Fun at the pools!

We have started our swimming sessions at the local pool. Thank you to our fabulous instructors for being so enthusiastic and teaching us great skills for water survival. Have a look at what we are learning...

Practising our streamline! Hands lying on top of one another,

tight arms and off we go...

Learning how to dive below the surface, and developing the skill of

regaining our footing.

We are very excited to be coming again later in the week!

Welcome to 2019!

What an exciting and busy start to the term we have had in Hauraki, and across Te Waka Ako. It has been fun getting to spend time with each other again, after our summer holiday.

What has been happening, we hear you ask. Well...where to start? We have been refreshing our knowledge of the school code of conduct: RESPECT. This has involved considering our rights and responsibilities as students and staff of Waikowhai Primary School. If you were present at our assembly last week, you would have heard us sharing some of our ideas;

We have a right to be heard - We have a responsibility to listen.

We have a right to be safe - We have a responsibility to act safely.

We have a right to use a chromebook - We have a responsibility to follow the Kawa of Care.

We have a right to learn - We have a responsibility to be the best we can be.

We are still in the process of creating our syndicate treaty, if you have any suggestions for our Rights and Responsibilities, please post them in the comments below.

Swimming lessons have commenced in the school pool - we are also fortunate to have relaxation time in the pool at lunchtime. Don't forget that next week we start our swimming sessions at Cameron Pools.

Poetry and writing have been concerned with our emotions as we move into Year 5 and Year 6. We have had choice over what style of poetry to use, when we post our personal blogs, we will be sure to share some examples. During Music, our teachers shared how music makes them feel, do you know that the same song made them feel completely different emotions? We're now having fun creating sounds that evoke different emotions in others.

Our Goal Setting is well under way, getting ready for the Goal Setting meetings coming up with our whanau in a few weeks time. This has included developing our Pepehas further, and sharing information about ourselves through our Getting To Know You Form.

Ms Sands, our fabulous Hauraki teacher, is absent until 11th March. In her absence, we are being taught by Miss McGrath, our DP. She has included her Getting To Know You Form below, so that you can know her better:

We are looking forward to sharing more with you as the term goes on. We LOVE getting feedback, please drop any suggestions, questions or feedback into the comment section below. We'll look forward to hearing from you.

Summer Learning Journey

Today Megan from the Summer Learning Journey Programme came into Waikowhai Primary to talk to our Year 4, 5 and 6 students about participating in this programme over the summer.
She shared reasons this is a good programme to be part of and the prizes that would be available for top bloggers. Yep its a blogging programme based on activities completed.

We spent the morning looking at one of the topics and activities that were in the Programme in 2016/17, as a practise.
                                               https://sites.google.com/site/summerlearningjourney/welcome 

Day 1 – Choosing a destination
The world is a very big and very cool place. There are currently 196 countries and
approximately 7.1 billion people living on earth. For this project we are going to focus on just
10 countries across 6 continents.... Australia, Canada, Chile, England (United Kingdom), Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa & United Arab Emirates. The first and second activities were to choose a country and give two reasons why. Then find some new information that wasn't on the info they gave us.
                               
As the teacher I choose
Chile  because I love mountains and would like to see the Andes Range.  I would also like the colours the people of this country wear and use, I think. Finally Easter Island is part of Chile and I have always been fascinated by this place and would love to visit.
Then I went onto google to find some interesting facts about Chile.
1).  Chile has the largest swimming pool in the world.
2. It has one of the longest coastlines in the world and the Andes mountains run down the other side of the country. It is long and skinny country with beaches and mountains. Awesome.
3). Chile is home to 5 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Read more: Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Chile https://www.quasarex.com/blog/top-10-things-you-didnt-know-about-chile-facts-about-chile

BIG FOOT CYCLING FUN

Two ladies from the company, Big Foot Adventures,  came to our school with all their bikes on a long double decker trailer. We had an hour long lesson on bike safety and equipment needed to ride successfully. They talked about what we need on our feet, out legs, our bodies and our heads.
We looked at high visibility needs with jackets and back pack covers. Then we checked out the bikes and what they need by LAW and how we should check them for safety purposes every time we ride.






Our next step was to look at how to fit a
helmet properly, before lining up for a bike to ride!
Our session was in the wind and rain!! But it was still heaps of fun. Check out the Hauraki students individual blogs to see more of what they did.



 BIG FOOT ADVENTURES WEBSITE

 

                   

Term 3 TESTING

Well we are half way through Week 3 of Term 4. Sorry to our Tuhi mai Tuhi atu classes for not posting on our class blog. We hit the term running with testing and gearing up for our school production called Pasifika Peter Pan. Testing started on Day One so we set up Novel studies, writing tumbles and Maths tumbles for the students to do independently across Te Waka Ako while the teachers tested. Everyone has worked very hard and very QUIETLY!! Many students in Hauraki will have blogged on their personal blogs about these tumbles.
We used images like this to write in any genre we chose....             






Some of the novels we have been reading are .... 

We have had the opportunity to do Bike Training this week with the company Big Foot, which is exciting, and we will blog about this next.

Ako Hiko Film Festival Submission

📽📽📽📽📽   Hauraki class is part of Te Waka Ako, which is the three senior school classrooms of Waikowhai Primary School. We all said yes to having a go at creating films for the inaugural film festival. It was a learning journey for sure! And it took longer than we anticipated. No wonder blockbusters are years in the making! We took the students through different activities and set a few small tasks to give them some time to develop some of the skills needed to create movies. The whole syndicate operated together, in groups of four students. It was very student run and everyone was involved in a group.
Here is the movie chosen to be submitted for Hauraki, created by Jasmine, Alan, Abigail and Jemma.

                                                                                                🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞

 

Feelings in Te Reo Film Making

With the Ako Hiko Film Making Competition on this term, we spent time practising our filming skills in other areas of the curriculum. Hauraki had to lead the school assembly last week so we decided to create a movie of all the feelings we have been learning about in Te Reo Maori. Different groups had a particular feeling that they needed to show and they needed to ask somebody how they were feeling. Different types of shots were used, some voice over was used, different sounds created.



The feelings in Maori and English are....

Stop Motion Animator.

Last week Te Waka Ako spent the morning using Stop Motion Animator to make short movies with play dough or lego pieces. Our students had a heap of fun and came up with some clever videos in the 40mins they had to create and upload them.
If you look at the individual blogs down the side of Hauraki's blog,
or Waitemata's Blog   = http://wpsrattenbury.blogspot.com/
or Manukau's Blog     = http://wpsriceman.blogspot.com/
you will see the students individual movies posted.

This is Abby's work. Her Blog is  http://wpsabbym.blogspot.com 

Cleaning out our HOUSE!!

PLASTIC HOUSE 

Well our Installation was set up for the Art Show at the end of Term 3. It filled up half way as the structure was much bigger than we had first planned. BUT it was still SOOOOO much rubbish.

The Clean Up Begins! 

We created signs to advertise the message of our art work and stake around the house during the week. Unfortunately it was a week of storms and down pours so we needed to set up our explanation and signs in the hall as well as outside. The Art show had a opening evening for parents to come and visit all the work in the hall. Some students played the piano in the background, others served food to our guests, others helped families take part in our community weaving project. But I digress!
The clean up of the house wasn't much fun at all!! It smelt!. It was wet! It was gross!

Bagging up the plastic packets

"Piles and Piles of grossness" said James 

Committed students Dazharn and Shabeera

ARTWORK by Dazharn

ARTWORK by James 

NEW PLAYGROUND

Waikowhai Primary School finally got their new playground after many months of waiting. We had a special opening with the whole school, parents and BOT and all had a quick turn on the new structure. A ribbon was cut, songs were sung, speeches were spoken and fun was had! Hauraki was lucky enough to be the first class to try it out.  Each student in Hauraki led a student from Room 1 (our new entrants) onto to the playground to help then negotiate it all.
Check out some of these photos and check the students blogs this week as they will be blogging about it in more detail than I.

Visiting the Auckland Zoo

Blogging about the Zoo 

Walt: Report, Recount and Reflect

When:   We went to the Zoo in Week 7 of Term 2. 

Where:  The Auckland Zoo near Western Springs in the Pt Chevalier area.

What:    A school trip that follows on from our trip to Tiritiri Matangi in Week 5.  

Who:     All of Te Waka Ako syndicate, plus 7 parents and 5 staff. 

How:     Lucky for us, by double decker bus!

Why:     To extend our knowledge and inquiry into New Zealand Animals and how they are being
              impacted by us.

Thursday in Week 7 saw all of our seniors head out to the Auckland Zoo to check out the New Zealand animals in particular, but anything else too. We all were in groups with six students and had certain times of the day we could roam freely and other parts of the day in educator programmes. Fraser was Hauraki's educator and he was outstanding. He was super cool and hooked the students and adults in to learning ' big time'. The students were so well behaved that the educators met us at the end to praise them and tell them they were the best group they had had through in the last few years!! High praise indeed. Our group loved seeing the penguins and the Ruru owl in the New Zealand sections. And of course who doesn't love tigers. He came up so close to the glass!

The Zoofari programme is an outstanding opportunity for schools to take up. Many of our students either hadn't been to the Zoo or had only been with a previous school trip. The educators we met up with inspired the students so much. They were informative, friendly and upbeat. We also had 45min checking out the Bug Lad that is inside the Zoo at present.

Link = https://www.aucklandzoo.co.nz/get-involved/zoofari

We had lovely weather and could have stayed several more hours to check out all the animals.


 
 
 

Starting to Build

Our Installation Building started in Week 3. We nearly got it all done in one day with the help of two fabulous builders from a company connected to a staff member in our school. They let the students help out in different ways.
We used recycled timber for the whole structure and 6 pallets for the base.

 

By the end of the day all we needed to do was add wood to the roof line and battens on walls so we can attach the plastic bags to enclose it and a door to seal it up. The students were very excited and continued to happily collect rubbish from the classes.






A couple of weeks later the last of the construction works were done and we could attach the large plastic bags that we receive from the local supermarket with old bread in. These we stapled onto the wood so they overlapped. They have proven remarkably weather resistant! And Auckland has provided many tests with wind and rain battering us. 

 

 

ARTWORK MESSAGE

This Installation Art work is ‘talking’ about….. How much soft plastic is used by a small school of 10 classes in 8 weeks. We are looking at what we are doing to our natural world that is having a negative impact on the other animals that live in it. We are filling up the world with rubbish like we are filling up the house. It’s a house because WE (humans) are doing the polluting and we live in houses.

We want people to THINK about…..

Would we trash our house and leave rubbish everywhere? Why are we doing that to the World. Don’t we live in it? How we are affecting our World. How much soft plastic we are using and if it is all necessary. How can the world last with all this plastic. It might look beautiful on the outside but inside/ hidden is the rubbish.

We want people to TALK about…..

How people could change their habits or behaviours to use less soft plastic. How people could make sure all soft plastic that is used is recycled. How they could help clean up the damage so far. How they could help in any way.