Awesome Books!

Book recommendation:  Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne (not in our school library, but Miss Simpson has a copy you can borrow).  Miss Simpson has read the first book and it is awesome - a definite 10/10.  She'll let you know her opinion of the second and third books soon.  The author even replied to Miss Simpson's tweet!

Miss Simpson has also been in touch with our mate, Dan Smith (author of Big Game).  Check it out:

FOR INFO ON DAN SMITH'S NEXT BOOK - CLICK HERE

We're In The News!

The Gone Series

Over the past few weeks, Emma and Jade have completed a massive reading exercise - they have read the entire Gone series - more than 3000 pages!  Both Emma and Jade were instantly hooked and had to keep reading to find out what happened next.  Here is what they had to say about it:

Emma - I really liked the series, because it was futuristic and couldn't happen in real life.  But, it still felt like it was real.  I rate this series 9.5/10.  My favourite character was Brianna and I was really sad when she died.  I would recommend this book to older readers, because parts of it are very violent and disturbing and a mature mind is needed to understand things that happen.

Jade - The author, Michael Grant, goes into great detail to describe what is happening in the story.  This was particularly obvious in 'Hunger' and 'Plague', where characters in the book were killed in gruesome ways.  I would rate this series 10/10 - it is my favourite series - even better than the Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies.  I agree with Emma, this series is not for the faint hearted!

Miss Simpson has also read the whole series.  She thinks it's one of the best series she has ever read too, along with the Hunger Games, Henderson Boys and Divergent series (nothing beats the Tomorrow series though!)  Miss Simpson found the content to be quite graphic as terrible things happened to many of the characters.  She doesn't usually like the sci-fi genre, but somehow became hooked into these books anyway!

Speech Topic

Today we brainstormed ideas for our speech topic - If I could change anything in history...  lots of great ideas so far!

Paper Mache

We are well underway with a massive paper mache project!  It's cool to be working on a slightly different kind of art activity. We're making masks...

2011 Black Day Flashback

End Of The Netball Season

The netball season has finished for the 'A' Team.  This group of girls has been playing in the Palmerston North competition since the beginning of Term 2.  Congratulations to the team - 11th place out of 60 teams isn't too bad at all!

Staff vs Students - Netball

Today we held the annual Staff vs Students netball match.  The whole school came out to watch the match, so the pressure was on!  The students started off VERY well, racing out to a 5-0 lead.  Slowly but surely, the staff started to come back into the match, with the game eventually ending in a draw.  Well done everyone... it will take the staff a couple of days to recover!

Photographer:  Catherine

Tech - Rotation Four Begins!

Everyone was really looking forward to starting our new Tech activities today.  With only four more weeks of Tech, we're now into our final rotation.

The ICT Group had loads of fun creating online art:

Black Day Is Coming!

Tech ICT

The Tech ICT group had fun using ipads today!  After taking lots of photos, we use an app called Pic Collage to make these cool collages:

The Great Coordination Challenge

Just a bit of fun for Crazy Day!

The Big Potato Project

Thanks to some generous sponsorship from Bunnings, we've entered the Great Potato Growing Competition!  We have until the end of the school year to grow the biggest, baddest, bestest potatoes possible.  We have buddied up with the students from Room 7 and 8 and we planted our potatoes today.

Firstly, we had to drill drainage holes in the bottom of all the buckets:

Next, we worked with our buddies to plant the potatoes.  First we placed a layer of gravel in the bottom of the bucket, which will help with drainage.  Next we mixed up a combination of potting mix, compost, as well as a 'special' super sonic potato growing mixture.  Then we planted our seed potatoes and covered them with more dirt.

For safe keeping, we've decided to store our potatoes inside the swimming pool fence.  We can watch them growing through the fence, and can water them from the outside too.

Next we decided to guess when we thought our potatoes would sprout.  There will be special prizes for anyone who has guessed the correct day!

CRAZY DAY

Today we held another famous Halcombe School dress up day - and it was CRAZY!  We were raising money for the Feilding SPCA, so everyone brought a gold coin along.  The costumes were awesome, and most people put heaps of thought and effort into what they wore.  Dancing around the court during the parade was another highlight.  Congratulations to Josh, Jorja, Jade and Madison of the Student Council for organising such a successful event!

Jade had the job of counting the money - we were amazed that we managed to raise $210 for the SPCA!  Josh did a great job of presenting the money to Katie, from the Feilding SPCA.

Creative Thinking - The Inventions Key

One of the tasks we had to do as part of our electricity unit, was a creative thinking task.  Using the Inventions Key, we had to 'invent' a superhero - ELECTRA-BOY or ELECTRA-GIRL.  These superheroes would have some kind of electrical power!  As usual, we came up with a massive variety of ideas.  Check out the examples below:

Tech

The ICT group had great fun making short movies today!

Maths Week - Day 3

Today we held the annual Senior Team Mathex competition!  We were divided up into teams and had to complete some practical maths questions, followed by more written tasks.  The pressure was on as we raced to complete as many problems as possible in the short time frame.  Congratulations to Emma, Logan and Cody who won the competition.  A massive thank you to Mrs Simpson and our Mathex teams for organising this super-fun maths activity!

The markers hard at work!

Science - Electricity

Today we finished up the practical side of our learning about electricity.  The challenge was to construct a miniature house (from cardboard), and wire the house so that when you opened the door, the light turned on, and when you rang the door bell, the buzzer buzzed!  It was pretty tricky and we had to use our best problem solving skills to work out how to do things.  Well done to Ffion and Isaac, who were the only group to get both the bulb and the buzzer working.

Basketball Competition

Our basketball competition finally got underway this afternoon.  More than half the students in our class have signed up to play 3 vs 3 basketball - this is awesome!  The competition was tough, but all four of our teams did really well.  Thank you to Mr and Mrs Henderson, Mrs Mudgway, Mrs Tai and Mrs Alcock, our wonderful coaches!  Good luck to everyone for the rest of the season.

South Makirikiri Winter Sports Exchange

Today was the day - time for our annual winter sports exchange with South Makirikiri School.  We were all VERY excited about this, and have been practicing hard over the last few weeks.  The conditions were perfect, and we had an awesome time.  After getting smashed by South Mak last year, we are pleased to report we did far better this time around!  Congratulations to all the students - your skills and sportsmanship were excellent.  Thanks to our coaches, refs and supporters.  We're looking forward to next year already!

Basketball With Miles - Round 2

We had our second session with Miles (assistant coach of the Manawatu Jets) today.  We refreshed some of the skills we learnt last time, as well as learning about how to shoot a hoop.  What a great way to start the day!

New Flag

Is it time to change the New Zealand flag?  What do you think?  The process will be long and complicated, and in the end, New Zealanders might vote to keep the flag we have.  But in the meantime, these are the flags that are being considered.  Be ready to share your opinion soon!

Static Electricity

Today we learnt about static electricity (when electrons move from one object to another).  Some students created this static electricity by running a comb through their hair.  Then, when they placed the comb next to small pieces of newspaper, the newspaper moved and stuck to the comb.  It was pretty interesting!

Maths Week: Day 2

We started off with some algebra-based hundreds board challenges today.  The task was to plot and connect the dots, which would eventually create a wee picture.  This was what one of the pictures was supposed to look like:

There was a massive variety in what some people created...

We also completed this annoyingly addictive make-a-square game.  Congratulations to Bethany, Mia, Bradley and Shane, who all managed to 'beat' the computer!

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GAME

In our final challenge, we used the multi link cubes to try to complete the tasks below.  We had to use different strategies such as trial and error, guess and check and logical thinking.  Some people figured it out straight away, while others took a bit longer!

2015 Speech Topic

It is time to start thinking about speeches!  We'll talk more about this in class, but in the meantime, here is the topic:

If I could change anything in history...

Maths Week: Day 1

We had a MASSIVE maths trail to kick off our Maths Week activities today.  The students in Room 3, 4, 5 and 6 were split up into teams and had to work together to find out the answers to ten questions.  To do this, we had to race around the school, counting and measuring along the way!  It was loads of fun and it was awesome to see all the teams working so well together.

Science - Electricity

Today we continued our learning and experiments about electrical circuits and how they work.  We're getting pretty good at this stuff now!  Next we'll be learning about static electricity and then we'll be onto our final project - building a house that has a working light and door bell.  Exciting times ahead!

Jigsaw Challenge

Check out this COOL programme - Digital Jigsaw.  Click on the link to try and beat Miss Simpson's time of 2.37mins.

Jigsaw Challenge - Click Here

Halcombe School Chin Up Champs

Two students, Jensen and Emma, competed in the Halcombe School Chin Up Champs today.  Emma did 26 chin ups, and Jensen 30 - they both have AMAZING upper body strength!  Congratulations to Rhianna from Room 3, who won the competition with 33 chin ups.

Photographer: Greer

Mathex Awesomeness

Today eight students in our class were involved in the Manawatu Mathex Competition.  All four of our teams did very well - thank you very much to Mrs Simpson who has trained the teams.

Lydia, Catherine, Jensen and Jack made up the Year 7 team.  They said it was fun, but very nerve wracking.  They were pleased with the speed of their marker and thought the free pens they were given were pretty cool.  They achieved an outstanding result of 3rd!  Congratulations team!  Thanks to Mrs Pene for providing transport.

Sophie, Madi, Josh and Jade were in our Year 8 team.  They commented that the questions were very hard and some of them were very frustrating to try and answer.  Despite these challenges the team achieved an excellent result of 5th.  According to the team, the key to success was being able to work well together.  Well done!  Thank you to Mrs Gilmour for providing transport.

Another Uniform Suggestion!