Term 2 Week 9

Yesterday was interesting at Edendale School with many pupils dressed up as various types of Super Heroes (some more recognisable than others) as a Student Council fundraiser for our sponsor child Grace.

$142 was raised by characters such as Captain Underpants, Super Silver Fern Girl, Pyjama Girls, Super Blue Bubble Man and Extreme Zombie. There were a few Cat Women, Batmen, Spidermen and even Wonder Woman.


Student Council and the best dressed from each room!



We held our speeches this week, and heard about a variety of topics - pet dogs, fuel, rugby, Grandad, soap, gumboots, cameras and more.  All speeches were well-written and delivered very confidently.  We enjoyed the new information we heard as well as some of the funny things people said.

These were videoed and are being put onto our YouTube channel and will also be linked to our personal blogs - it does take a while for each video to load so some may not get loaded until after Mrs Coyle returns from Singapore at the end of Week 11.

Ski trip has had to be cancelled as there is still no snow up at the Remarkables. We are disappointed about this and wish to thank Mrs Jo for all her time and effort to arrange (and unarrange) the trip. The Year Fives are hoping for better luck next year with the weather!


The big highlight this week was the class reward to the ILT Velodrome in Invercargill on Wednesday - we worked on basketball skills with Mark Dickel and Gareth Dawson from the Southland Sharks, and we learnt to ride racing bikes on the velodrome track, assisted by NZ cyclist Eddie Dawkins.


Room Six Kokako with our Cycling Southland tutors (from left: Cathy, Matt, NZ star Eddie Dawkins, and Liz)



Mrs C and Group A with Southland Sharks basketball team members
Mark Dickel (captain and ex Tall-Black) and Gareth Dawson



Many of us were able to ride onto the slope of the track, with some, like Liam, heading right up into the top half of the track - we learnt that with these racing bikes it is important to keep your speed up when on the slope (as it is MAJORLY steep!)

None of us got as fast as Eddie Dawkins though - in a race he would have lapped us almost four times in the time it took most of us to do one lap!

As for our basketball skills - there could be a few future Southland Sharks and Tall Blacks or Tall Ferns in the class going by some of the great shots that were happening!

Thanks to the parents who drove us there and helped with the sessions (some of you were pretty good on the bikes or basketball shots too!)

Term 2 Week 8

Wow! Where are the days going? We are upset that there is no snow in Queenstown as we would have liked to be skiing today - fingers crossed that it will have snow for us next week maybe????  Have a look at the Remarkables ski-field web cameras!

This week we have been flat out writing and recrafting our speeches.  We have written them in the argument style of writing - giving introductions, personal opinion, reasons and evidence, with a conclusion to finish.  Some of us have already put the speech onto cue cards and we are all practising so we are ready to deliver our speeches next week.  Mrs Coyle will video our speech for us so we can put it onto our youtube channel and our personal work blogs.

Many of us have chosen a technology theme for our speech (what is the greatest invention ever?) as the going further stage of our inquiry. We have prepared speeches about a range of topics including toilet paper, soap, computers, cameras, airplanes and telescopes.

Constable Graham was in again to help us think about strategies to use if we experience any bullying. We carried out some role-plays and know that we can ask adults for help, ask a friend or friends to be with us, can try to stand up to a bully - for which we need to feeel confident and stand strong (kia kaha), and that if we see bullying we should try to do something to help.

We have created some design pinwheels for art and we finished our timelines for our technology inquiry. 

This week for arts @ Edendale the Year 5's stayed with Mrs Coyle and worked on their rakau (Maori stick game) skills while the Year 6's worked on drama with Mrs Weir.

Term 2 Week 7

The results from Southland Crosscountry: Thomas 4th!!!! Bailey 54th, Hayden 38th, William 64th, Maria 63rd, Taya 33rd, Jordyn 14th!!!, Josh J 47th, Daniel H 74th.  We think you are all awesome for getting to that level of competition and representing the LMV in a Southland race.

Two teams entered SouthSpell: Maria, Kieran, William and Shaz were in one team, while Mckenzie, Anton, Gabby and Hannah were in the other team.  Up against 36 other teams, we weren't able to take out a placing; there were only 3 points between the two Edendale teams and we obviously have a bit of work to do on a few areas of spelling!

This week we have been writing our speeches - we are doing these in the form of an argument so that we can practise this for a writing skill - our planning sheets helped us to order our ideas and to create paragraphs as we wrote.  We look forward to finishing these today so we can start practising next week how to deliver the speeches.

Some of us will also turn the speech into a powerpoint to enter a competition about technology - very relevant to our inquiry.  For inquiry we have also been completing our assessments - timelines about the changes in the telephone and how these changes affected people.

Mrs Peirce was in on Tuesday and we used the Chile volcano eruption as our writing, reading and art theme.  We have created Southland sunset pictures in response to the photos we saw in the newspaper of the brilliant red sunsets we have been seeing lately.

With Room 5 Kereru we have been learning our songs for the LMV music festival - a range of NZ songs - it is sounding really good as we get to know the words!

Term 2 Week 6

 We have had a short week this week, with Queen's Birthday on Monday and the teachers having a teacher only day on Tuesday.

The teachers travelled to Winton Primary School to look around and see how they run their classrooms. Then the teachers had lunch and talked about what they had seen and could use or do differently at Edendale School.  Mrs A also taught the teachers and Mr McKenzie how to play a couple of songs on the ukelele!

Josh J, Thomas, Maria, Taya, William, Daniel H, Hayden and Bailey are all away to the Southland Crosscountry today - we hope they all do well! Results later!

Constable Graham was back again and we talked about how being different is good - we made shields to show our uniqueness.

Talking about the similarities and differences in a class photo.



Talking about the similarities and differences in a class photo.

Talking about the similarities and differences in a class photo.

Our personal shields.

Mrs Coyle finished reading our daily novel to us - we were listening to Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and were always blown away by the descriptions of Brian's problems as he survived in the wilderness.  The ways he overcame those problems were really good examples of technology - the solutions created to meet a need (our inquiry theme).  We are all glad nothing like what happened to Brian has ever happened to us, but now we have a few ideas if we do get lost in the woods (note one: take a hatchet with you!)

Below in the comments are our reflections for this week - have a read...

Term 2 Week 5

Last week we welcomed Lance to our classroom.  Lance is a Year Six pupil and we are pleased to have him join us.

We used this favourite off our youtube channel as inspiration for writing - well done to Kiwi BMX rider Jed Mildon for his world-record triple flip!

Our technology inquiry is well underway and we are now thinking about the greatest inventions to influence our lives - we will be using our ideas for our own asking further and will perhaps also use them for speeches and argument writing.

On Thursday the student council were invited to meet Prime Minister John Key at a morning tea in Invercargill.  Watch this space as they will write about their visit soon!

We didn't have our German lesson this week but we have added a new page to our wikispace for our German words and there are a couple of links to games that can help us practice our pronounciation for some of the words. http://room6eps.wikispaces.com/German+lessons

Constable Graham came for our first session of Kia Kaha (stay strong) and we created a booklet about a boy who is bullied and the choices he can make to get it to stop. We each drew a page of the booklet to show part of the story.  It looks really cool and is on our bookshelf.

Young leaders day

On the 30th of May the Student Council went to Dunedin with Mrs Coyle and Mrs Heads for Young Leaders Day.

All of The student Council outside the Dunedin town hall at lunch .

It was held in the Dunedin Town Hall and the theme was 'Train to Play' which means that everything we do should be in preparation for our future. We are building our skills and making choices that will help us reach our long-term goals. The day was all about leadership and how to be a good leader, how to make the right choices and that we need to choose friends who care about us.

Anton asking Pat Buckley from Amped 4 life a question .

Adam Hall telling us about skiing .

The speakers were Alison Shanks (Commonwealth gold medallist and former cycling world champion), Adam Hall (paralympian gold medallist for skiing), Dave Akinson (motivational speaker), Pat Buckley from Amped 4 Life and Allison Mooney (motivational speaker). They all gave us advice about being leaders or reaching our goals.

We also played games and had the chance to ask the speakers questions.  It was an interesting day and I enjoyed it !!!
By Rhiannon


The hosts Alice Gallagher and Charlie Panapa from What Now .  



Alison Shanks showing us her gold medal from wining her cycling race .

Term 2 Week 3

This week the Year Fives are on camp at Edenview for a night. They are doing: drama, dance and art as well as indoor bowls and a bush walk.



Painting by Rhiannon



Back at school we Year Sixes are doing lots of school work. We have made blow-painted autumn tree paintings and written awesome poems to go with them (check them out on our pupil pages through the link below to our wikispace). We have practised our time-telling skills on the Studyladder website.



Laura helps Taya practice her German words



We had another german lesson with Laura - it is really FUN!!! We learnt how to say my brother is... and  my sister  is... and other family words.  We played a board game made by Mrs Coyle, using a ten-sided dice so we could count up to ten in German, and using the days of the week to land on.

We have practised the cross-country course over at the rugby grounds and are all set for Tuesday's race!

By Taya and Mrs Coyle