Term One Week 7

It's Friday!  This week we have continued to work on our inquiry about keeping ourselves safe and healthy and this week we began researching our own Asking Further question - see these in the comments section for this post.

We also did another session of football/soccer skills with Lucy from Sport Southland and we organised ourselves into groups for performing an item in the X-Factor Show to be held during our X-Factor X-treme X-pedition (aka camp!) in two weeks time.

Our addition skills are improving as we focus on this in maths and our writing this week involved 5+ a Day with Mrs Shepherd.

Our VIP this week, sharing a display about her life and interests was Freya.














Be sure to check out the Awesome Achievements page of our class wikispace to see what else we have been up to!

Last week the Senior MVP for celebration was Breana for her consistent displaying of the respect value - great role-modelling Breana!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Term One Week Six

What a week! Monday was the day for the LMV Athletics - everyone put on a great performance, with many of us achieving firsts, seconds, thirds or personal bests. Well done everyone for giving it a go!



Sam in the high jump



William heads for the finish line

Josh R on the run!



Gabby sends the discus flying



Tom makes it over

Maria in action

 Thanks Mrs Lindsay for the great photos!

On Friday we celebrated the SPCA - with the Student Council organising an Animal Dress-up Day - raising over $150 for the Invercargill shelter. There were a lot of very cool animal-related costumes at school...



Kokako girls

Kokako boys



Student Council and prize-winners



Mrs A, Tom and Josh R

Our VIP for this week was William - great to see all the things you like to do William - you are a busy guy!

Despite a technical glitch with our expedition to Aoraki Mount Cook National Park (the website kept freezing up on us) we were able to find out about this World Heritage Area and begin to think about the importance of planning and preparation for any expedition.

Some of us were lucky enough to use M&Ms as maths equipment to help us see how fractions and decimals are linked (tenths of a whole - with ten lollies making up one whole); while for art we had more practice with using brush-strokes to paint flowers and mix our colours as we worked.

At writing time Shaz and Gabby ran workshops for two writing groups, practising the skills they learned last week at the Yong Writers' Workshop with authors Kyle Mewburn and Craig Smith, while the other two groups worked on drafting skills with writing about the mountains of NZ.

Term One Week Five

Hi all! This week our VIP was Maria, seen below sharing a few aspects of her busy life!

Yesterday we looked at some abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and then created our own paintings inspired by him - we will finish these today.

With Mrs Shepherd we finished our paper collage action people showing that exercise is healthy for us - we created dancers, netballers, ice skaters, tennis players, rugby players, gymnasts and wrestlers, and even shovellers!

Last week, as part of our response activities to the poem 'Old Flowers' by Caroline Hall, we practised taking macro photos using the digital camera. Mrs Coyle has printed our best shots and they are on display in the interview/piano room - come and check out our fantastic photos in person. (Some of us have also displayed our photos on our personal blogs.

For our reflections this week we will comment on our favourite type of exercise and why...

Term One - Week Four - BIKEWISE and more!

This week we had two sessions with Constable Graham on the Bikewise Safe Cycling programme - our Tuesday session was a theory discussion in which we learnt about safe cycling and the hazards to look out for...boy, there are a few! In the middle photo above you can see Const. Graham , Shaz and William demonstrating why it is illegal to ride bikes on the footpath - cars coming out of driveways may not see us as we bike along and we could get hit (as we can't always see the cars either!)

All of us learnt something new from Constable Graham in this session and we will put that in our comments for this week.

On Wednesday we used our bikes (and helmets of course) to practice some cycling skills out on the school courtyard. Const. Graham laid out cones in slalom courses and for corners so we could practise the hand signals that we had learnt the day before - it can be quite tricky for some of us to balance our handle bars while lifting one hand up to show that we are turning or stopping! Something for us all to practise!

Other activities this week: we published our stories of what was hiding in our wardrobes -Mrs Coyle is hoping that these were all imaginative as she wouldn't like to meet some of the crazy or scary creatures that we described! We have published on pad paper and made doors on the front with card so they look like wardrobes - come into class and check them out on the wall!

Mrs Shepherd was with us today and we created some collage people in action -we used the shapes of the paper to show the positions of the arms and legs of our paper-people as they carried out all sorts of healthy exercise options such as dance and sports. They look really cool and we will write poems to go with the pictures...watch this space!

We also worked on reading scales showing millilitres, grams, litres and kilograms. Our numeracy maths sessions have been based on fractions or reading/writing large numbers and addition strategies.

This week we also looked at ways that we can be healthy -we still have a session or two to do about this and then we will begin our own investigations into an aspect of keeping healthy or safe.

Congratulations to Keryn, who we voted last week as our Most Valuable Pupil for self-responsibility - you can check out our list of achievements on our wikispace page throughout the year - there will soon be lots of athletics results there with the LMV Athletics planned for next Friday!

Our class VIP (very important pupil) this week was Renee - we learnt that Renee enjoys riding motorcross and has a lot of pets.

This week as part of her Connected Award we had Shaz sharing some magic tricks that she has been practising - Mrs Coyle was totally blown away when Shaz could find the right card in the pack - how did you do it Shaz?!

Tomorrow is our camp fundraiser - our annual Car Boot Sale and Car Wash - fingers crossed for a nice day and a huge turnout of customers - see you all there!

Term One Week Three

Hi again! Great to get five days of learning this week - we were pleased to be able to meet with our parents on Wednesday or Thursday to set our learning goals for the year - read our comments to find out what some of us are hoping to achieve!

It is great to be able to build the learning partnership between ourselves, our parents and our teacher/school. We have each chosen two learning goals to focus on (though we will of course have many, many other targets to achieve this year) and we are all looking at the actions we can take towards achieving our goals.

Thank you to all parents for taking the time to come along and share in this important process, showing your children that you support them with their progress. The pupils are able to take ownership and accountability for their learning by having taken part in these conversations and will feel the success more deeply when it happens. - Mrs Coyle

The rest of the week has been busy with: writing tree poems to go with our painting/collages; getting stuck into some number knowledge such as fractions; and beginning our inquiry into how we can keep healthy and safe.

Today we have also looked at the 'script' for when we are running the school celebration assembly on Fridays - we will each try to introduce the celebrations in our own way, though we know the first time might be a bit nerve-wracking!

This week our VIP (very important pupil) was Kieran - he enjoys reading and playing rugby and has a pet dog and cat.

Term One, Week 2 - Year Six Welcome

This week we held our Year Six Welcome afternoon - a special event during which the Year Sixes are introduced to their leadership role within the school.

Mrs Lorraine Stuart from the Board of Trustees welcomed the pupils, parents, staff and invited guests. Our principal Mr David McKenzie (above) spoke a few words of advice followed by our school chaplain Mrs Sandra Hunter who urged the Year Sixes to have a good year and to protect their good name with positive actions and deeds.

The Year Sixes then met with a panel of ex-pupils (Jordan Stuart, Josh McKenzie, Jamie and Bella Ranstead and Joseph Ferguson) to hear their advice. Thank you to these young men and women for giving us their time to talk about their experiences.

Then we had a question-time with our special guests - local Eastern Southlanders Hayley Saunders (right) and Ashleigh Smith (left) from the Southern Steel netball team - to talk about reaching for goals and how to deal with the steps and events along the way.

The new Student Council was announced by Miss De Groot, who will be overseeing the Student Council this year, and our two Steel players presented the new members with their special badges.

Congratulations to Marina, Josh R, Tom, Caitlin, Gabrielle and Hayden - our new Student Council as voted by the pupils in Rooms Tui, Kereru and Kokako. We had 22 pupils stand for the election and all would have done a sterling job - we know the rest of the Year Sixes will support these six pupils as they carry out their very important role this year.

This week we also worked on some colourful art for our walls - using a black and white A4 size photo of ourselves, we cut out the initial of our first name...added decoration with crayon...then dyed the background - they look groovy don't they?

See more on our personal blogs at http://room6eps.wikispaces.com/Blogs+By+Us%21!

Room Kokako 2012!

Hi everyone!

Very exciting this week as the pupils returned to school and both 'old' and new Room Kokako pupils gathered here to begin their final year with us as Year Sixes!

We welcomed Sarah from Waimahaka and also Miss Van den Beld from the University of Otago.

One of our first tasks was to review a poem called The One Thing I Won't Eat by Kenn Nesbitt (and we won't tell you what it was except that it had something to do with snot!)

We made our own little video of what we wouldn't eat - here's a look at the super kids of Room Kokako 2012...