know either!

Kieran is just loud.

Maddy and Renee still look the same - what's with that?

Someone dropped a big one this week, stunk the room out - Hayden claims he knows nothing. It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for you know!

Josh believes he can double back flip (but...well..that's Josh!).

Does anyone else know that Renee thinks Mrs C is the best singer in the world (is true too!)

And Marina just fell off her chair, really, fell off! What's with that?

 Tom is just getting on with the job. Good on ya mate! (He thinks we are seriously mad). (He is a  great ballerina too by the way!)

As for Keryn Casserly she is trying to escape the room, not having any luck so far.

Now everyone is staring at the board - zombies!

There is too much talk about pee in this room. Get back to work everyone!

Caitlin watches too much tv! Needs to go to bed earlier!!

Has anyone seen Jordan today?

Have a good weekend!

Yep, found Jordan!

PS William and Josh are the bestest rugby players in the world. By the way, did you know Richie McCaw was over at the factory on Wednesday and didn't come to see Mrs C and ask her to marry him? ;-(

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Term 3 Week Three

Kia ora!  The last two weeks have again been action-packed as we cram our days with lots of learning and skill-building!
Sarah was last week's VIP

 Our ski trip was the motivation for some writing this week - first we used a circular plan (looks like a pizza) to help us quickly write eight main events that happened to us during the ski trip, which we then used to create the draft of our recount.

The Dahl group were then looking to recraft one sentence from their work - trying to add in details to make it more descriptive for the reader.  What great work they came up with - see some examples on Blogs By Us.

The Mahy group took two of their events in the recount and used the hamburger plan to add more details to each event so that they would be able to create a really descriptive paragraph to extend their main ideas.  The improvements made by using the planner were fantastic and we could really see how the details are important for sharing our experience.  You can also see these on Blogs by Us.

The Rowling group had been working the past two weeks on My Story (writing entries for the NZ Post Young Writer's Contest) and these have been sent away online by Mrs C.  So this week they began writing an informational text titled " What to Expect When You Are Skiing" and they will turn these into posters for next year's skiers to read. These will also eventually be on Blogs By Us.

Hayden was this week's VIP
On Wednesday we hosted the Lower Mataura Valley Schools' Speech Contest for Year Five and Six pupils, with up four pupils each coming along to represent Edendale, Wyndham and Tuturau (we hope all our friends at Glenham are feeling better soon!).

Well done to Maria and Sarah who spoke very confidently and presented their speeches well. We were very proud of you.  Check out some highlights here:



We began miniball skills with Callum from Sport Southland last week and look forward to using these skills in the end of term tournament.
Maria shared her Connected Award activity
- a booklet about her overnight weekend tramp in Fiordland National Park.
We are also excitedly looking forward to performing " Murphy's Marvellous Time Travelling Machine" on stage at the end of the term too! Who will be our star actors, singers and dancers???

The Student Council Master Chef competition started this week - on Friday Nich created a batch of very delicious butter cupcakes as his contest entry. Good luck to Nich and the other seven Year Five or Six contestants! Mrs C is most willing to be taste-tester!!

Nich shows two samples of his cupcakes (the rest had been eaten!)
Our inquiry into why we need to look after our natural resources is well underway with Mr Lloyd Esler coming along to speak to us about the Earth - he had a billions of years old piece of space rock that had been found in South America - probably the oldest item any of us will have a hold of! 
Allynah holds the space rock - it was very heavy for its size!
Finally, more of us have been busy producing Take Two News clips (but a technical glitch meant we have not yet had a chance to edit these) - so we will be sharing these with you soon! E noho ra!