Thursday 22nd June

School kit- CLASS-fied

A few weeks ago we signed up for another Schoolkit resource. This time we are participating in a mystery skype styled challenge which pairs city and country classrooms across New Zealand. We have to do a photograph scavenger hunt where we collect photos like ‘Our classroom’ and ‘How we get to school’. In the last week of school we will have a skype chat with a mystery school in New Zealand. The aim of the game is to guess who our mystery school is before they guess us! We will need to find out four questions: Which island are they in? What region are they in? What town is their school in? What school are they? To prepare for this, we brushed up on our New Zealand geography skills. We mapped our all the different regions as well as finding landmarks in each region that could help us with our questioning. We look forward to our skype chat in the last week of school to find our who our mystery school is!

Wednesday 21st June

Headphones!

This week we were lucky enough to get four new sets of headphones to use in the Middle Room. We can use these when we are on Sunshine Classics. This is where we can read stories and have them read back to us. We then answer questions about what we have read. We can also use them when working on Reading Eggs. These headphones are very helpful for our reading programme and have already been very popular!

Bree and Esther testing out the new headphones

Monday 19th June

Inquiry

Our inquiry topic this term is ‘What makes a Kiwi Inventor?’. This week we have been doing some Finding Out and Sorting Out activities. We watched an episode of Let’s Get Inventin’ where Josh made an invention to help him feed out on the farm more easily.

We then spent some time making our own inventions on the Let’s Get Inventin’ App on the iPads. It was really fun and awesome to see all the great ideas everyone came up with. The Middle Room students are very creative! Our next step will be choosing a topic for our individual Going Further projects.

 

The Hay Bale Launcher

Flynn having a go on the Let's Get Inventin' app

Caitlyn having fun on the app

Friday 16th June

Music Festival

Last night was our performance night at the South Otago Schools’ Music Festival. It was a fantastic night and was really awesome to hear all the schools come together and perform after all our hard work practicing. Our item was a song by the band The Script called Superheroes. Our students did a super job and sounded fantastic even though there were a few nerves about the big crowd, even from Miss Chapman and Miss Taylor! It certainly was a great night. Thank you to all of our parents and families for bringing your children along to the event. Check out our item below.

Wednesday 7th June

Otago Museum Trip

Yesterday we journeyed to Dunedin to visit the Otago Museum. We were learning about inventions for our inquiry topic. Our class was split in two, with the Year fours going with the Junior Room and the Year fives going with the Senior Room.

One group worked with the Museum educator Emily to learn all about different inventions. We looked at a wooden plough that is 4000 years old, and then one that was built of metal. It was interesting to see the difference between the two inventions and why they were useful at the time.  We also split into smaller groups and went on a scavenger hunt to look for different inventions. It was cool to see all the great ideas that were being shared.

While one group was working with Emily the other group was exploring the Tropical Rain Forest which was so awesome! There were many colourful butterflies and we were even lucky enough to have them land on us! We also saw little birds called quails, goldfish, turtles and a couple of tarantulas. It was really hot in the forest and we learnt that the butterflies couldn’t go outside or they would die.

We also got to spend some time in Discovery World, where we played with the fantastic equipment and thought about inventions that we would like to make. Some of our favourite games were the mind-controlling game, table football, the distorting mirrors and the giant piano you get to stand on.

It was a fantastic day out and we learnt heaps about inventions for our inquiry topic!

Otago Museum Trip on PhotoPeach

Thursday 1st June

Sports Activator

Today we had our last visit of the term from Greer our Sports Activator. Today’s focus was basketball. We started with a few games to get us all warmed up. We then focused on skills including bouncing the ball and dribbling. We had to try to dribble the basketball as we were chucking a tennis ball up in the air. This was very tricky! We then had to dribble our basketballs up and down the court trying not to have our balls stolen by the two people who were ‘in’. We also played a game similar to sneak up on granny, where we had to dribble our balls up the court and if Greer turned around we had to quickly stop and stand still. Finally, we practiced a very important part of basketball, our shooting. We had a go shooting from right in front and then from the sides. We learned we aim for the square when we are shooting from in front and aim for the red corner when we are shooting from the side. It was a great session and the skills we practiced will come in very handy for those students who play basketball on Monday nights.    

Tuesday 30th May

Rippa Tournament

Today was the annual South West Otago Rippa Rugby Tournament held at the Balclutha Showgrounds. It was a rather cold day but we were very lucky it didn’t rain! Waiwera South had four teams competing in this Tournament with all students from Years 3-8. All teams tried really hard and it was great to see fantastic team work happening throughout all four teams.

Thanks to those parents who managed our teams and those that came along for support. We all had a great day! Check out the slideshow below of our day!

Rippa Tournament on PhotoPeach