Holiday Time!

Dear Room 6
It has been such a crazy-busy term, that you all really deserve a break. Not only have you worked really hard in class, but we have relied on you to help with so many things around our school.
Thank you!
MS

Blob Art

We used vivid and crayon to create this Blob Art.  It looks so effective on the classroom wall, so feel free to call in and have a look!

Halcombe School In The News!

Have a read of this article from the Feilding Herald, we're famous!

Celebration Of Learning Wallwisher!

Wow, what a night!  Our performance was awesome!  Everyone spoke clearly and remembered their lines well.  The poi performance by the girls was practically perfect, and the boys' timing in their rakau show was spot on.  Well done team!

 



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A Sneak Peak...

We are finally ready....  The Celebration of Learning Show is nearly here.  We've been practicing the poi and rakau like mad.  Today we filmed ourselves so we could continue to perfect our performance!

Maori Legends

One of the things we've been learning to do is to summarise a key moment in a maori legend.  Some people found it hard to do this without explaining everything that happened in the legend.  The final part of the task was to illustrate the key moment.

Several people chose to focus on the legend of 'Maui and the Sun'.  Cody, Juliet, Holly and Jasmine have all done a great job with their illustrations.  Check it out:

Elen's Central Pulse Adventure

Last night, the Central Pulse netball team played the Southern Steel in an awesome game in Palmerston North.  Elen went along to the game - she was even given the job of Chief Door Holder as the players entered the stadium.  After the match she collected the players' autographs.  Nice one Elen!

Drumming Show

Wow!  What else can be said about our visitors from the International Pacific College?  This small but very energetic group entertained us with some incredible drumming skills.  It was awesome to get a wee insight into an aspect of Japanese culture.  Check out the videos:

We were able to have a little turn too!

 

Student Council Fun Day

It was a very big day for the Student Council today.  The first big event was Wheels Day - HEAPS of kids brought their wheels to school and had loads of fun wheeling round the course.  The Student Council did a great job of keeping everyone safe and heading in the right direction:

Photographers:  Tyler and Grace

 

We also had to make 103 spiders for lunch!  Well done to the team of kids who worked really hard to serve the icecream.  Everyone agreed the spiders were delicious!

 

 

Tyler's Artwork

In preparation for the Celebration of Learning show at school next week, we have made a giant sign for the wall.  Tyler's job was to provide some illustrations!  Awesome work Tyler!

Alex's Sky Jump

During the Easter holidays, I visited my relatives in Auckland.  I received an 'interesting' birthday present - to jump off the Sky Tower!  It was very frightening to stand up on the top with very little support, and will myself to step off.  Afterwards I felt extremely pleased with myself and completed exhilerated.  Here is the video!

By Alex

 

 

Writing Feedback

We recently wrote to Mrs Casey's Year 11 English class at Feilding High School.  As well as writing a letter to introduce ourselves, we asked these wise high school kids to give us some feedback on our swimming recount writing.  Their replies have arrived!  Here is a lovely letter from Mrs Casey:

And here is a sample of the feedback we received on our writing:

Symmetry

In maths, we've been learning about symmetry.  Check out these awesome symmetrical patterns:

More Poi

Here is the video girls, as promised!

 

 

Check this one out!

Rippa Rugby Tournament

Even though we haven't had much time to practice, we all enjoyed the Rippa Rugby Tournament, held in Palmerston North today.  There were some awesome skills on display and some excellent tries were scored.  Everyone worked hard on defence too!  Thanks to the parents who provided transport and to Mrs Brett and Mr Ricketts, our coaches.

Here we are with James from the Manawatu Turbos and Tom, from the Manawatu U21 team:

Celebration Of Learning

We need to practice....

Moment Of Inspiration

Kia Ora Kids

I've been away at a conference in Palmerston North today.  I am really looking forward to sharing some of the great ICT tools I've been learning about!  I love this quote:

"I aspire to inspire before I expire!"

This photo, 'Earthrise', is very famous.  It was taken by William Anders, an astronaut on the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the moon in 1968.  Some people think it is one of the most important photographs ever taken, because it was the first photograph of earth from deep space, and the first time that earthlings could look at themselves from this perspective, and reflect on their vulnerability amongst the massive universe.  I think that is worth thinking about!

See you tomorrow,
MS

Puppies

Victoria and Hilary brought their three huntaway pups to school last week.  They were very cute!

Rippa Rugby!

We love playing rippa rugby, a game very similar to touch.  Today we had a visit from Tom, from the Manawatu Turbos.  He taught us several 'moves' and fun games.  Then we divided into teams and played lots of mini-games.  Hopefully these skills will come in handy at the big tournament we're going to next week:

Sleepover At Taumata O Te Ra

We were so excited about our return trip to Taumata O Te Ra.  Staying the night at a marae was a first for many people.  Highlights of the trip included:

• experiencing a 'real' powhiri.
• being able to hongi.
• having another look at the special carvings, tukutuku and kowhaiwhai inside the whare tipuna.
• sharing a delicious meal with the whole Senior Team, and our hosts.
• having a chance to sketch out what we might have carved into the front of our own family whare.
• everyone sleeping together in one massive room!
• morning exercise - even though it was FREEZING!
• having breakfast together - and what a fabulous breakfast it was.
• helping to clean up.

We are looking forward to visiting Taumata O Te Ra again sometime in the future.  We would like to sincerely thank our hosts, and Mr Kereama in particular. 

 

Thank you to our Year 7 students, who were in charge of preparing lunch for our team on Friday.  They did an awesome job!

 



Te Reo Word Clouds

One of our recent literacy tasks was to create a wordlist of 20 things we do during a normal day (sleep, learn, eat, run etc).  The challenge was to then translate this list into Te Reo and create a word cloud.  Check out these great examples:

Interhouse Patter Tennis

It was time for our four house groups to face off again, in the Interhouse Patter Tennis Competition.  We held a shortened version of this activity, where after one match, the losers played the losers and the winners played the winners.  It was awesome to see so much house spirit!  Congratulations to Kauri, the eventually champions!

Te Reo Kori - Gutterboard

Today we had our final activity in our Te Reo Kori rotation - gutterboard with Miss Campbell.  We practiced our target throwing and catching skills, and had a lot of fun along the way.  Perhaps some people will be ready to challenge the world champion, Miss Simpson now?

Photographer:  Holly

Japanese

Here is a wee sample of one of the things we worked on during Japanese today!

 

 

Student Council Fun Day

Aerial Photos

Here are the photos from Molly's special flight with her dad.  She was even allowed to fly the plane by herself for awhile!  They flew right over the top of our school on the morning of our school gala.  Thanks for the photos Molly, looks like you had an awesome time!

Poi Making

Today we made poi with Mrs Langtry.  Some parts of the process were pretty challenging but most of us got it sorted in the end.  The boys were great helpers too!  Now we'll be able to practice for our poi display at the Celebration of Learning night at the end of the term.

Technology - Build A Whare Challenge

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been working on an epic technology challenge.  The task: to build a whare!

Criteria:

• must be able to sit on an A4 piece of paper
• must be as realistic as possible
• must be made from natural materials - sticks
• must be aesthetically pleasing
• parts must be in proportion (eg. window should not be bigger than door)
• must be sturdy/strong
• must be able to be carried around
• whare must be given an appropriate name: Te Whare 0 _________

The whare must have:

• tekoteko
• koruru
• maihi
• raparapa
• matapihi
• pare
• whakawae
• paepae
• amo

Equipment/Tools:

• sticks
• secateurs
• ruler, pencil, pens, scissors etc.
• hot glue gun
• tools: sandpaper, hacksaw, files etc

Process:

• learn about whare
• draw a labelled diagram of a whare and learn the correct terminology and meaning of each part
• allocate partners
• plan whare (sketches and diagrams)
• gather materials and equipment
• build whare
• evaluate success

While this has been a really challenging task - we had to do a LOT of problem solving and critical thinking along the way, we are really proud of our finished whare.

Here are photos taken during the construction of our whare:

And, here are the finished products - you can have a close-up look at our work, which will be displayed in our school library:

High School Writing Project

We have been working on our replies to Mrs Casey's Year 11 English class.  They wrote to us, giving us some advice about high school.  In our letters, we introduced ourselves and talked about what we've been up to school recently.  We are also sending along some of our writing (personal experience recounts about swimming), and are hoping to receive some feedback from our older, wiser friends from Feilding High School!

Here are our letters, ready to go!

Special Visitor From Japan

Today we had a visitor from Japan.  His name was Masaya.  Masaya is Isaac J’s cousin. We started by introducing ourselves in Japanese.  Masaya was very impressed with our pronunciation.  We taught Masaya, 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes', in English then we did it in Japanese. Next we learnt how to form three more sentences:

1) My favourite food is...
2) Food I dislike a lot is...
3)  I like (type of sport) a lot.

Masaya enjoyed a performance of Haere Mai which we gave to welcome him to our school.

It was a great opportunity to ask Masaya all of our questions about Japan and Japanese life. We were very thankful to have Masaya visit our class on his short trip to New Zealand. We also thank him very much for the gifts he brought us.

Cricket - Round 5

Today we had our second-to-last session of cricket.  We had a chance to play a couple of our favourite games, No Man's Land and Non-Stop Cricket.  Tammy and Daniel were the stars of the day, with awesome batting performances from both!

We also received our final goodies - a totally fabulous drinkbottle!

Buddy Class - Rakau

Today we taught our buddies to do a traditional maori activity - rakau stick games.  The aim is to come up with your own sequence, and to be in perfect timing with your partner.  It is great fun!

Harlem Shake

Boy, did we have fun making this movie!  We hope you like it...

 



Japanese

Miss Campbell has been teaching us Japanese - she is a real expert.  We have really enjoyed our sessions so far and look forward to learning more.  We have learnt how to introduce ourselves in Japanese - have a listen!

 



Water Safety

Earlier in the term, we did some great work with Miss Humphrey around water safety - an important issue for us all to be aware of.  We made posters to share our water safety information.  Here is Tyler's poster - isn't he a fabulous artist?

Whanganui Museum Acrostic Poems

Following our trip to the Whanganui Museum, we wrote acrostic poems about our experience.  This forced us to be creative and think hard about our writing, because we could not change the letter that the first word in each sentence had to start with.  Here are some great examples:

Survey - Round Two

Mrs Simpson's maths class has made a few adjustments to the survey we completed a couple of weeks ago.  Please complete the both the surveys below:

SURVEY 1

SURVEY 2

Statistics Assignment

In maths, we have been working on our Statistics Assignments. 
WALT:

• answer questions in a survey.
• analyse, make statements about and discuss data.
• use ICT to create simple pie and bar graphs.
• label graphs correctly (title, x axis and y axis).

Here we are working with our partners on our assignments:

Here are some of our completed assignments:

Te Reo Kori - Skipping

Today we started our Te Reo Kori rotation.  First up was skipping.  Most of us are pretty good at skipping on our own.  Some people found it a little challenging to 'run in' to skip with a partner, or in to a long rope.

Class Challenge:  No more patter tennis until you can do double dutch AND eggbeater!  If your old teacher can do it, so can you!

A Reply From Mr Kereama

Not long ago, we wrote letters to Mr Kereama to thank him for welcoming us to Taumata O Te Ra Marae.  Here is his reply:

RAIN! RAIN! RAIN!

We haven't had any rain for weeks and weeks.  Today it poured with rain, so hopefully this will help things to grow and help to fill up our water tanks too!  Phew!

Gala Time!

After weeks of anticipation and preparation, the day of our school gala finally arrived.  It was awesome that so many people from our community came along to support Halcombe School. 

There was a lot of delicious food to eat - hamburgers, hotdogs, popcorn, hangi, hashbrowns and candyfloss.  The cold drinks, spiders and juicies were very popular - they went down well on another hot day!

Our day started with a 'fly-by' from Molly and her dad:

There was loads of entertainment including a police dog display, the Halcombe School Choir, the Idol Competition (massive congratulations to Molly and Sophie, our runners-up, and Jasmine, our winner), a Western Riding display, and a fabulous performance by Turakina Maori Girls College:

There were lots of fun activities to do, including target shooting, rides on the Bren Gun Carrier, a bouncy castle, splat the rat, ping pong plunk, face painting and of course, the Magic Carpet Ride was very popular again this year:

One of the highlights for Miss Simpson, was watching the Year 8 students get dunked.  It was hilarious!

This year, we had a hangi.  It was awesome to see the process of putting down a hangi, and preparing all the kai.  It was a massive job!

The good news.... a profit of approx. $13,000!  Thank you so much to all our wonderful helpers who put in so many hours to help make our gala a success.  Thank you to the wonderful students in Room 6, who have spent day after day preparing for this event - and get the fun job of cleaning up the hall on Monday!

Phew, what a day!

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Gala Time!

Special Delivery!

Today we received a surprise delievery - letters from Mrs Casey's Year 11 English class!  They were given the task to write a letter to someone to give them advice on how to survive high school.  It was interesting trying to guess what the mystery envelopes contained.  We were very excited to read the letters!  Next week we'll have a bit more time to read them again and reply.