Term 4 Roundup

It's been a while since you have heard from us. Much has happened in that time. We've been busy, busy, busy!

This term we the kids became the teachers in our class.  We had to plan and run our own workshop on something that we were passionate about.  There were workshops from on baking, slime making, remote control racing, coding and looking after a pet bunny.

We have several sessions of cycle safety from Marty and his team at Ride On.  Our confidence grew during the lessons, especially when riding out on the road.

This term the choir were a part of a special recording.  They sang and recorded a song that is to be used by a local company Pics Peanut Butter. We are also putting out a recording next year.  Look out for it on sale in 2018

Our final visit to the Suter was a Seasonal Ceramics Clay workshop. We got to make our very own clay Santa's.

 Carrying on the Christmas theme we were lucky enough to have a visit from some of the cast and set of the Kiwi Christmas. One of the main actors is actually a local boy that several of us know.  Some of us were lucky enough to hop in the sleigh.

 

This week we celebrated the end of the year with our Totara Sydicate Big Day Out at Teapot Valley. We had fun in the pool on the inflatable, on the zipline, waterslide and much much more!

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Mask Parade 2017

Last week we celebrated the culmination of several weeks worth of work with the Nelson Masked Parade.  Our school represented the many of the continents around the world

Kahikatea as tigers from Africa

Pohutukawa asTakahe from NZ

Kowhai Children as tpenguins from Antarctica 

Totara children as the bright colourful birds from Central America

 Today Nelson represented our school at the Nelson Gymnastics competition. He placed 3rd in the boys competition. Way to go Nelson!

NCS band performance

Check out Ruby and Emma, part of the NCS band performing to the rest of the school during a special lunchtime performance this week! 

Masked Parade all go!

We've been all go preparing for the Nelson Masked Parade. We've been practicing our song and dance moves.  Today some of Room 2 students had fun creating some additional birds as part of our performance.  We are looking forward to sharing our performance with thousands of people next Friday!

Amazing week at school

 This week some girls have been working hard on Science Fair projects for the Cawthron Science Fair. One group have been investigating different flours in cakes and how much they rise.  On Thursday they made cake and we were lucky enough to eat it!

  

We have been working our bird masks for the masked parade next term.  We are the birds of the South America.

                                                 

This week we finished our prototypes as part of our inquiry project. These prototypes are to help people reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle. Michael and Zai made a seesaw out of an old truck tyre. Meg, Chloe and Jasmin made a tyre shelf decoration out of an old car tyre.  Today we will present our prototypes at our very own NCS Dragon Den!  Who will the investors invest in?

 Written by Michael, Grayson and Sally.

Skiing at Rainbow!

On Thursday we went skiing at rainbow it was so much fun.There was lots of snow and at one point it started to rain.The drive there was fun but also boring so once we got to the hut we unpacked and waited for our lessons.We got carried away skiing an in no time we had to go and I don't know but I think everyone had a great time.

By Rosie and Summer

Way to go Ruby and Koebi!

Well done to Koebi and Ruby who represented our class at the Totara Speech Finals today. Check out their speeches below!

Speeches and Suter

This week we were lucky enough to visit the fabulous Tamatea Exhibition at the Suter Art Gallery. This exhibition focuses on art and conservation in Dusky Sound. We had lots of fun creating our own prints using some very special jelly plates. Thanks Esther for once again providing us with opportunities that we don't have at school.

Today we were able to showcase and celebrate all our hardwork in writing this term when we presented our speeches to the class.  Sally was proud of the way we worked so diligently on them, and for many the way we overcame our nerves and presented them to the whole class.

Room 2 Calendar art

This slideshow shows room2's calendar art.
Made by Rosie and Summer!

Mahi Toi

Last week the Totara Syndicate held our first ever Mahi Toi Arts Concert. At the concert we showcased all our learning from our Mahi Toi Arts Workshops that we participated in during Term 2.  At our concert songs were sung, skits were performed, art was showcased and dances were performed. Thank you to everyone who came along and helped us celebrate our learning. Below you will find a video from the dance performance.

Reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle!

Well we're right back into it in Room 2!

We began the week with a visit from Mark, the Manager of Fresh Choice Nelson. We learnt about the use of plastic bags in their store and the ways they are trying to be more environmentally friendly. Did you know that they use potato starch trays in their produce section and they are hoping to be the first store in NZ have reusable and biodegradable bags made out of Cornstarch!  We learnt that between Atawahi and Enner Glyn we use 3.6 million bags per year!  

Then on Thursday again thanks to the organisation of several Room 1 students some of us listened to Matt Lawry from the Green Party. He talked about some of the initiatives here in Nelson and changes that we can make.

Today we visited an exhibition at NMIT put together by Rose Sheppard and our very own art extension students Arlo, Grayson, Meg and Tilly.

Week 10!

This week we celebrated some of what we have been learning in class with whanau during our student led conferences.  

As part of this we shared our pepehas in front of our whanau.  You can see below Chloe modelling our class Korowai.  We each decorated feathers with things that represent us such as our mountains and our rivers. Sally's Mum very kindly sewed it all together for us.

For the last two weeks in Reading we have had a focus on Matariki. As part of this we read stories and watched videos about Matariki and the Maori game Kio-O-Rahi. We then had fun making up our own plays and making a movie about how to play Kio O Rahi. You can see one of our Matariki plays below

Way to go to our very own Caitlin who has had her Letter to the Editor published in our local newspaper. We recently had a representative come and speak to us about Boomerang Bags.  Caitlin started writing this letter as part of one of our writing workshops. Way to go Caitlin!

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Science, Sport and Shovelling!

Life in Room 2 is always full of much variety. This week we began our week with a tree planting trip up the Brook organised by our local council.  We were so efficient that they had to go and get more trees for us to plant!

On Wednesday we held our biennial school Science Fair.  We each discussed with the judges our experiments and the outcomes of our testing.  We were very proud to showcase our work to the school and our parents!

Today a number of students from our class went to the Inter-Regional Cross Country Champs at Rabbit Island. At this even we competed against children from across the Nelson/Tasman Region.  Well done to our very own Hollie who place 11th in the Year 5 race and Jasmin who placed 9th in the Year 6 race.

All this term Meg, Tilly, Arlo and Grayson have been lucky enough to be a part of an Art extension programme by local artist Rose Shepard.  You can see below the amazing masks that they produced as part of the workshops.

Shark Man and Bug Man Visit!

Today we were very lucky to have Riley Elliot A.K.A the Shark Man and  Rud Kleinpast A.K.A the Bug Man here as part of a special EnviroDay.  This EnviroDay was held as part of our special opening for a new specially designed sensory garden . A special thanks must go out to one of teachers Lynley who wont his makeover for us and who has organised and driven the whole project.

Can you spot the weta on Rudd's nose?

Cross Country, Fidget Spinners and More!

There's never a dull week in Room 2! Check out our highlights of the week below.

In Maths we have been learning all about probability. Many teachers have banned the fidget spinners, the latest craze!  However, our teacher Sally has us use them in Maths. We played a number of different games and had to decide if they were fair or not.

We were lucky enough to have Andrew and his dog Bo from the Department of Conservation come and visit us on Wednesday. We learnt about the role that Doc dogs have locating both protected and harmful species. 

On Wednesday we also had our Totara Syndicate Cross Country at Branford Park. Well done to the following children who placed in the event.

Year 5 Girls

3rd Hollie

6th - Keara

Year 5 Boys

Year 6 Girls

2nd - Jasmin

4th - Jenaya

8th - Rosie

Year 6 Boys

2nd - Zai

3rd - Koebi

6th - Michael

This week our Science Fair theme carried on. We have all been working hard on our experiments at home and school and Sally is very impressed. We all took part in Caitlin's Science experiment. In her experiment we were blindfolded and had to block our nose and eat a sample of potatoe and apple and guess which one was which. Let's just say there were some interesting reactions!

In Writing we are learning to write explanations. This week we watched an interesting video about the Sea Turtle's life cycle. Did you know that only 1-2% survive to breeding age!  Crazy huh!

Our week

We've had a week filled with much variety. On Monday we tested out our little ovens that we made with Sue in a Science workshop. Sue showed us how to make one and then we each made modifications to them in order to carry out a fair test. We enjoyed cooking smoores in them even though they didn't melt as much as we had hoped.

On Tuesday we went to the Suter for the Optical Illusions exhibition. We had fun looking at lots of different artworks and exploring a variety of techniques to create optical illusions within art.

This week in Maths we have been focussing on Statistics.  We enjoyed constructing a pie graph out of M&M's and then of course eating it!

We also watched a fascinating video about what it would be like if it was a village of 100 people. We then constructed pie graphs on a variety of topics from the video.  You can watch the video below.