Netball Tournament Today some of us participated in the inaugural Balclutha New World Year 5 & 6 netball tournament at the Cross Recreation Centre. Maddie, Cooper, Bree, Esther, Taylor, Courtney and Kordelia represented Waiwera South at this tournament. They played very well and showed some great skills. Unfortunately, we just missed out on getting into the finals. Thanks to Warepa School for organising this event and to Stacey and Tania for helping with transport. It was a fantastic day which we all really enjoyed.
Sports Activator We have been making the most of the good weather and have been getting outside to practice some Rippa Rugby. Yesterday we had another visit from our sports activator Greer. We went through some skills and games to help us prepare for the Rippa Rugby Tournament in Balclutha next week. We started with a game of rob the nest. This was where we had to get the balls from the middle or other teams hoops to bring back to our own hoop. The winner was the first team to get 5 balls in their hoop. We then played a game where we had to try rip the tags off everyone and put them on our own belt. The winner was the person with the most tags. We also played a game of rippa rush and ended the session playing rippa numbers. This was where Greer called out a number and that many people from the team had to run around a cone and start playing a game of rippa. They had 3 rips to try score a try before it was the other team's turn. It was a very fast paced game and we were all out of breath in no time. These games were great to get us prepared for the Rippa Tournament which will be taking place next Tuesday the 30th at the Balclutha Showgrounds.
Snake vs Lizard writing Today we watched a video called Iguana vs Snakes - Planet Earth II. We then had to write about how we felt and what we would be thinking if we were the iguana or the snake. It was a lot of fun writing about the suspense of the chase and for most of us, the relief! Check out the video and our writing below to see what you think!
Snake- Taylor
I'm hungry sneaking around looking. I smell something. I turn, I twist. What am I?
I am a snake looking for a smell. I sneak around. Something moves, I start chasing it. It's a iguana! My gang come along to help. We are all hungry and we want to eat today. We try our hardest but so does the iguana. We finally caught it! We try strangle it but it slips away. After it we go trying to chase it. The iguana takes a jump for its life and makes it! He climbs up and reaches the top while we are still stuck here. We slither away sadly and starving trying to look for another prey.
Unlucky Iguana- Courtney
One sandy morning I, the snake, have just spotted a very FAT Iguana. I feel like I should catch him because he would be able to feed the entire colony of snakes. I am a Sea Snake and I am very fast, fit and determined to catch that Iguana. So I slither over and I see the Iguana has frozen with fear because he saw me coming towards him. As soon as I twitched his tail he was on the run and I was after him like a cheetah chasing a water buffalo. Then suddenly…. My colony wrapped around his legs, body and neck….. But just then he managed to squeeze out and started to run again up the cliffs. Now I was Angry and really wanted him for lunch so I chased him up the cliff. He started jumping over gaps. One of my friends fell down the crack but I swerved and almost got him when…… I slipped down a giant gap in the mountain and fell down. But luckily I wasn’t dead and even though the Iguana got away, in the gap was full of dead meat piled on top of each other so I called my colony and we lived in the cave for the rest of our lives and never ran out of meat.
The Lucky Iguana- Esther
I was sitting on the sandy land of Africa when suddenly a snake slithers up to me. I stay as still as I possibly can hoping it will go away. It starts to go away. OH NO, I move! The snake slithers back, it comes up to me. I run like lightning for my life. Now all the other snakes are chasing me then suddenly one of the snakes catches me by the neck, then another hops on top of it. But I squeeze my way out and I manage to get to the rocks. I jump and the snake falls down the hole. Yes, I am safe! I am so relieved! I was so worried when I was being chased by the snakes. Now I am here with my mates and I can relax.
Snake and Lizard- Bree
Hi, this is lizard here. I am sitting in the snake area but I can hear a slithering noise coming from behind me. Suddenly I could see a snake coming up at me out of the corner of my eye. Omg! I start running and the snake is chasing me. His friends keep on appearing out of nowhere but I am running my fastest and I am ahead of them. To be honest they are really slow and skinny so I slow down. But what I couldn’t see were the snakes ahead of me and they bury me! So I wiggle and wiggle and wiggle around. Finally, I get away! I jump up and I am safe and sound back with my family. I am really lucky! Since they are skinny they might die because they have not had food in a long time.
Lizard- Emily
I was out sunbathing when a snake was slithering toward me! I faked that I couldn't see him then all of a sudden he was right behind me! As soon as he touched me I sprinted away. I was running like the wind and then there were millions of snakes trying to get me. Now I was freaked OUT! Next, I was getting strangled by about 3 snakes but somehow I managed to escape from them! I was running so fast on the rocks and snakes were everywhere. I was scared I would die.
Snakes and Lizards- Tristan
Snakes are predators to lizards. They fight when they get too close to them. The lizards feel fear when they are near. The snakes feel anger towards the lizards. The snakes have to slide around because they have no legs.
Lizard- Kordelia-Rose
I was on the bumpy rocks resting until I spotted a snake chasing after me. When I saw the snake I was feeling worried and afraid. The snakes starting chasing after me so I zoomed away from them but they just kept getting closer and closer. I ran faster and faster but then the snakes caught me and wrapped me up. I started to wriggle my way out of the snakes and then I finally made it out! I tripped over but I got back up and zoomed away like a cheetah. Oh no! The snakes have got me one more time but luckily I managed to get out again and finally I got home to my lizard family. I was so relieved.
At the start of the term we did some writing about our holidays. We chose two main things we wanted to tell each other about. To go with our writing we decided to do some self portraits. We had to make sure we used up all the space on the paper and it was in the middle of our page. We used pastels or coloured pencils to finish our beautiful artworks and made them colourful. Finally we had to stick on some giant sunglasses that had pictures of the two activities we had written about. They are now up on our wall beside our writing so come and check them out.
On Monday the whole school attended the Small Schools Athletics at South Otago High School in Balclutha. We were lucky with the weather- the sun even made an appearance later in the day! It was great to see all the children giving it their all. Well done to the children who qualified for the South Otago athletics in a couple of weeks. Thanks to all the parents for coming along and supporting your children.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Middle Room have been very busy with our technology. We were given a brief that related to our inquiry topic of “Watch us Grow”. The brief was to design and make something that helps things grow. To be successful we had to design something that:
Can be used in the garden
Helps things to grow
Is our own design
Doesn’t cost a lot to make
Works properly
Is interesting
Can work independently on this
Doesn’t take a lot of time to complete
We have been really engaged in our work and have been working very hard to get these completed. Have a look at some photos of us busy creating our designs. We can’t wait to show everyone our finished projects!
Girls painting their designs.
Courtney decorating her worm farm.
George drilling holes for his worm farm.
Cooper filling up his bird feeder.
Boys helping to saw the wood needed fro a planter box.
Lately in Maths we have been learning about statistics. Everyone had to plan and conduct an investigation based around sports questions. Some questions posed were:
How many sit ups can the Middle Room do in a minute?
How many skips in a minute can you do?
How long can you hang from the monkey bars?
How much does your breathing change before and after exercise?
What is the average height of gymnastic bridges in the Middle Room?
We have been collecting this information this week and although it was hard at times, it was great to integrate some fitness into our maths. We have been having a discussion about things that can affect our data and what this would do to our results and findings. Our next step will be to analyse the data and write a report about what we find.
We have has a busy last week at school. We had a great day for Greer to visit to have another session of touch skills. We start off with some warm-up games which were a lot of fun. Then it was time to practice our skills especially passing and stepping. We round off with a quick game which was very fast paced. We are all improving so much each time Greer visits. These lessons are going to help many of us with our after school touch.
Practicing our passing.
Keep an eye on the ball.
Rats and Rabbits!
Testing our reactions.
Georgia on the run!
George stepping.
Baking
The past few weeks for Maths we have been learning about fractions. We have all worked hard and learned a lot. For our reward for working hard this term Miss Chapman let us do some baking! We had to deal with lots of measurements like ½ cup, ⅓ cup and tsp. The class split into two groups and made lolly cake and russian fudge. They both tasted so yum! Unfortunately we didn’t take any photos of the end products as they were gobbled up so quickly!
James checking Bree has measured correctly.
Flynn stirring the fudge. It was delicious!
Oral Presentation Day
This term our inquiry has been focussed around Then and Now. We have looked at things from the past to what they are like now. These included transport, household items, clothes, and schools. We have worked really hard to produce a speech about a topic we are passionate about. Today was the day we presented them to the whole school, parents and friends of the school. We were all very nervous but everyone of us did a fantastic job. Then it was time to perform our dances we have been learning with Kayleigh Broad after lunch on Thursdays. These were performed down at the hall and we got a big crowd watching us. We got a lot of great feedback that we did an awesome job! Check out some photos of us delivering our speeches and our Then and Now dance performance.
