Chris is one of our 7 year 8 students leaving for college. This is his performance of Mambo #5 at our end of year production, "Stars in Your Eyes". My apologies for the poor video recording at the start.
My year 5, 6, and 7 students did a brilliant and very funny version of the twelve pains of Christmas for our end of year production. This take off of the well known Christmas song looks at the things that stress us most at Christmas time. You may need to leave this to load as it's quite a large file. Also best viewed on full screen.
Our end of the year school trip this year was to the Te Awamutu Events Centre for a swim and lunch. Rooms 1 and 3 also used the hydroslide. I'm not sure who was the fastest to get on there for a turn, parents or kids.
We have a tradition at Otewa School where the Year 8 students who will be leaving for college at the end of this year have a day out with their teacher. This year we went bowling and played laser tag. Grayson's dad came with us. Turns out he is a superb bowler but he hasn't quite got Jamie's skills. The rest of us just use luck and hope that our fingers come out of the bowling ball as it heads for the lane. We will miss these 7 fine students next year.
My apologies to my class. I got this clue completely muddled with another picture for the term. Thank you Kayla for making me come back and re check my work.
Here is the correct clue.
Gladiatori combattevano qui
This term we are doing options on Wednesday afternoons for the first 4 weeks of the term. Here are the Otewa Students that chose to do cooking with Miss Wesley. This week we made lolly cake. Simple to make a favourite of kiwi kids. For an interesting read about LOLLY CAKE check out Isaac Freeman's blog.
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, one of our Room 3 students is off on an adventure to England, Paris and Spain. Max left on Monday (11th). First stop, Aussie. We have created a blog for Max to post onto and you can visit it here. I have posted Max's first email onto it but we should see him posting straight there from here on.
A different twist this term since we are planning our virtual world trip...Can you guess what this is and where it is located? Clues below...
They speak English where she resides now but French where
she originated from.
Click here for a message from Miss Wesley.
I went to Christchurch last weekend. Here's a little bit of what I saw.
I have been busy planning our work for term 4 and have sorted the countries for our virtual world trip. I have included every country that has visited our wiki and broken some down such as America and Alaska, even though Alaska IS America. I have learnt a lot about world geography while I have been doing it. If you get a chance, you may want to stick you head in the door of the travel agents and ask if you can have some travel brochures for your country. You can see where you are going by clicking here. Anna, yours is in two parts since you were really keen to do Canada.
We, as staff, have had many conversations around the topic of student photos on the internet. As part of a new ICT cluster, teaching children to use Web Technology has been a focus for us this year. With that came the teaching of web etiquette and all that that encompassed.
Being able to share photos of students’ learning, succeeding, playing etc was an excellent way of keeping whanau and friends up to date with what was happening at school and allowing them to share these experiences.
Of course for us, the ultimate decision was with parents. We shared our reasons for posting photos with parents and explained the guidelines that we would adhere too. It then came down to them. Most families are at ease with the use of photos on our blogs and wikis. A few are not. We respect that and use avatars for those students. Personally I respect a student’s own wishes as well, with a few in my class who prefer not to have their photos posted.
We only use photos that have no identifying elements and are named with first names only. One of our student blogging rules concerns the posting of photographs as well. We have discussed at some length the reasons for selective photo posting. I feel this is an opportunity for my emerging adolescent students to understand the power of the internet before they have their own blogs, facebook profiles etc.
Schools in New Zealand are on holiday at the moment. We are back on October 11th. So there may not be too much happening here until then. However, on the last day of term we brainstormed in class the reasons why our class blog is worth visiting as part of the blogging challenge. We think that by visiting our class blog you can
- Learn about new things
- Learn about us as a individuals, a class, a school, a community, a country
- Keep up to date with what we are learning
- Share our successes
- Watch us grow
- Have fun
- Be challenged by Maths problems
- Enjoy our creativity, arts and homework.
- Compete in Miss Wesley's weekly challenge
- Play games
- See how we are getting more competent with Web 2 tools
- Use our blog to meet other classes from our blogroll
- Smile
Over the next few weeks, one of our class members will be visiting the UK, France and Spain. We are hoping to get emails from Max if he is able and we will post these on the blog with photos that he sends so everyone can see what adventures he is having.
Our class is taking part in a class blogging challenge which happens twice a year and is organised by Miss W and Sue Wyatt. If you follow our blog you will see us participating in challenges that we have to do. As you know blogging is new for us in Room 3, so we are hoping that taking part in the challenge will help us to become better bloggers, and to 'meet' new friends all around NZ and the world. Watch this space!!
Ten room three students attended the Combined Otorohanga Primary Schools Mathletics Competition today. Although we didn't gain any of the top three places, it was a great learning experience for the students. Well done Max, Samuel, Kahnn, Holly, Kayla, Anna, Sharnay, Christopher, Jamie and Devinn.Today is World Gratitude Day.We talked about what we have complained about during the week and realised that in actual fact our grumbles are misguided. We talked about how grateful we are for what we have in our lives. Some children dont have shelter, clean water, parents to care for them and no education. So when I wake up every morning I should think about how lucky I am to have all of those things in my life. We created this voicethread to show some of the things we are grateful for.
Five other Otewa Students and I have been working with Glen from Mad Cow Drums since term one of this year. We used coloured bands on our arms and leg to learn how to follow drumming patterns. We learnt beats first, then some fills. We look forward to Glen coming every Monday to work with us. Today we showed the rest of the school how far we have come. I would like to keep learning the drums because it’s fun.
To contact Glen at Mad Cow Drums click the cow icon below.
This was our warm up for maths at the start of the term. We put it up on the wall in the corridor. Samuel, Holly and Kendall have made a voice thread about the challenge. Come and have a look and see if you can help fill in the gaps.
You can see this voicethread full screen at.. the voicethread website.
You can see this voicethread full screen at.. the voicethread website.
Last challenge for the term...nice and easy.
Great response from the class with the majority getting it right. Thanks to Mr Webb for getting in first but not right this time. Bonus points to Andrew who not only guessed it was a lego man but that it was a LEGO SPACEMAN!!!!!!! That boy knows his lego, that's for sure.
Great response from the class with the majority getting it right. Thanks to Mr Webb for getting in first but not right this time. Bonus points to Andrew who not only guessed it was a lego man but that it was a LEGO SPACEMAN!!!!!!! That boy knows his lego, that's for sure.
This term we have looked at the symbolism in Australian Aboriginal Art. These traditional designs were made of lines, dots, swirls and circles that had different meanings to different groups. These designs told stories or stood for natural features or forces and the spirits that created the world.
We hope you like our finished pieces of work.
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| Tyler R working on his E-Pals email |
- We are completing our fourth emails to our Epals in Melbourne and all that will be left to do will be to complete our presentations which will be posted on our wiki. These will be completed next term.
- We are working on finishing term 3's art work and we can't wait to share some of it with our readers.
- Ten of our students will be heading to Mathletics to compete against Combined Otorohanga Primary Schools next week so the whole class is focussing on problem solving in maths.
- These last two weeks we are learning about Question and Answer Relationships in reading.
- And in between the rainy bits we are getting out to do some PE..roll on summer.
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| Bradlee |
Last week the students in room 3 used Tony Ryan's Construction Key to build a red back spider trap using only a pair of scissors, a sheet of newspaper, sellotape, 10 rubber bands and either 3 straws or 3 ice block sticks. These are their creations.
Warning - This movie contains graphic violence.
Kane is one of our year 5 students..that's his handsome face in the centre of the photo with the green mouthguard.
Here's the crunch...what is this week's picture?
Don't forget to leave your name!!!
There you have it, thanks to all the people who commented, including our MLU friends from Aussie and parents.
Crystal and Anna from Room 3 got it right..it's a crunchy carrot.
Don't forget to leave your name!!!
There you have it, thanks to all the people who commented, including our MLU friends from Aussie and parents.
Crystal and Anna from Room 3 got it right..it's a crunchy carrot.
A huge congratulations to Anna, Samuel, Christopher and Grayson who represented our school the Waikato Intermediates Cross Country after competing at the Small Schools then the Combined Otorohanga Primary Schools (COPS)x-country. Look at these fantastic results. Although only a year 6, Samuel ran in the year 7 competition at Waikato as they do not run the year 6's, so a fantastic effort Samuel. Look out next year's competitors!!
| SMALL SCHOOLS | COPS | WAIKATO | |
| ANNA | 1st | 2nd | 3rd/95 |
| SAMUEL | 1st | 1st | 29th/97 |
| GRAYSON | 1st | 4th | 40th/100 |
| CHRISTOPHER | 3rd | 6th | 65th/100 |
This is Caitlin, Tayla, Lucy and Crystal's response to Melville Intermediate Room 8's blossom video by Isla.
Our school entered a colouring competition run by Te Wananga o Aotearoa to celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori. Anna from room 3 got second place in the year 7 and 8 section. Davina and Tiaki from Te Wananga o Aotearoa paid a surprise visit to Anna at our assembly on Friday the 3rd to present her with her wonderful prize. They also very generously gave Otewa School the opportunity to choose some books from their extensive book selection. Kaitoa Anna.
Kia ora Te Wananga.
Kia ora Te Wananga.
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| Anna's winning entry |
Macro shot...can you guess what it is?....We welcome, in fact we encourage, comments from any visitors to our blog. Answer revealed on Friday.
This week I will give you a clue. 'It will really satisfy you to get the answer'
All comments will be revealed on Friday....
OKAY, I admit, that was the hardest one yet...You really needed to use the word clue as well.
SNICKERS "really satisfies you".
Well done Max who guessed correctly and Adam who thought it was a moro bar.
We would like to say WELCOME to all the students from the Middle Learning Unit at Belaire Primary School in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
Thanks heaps for visiting our blog and having a crack at the challenge.
Otewa School celebrated Blue Friday to raise awareness for Prostate Cancer. We all dressed in blue and gave a gold coin donation. We have only 60 students at our school but we raised $125. A big thank you to parents, whanau and caregivers for the behind the scenes support. Otewa rocks.
We have the most amazing families in our community and I think the best cake baker in the district. Lucy's mum and dad arrived with a beautiful chocolate cake to share with the class. Aren't we lucky? Happy birthday Lucy.
Each week this term Room 3 have used a Thinkers Key to look at Australian products or icons. So far they have invented a machine to ice lamingtons (which we are only willing to claim are Australasian), found new uses for a Kylie Minogue record, found strategies to weigh Uluru (some great ideas though often Uluru was not left intact ;-s ) and creatively combined an old Holden and an iceblock. Last week they used the disadvantages key to look at the Hill's hoist clothesline..Perhaps Lance Hill was Australia's equivalent to Merv Hicks from Eltham. Chocolate fish to the first non NZ'er to tell us what Merv is famous for. Here is Room 3's latest work. Click here to see full size at the voicethread website. We'd love to have some comments.
This week one of our maths groups has been working on finding rules for patterns. They understand that the letter in an algebraic equation is the 'variable' and can be replaced with anything...They are getting very quick at working out some very complicated formulas for patterns they have created themselves. Watch this space...they will be here to write or talk about it on Monday. Unfortunately we lost the internet on Friday so I am posting from home.
Last week the class used Tony Ryan's Alternative Uses Key to come up with 10 different uses for a Kylie Minogue record...here is a selection of their ideas.
We work in groups often in room 3...this helps those more able students to cement their learning and scaffold others who may need more assistance. Lucy, Jack and Tyler are working to solve a maths problem....where do you put the + signs between 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 and 1 to = 99.....? They solved it two ways...can you?
We have been lucky enough to have Libby from Project Energise working with us at Otewa to help build our fitness for the upcoming Small Schools Cross Country against Maihiihi. We challenge them every year to try and get the boot off us..we are determined to keep it again this year. Two weeks of training left and we wish the rain would go away.
Today our maths group was down with Miss Wesley and we were learning about algebra. We were working out of a figure-it-out book. We are looking at triangular numbers and how to find out the formula that would give us the answer no matter how big the base of the triangle is. Sometimes it's easier to use 'x' or another letter in the equation to represent a number. This number is called a variable.
The three students who gave the correct answer, Max, Anna and Chris get the extra points this week. There were some great answers.
Last term we did a fractions unit for maths. At the end, the class used photostory to document some of their learning. To do this they also had to use the easispeak microphones. This week we have been tidying these up for publication. We still are not sure how to stop the voice tracks from fading off at the ends.
I thought this theme for the blog might be a treat for our ePals from Vermont Primary in Melbourne. You can also take a tour of their wiki here.
Today when we were looking in Voicethread we found a maths problem solving voicethread. We paired up and tried to solve the problem. It wasn't easy, but Sharnay and Holly cracked it. Here is the voicethread that they made in response. The original problem can be seen here and the girls' response is here
