Enterprise 2020

 We did it!!! There was a time where it didn't seem like we would be able to complete our Enterprise project this year, but we managed it. Financial literacy is so important for our students, and this is a fantastic way to teach this. We covered formal letter writing (to the bank manager for a loan), budgeting, profit/loss, sourcing items needed, planning and time management skills, along with art (advertising), and speaking in front of others. 

We would really like to thank Alex Ryan's Grandmother, because without her help, we'd be a whole lot of cupcakes short and they sold like hot cakes!!! They were delicious, so Cupcake Kraze, you should be very pleased with yourselves. We also had some delicious choc chip cookies, some beautiful bath bombs, some survival bracelets, a ton of sherbet and some pompom pets, along with some very nice lip balm. We still have a few bath bombs and lip balm pottles left, so we will happily sell them to you on Monday!

The Enterprise Project is all about financial literacy, however, making a profit is also key. Students were keen to pay back their loan to the bank manager, and this was their priority. They then set about making as much profit as they could. This year we managed a combined profit of $420.00. Add this to our $660.00 from last year and that is more than $1000 that will be making it's way to charities in our local area. While it would be nice to hold a class party, or eat pizza, it is more important that we live by our School Values and show caring toward others. We are lucky that we have what we need, however, many do not, so a donation to others less fortunate is always a good thing. We also hope to purchase some fruit trees to plant on the school grounds so that the Year 7 and 8 students leave a living legacy, and others can enjoy the fruit when it grows.

The year is almost done....three more school days (but who is counting???) Our farewell assembly is on Monday, and sadly we will be saying farewell a member of our Senior Syndicate, Miss Tenci, as she is teaching in Dunedin next year. Our Senior Supper is on Monday evening at 6:30pm, all Year 8 students are expected to attend this, and present their speech. Our prize giving assembly is on Wednesday 16th December at 1:30pm. This is also the last day of School for what has been a rather odd 2020. 

2020 Senior Social

Wow!!! What a night! It is always one we, as a classroom Year 7 and 8 teacher, love to see. The students amaze us with their enthusiasm, their willingness to learn new (and some very old) dances, and to become the creators of their own dances. It is something we do every year, and every year I forget the dance moves! This year we had some incredibly willing and able Year 8 students who took the time to teach the Year 7 students their dances. 

There is nothing like seeing parents join in! We had so many parents this year that it was a little squishy on the dance floor, but that just added to the fun. Students looked amazing! I have never seen so many boys come along so dressed up and I love seeing them in a dress shirt and tie! Girls looked gorgeous, with their hair done and a touch of make up on and dressed so well! This saw all teachers oohing and ahhhing over their outfits! 

Many parents took a lot of photos and if you would like to share any, please feel free to email a copy to us and we can add them to the blog! For now, we will just add a photo of our Year 7 and Year 8 students at the end of the night, before we tucked into some of the best baking I have seen in a very long time! 

A huge thank you to all parents for going to such a big effort to get your children ready, for joining in with a big smile, and also for the supper. We really appreciate it!

The end is near.....

 Wow....4th Term has started and we are half way through the first week! It is great to see everyone looking a bit less stressed and a lot more relaxed as we head into the home straight for 2020.

This term is H*U*G*E! We have some important dates to remember:

Calendar Art due back as soon as possible please

Senior Social - 17th November

Beach Ed Day - 19th November

School Fair - 4th December

Swimming 7-11 December

Senior Supper (Year 8) - 14th December

Prize Giving (Years 5-8) 16th December

In between all of this there is Whanau Sports Day, Cricket Day, a visiting Magician and I am sure I have forgotten something....hold on tight, we are in for a great finale for 2020.

This term we are focusing on Senior Social Dancing - it is a daily practice of the timeless classics such as the Gay Gordon, The Waltz, Gypsy Tap and lots of other toe-tapping, heel stomping dances like Copperhead Road. The Social is a night of great fun and enjoyment, and one not to be missed. All parents join in, so dust off your dancing shoes and get yourselves ready! All students are expected to be there on the night.

Calendar Art orders have gone home and I hope to see these back as quickly as possible so we can finalise the orders. I will include a few snap shots of the awesome art produced by Room 9 this year! The students really put a lot of effort into their artwork and I am sure it will look great on your wall, as a diary or notebook, or even a mousepad!

Dancing practice is going well. I must admit, every year I seem to forget what each dance is, and rely on those Year 8 students who did them last year. You would think that after all the years of doing each dance, it would be ingrained, but no! We are seeing a lot of students catch on really quickly and this is making the job so much easier. They will look amazing on the night.

Term Three is half done!

 Wow...time is flying, even with these Level 2 restrictions we seem to be super busy. We had a great trip to the Otago Museum in Week 5, and the Planetarium Experience was fantastic. We also were able to complete the Museum treasure hunt, which was a great conversation starter about our history and the history of other countries in the Pacific area. We were lucky to have a great bunch of parents come along with us, which always makes the day!

Room 9 have been using their Design Technology skills this term, and the Maths Games have been designed, constructed, modified and tested. I am most impressed with the thoughtful feedback (both positive and things to work on) given by students to their peers. Improvements included adding more features to a game, adding more colour or even more squares so the game lasted longer. These games are going to be gifted to younger students to help with their maths skills. The testing has been a great time in the classroom, and it has made student realise just how specific they need to be with their instructions, as that is really all the players have to go by! 

We will soon begin social dance practice - and hope to hold the social in Term 4. It is always a highlight of our year and it is great to see so many Year 8 student willing to help the Year 7 students learn the dances! Stay tuned for more on this event as we get closer to the day.

Here We Go Again!!!

 New Zealand has done so well to avoid Community Transmission of the Covid-19 virus, however, today we are heading back to Level 2. This means we will be making sure we sanitise, sanitise, sanitise. Students are washing hands upon entering our class, sanitising on the way out, and hopefully this will keep us as safe as we have been - and maybe even help eliminate the nasty gastro bug that seems to be doing the rounds!

We have had a great couple of weeks - students had their day at the Science Fair and 6 students were awarded prizes, some students multiple prizes! I am super, super proud of our budding scientists. It is a passion of mine, and we really enjoy anything "science" related!

Next Thursday we are heading off to the Museum in Dunedin for.....you guessed it.....SCIENCE!! We are heading to the Planetarium to be mesmerized by Space! A notice will go home with students today so please look out for that one. We will need parent helpers, so if you want to be amazed by the Cosmos...come and help out.

Our students have begun the Education Perfect "Stealth" challenge today - it is a cross-curricular competition where they can show their knowledge and skills across the curriculum. We will spend a little bit of time each day working on this. Students get choices, and we know how much they love that, so this should be a fun activity! We are focusing on reading for meaning this Term, so we have been looking at this through the lense of New Zealand history - and really enjoying learning about our country from its beginnings. 

We are also focusing on writing, as this seems to be an area students really struggle with. Not so much the quality of the writing, but getting students to WANT to write - we have a few tips and tricks up our sleeves, so stay tuned.

For now...enjoy a few happy snaps of Room 9 students....(Sadly Willow was unable to go due to illness, but her board went!)

Term 3 ... .Yippee!!!

We're back!!! I hope everyone enjoyed their break away from school as much as I did. It was long needed and really appreciated. It is good to be back, and great to see such happy students again!!! We are heads down already, as Term 3 is a busy one....here are some highlights!

*   Cross Country - August will see our annual Cross Country - we will be training each afternoon (weather permitting) except Monday, as that is Technology. Students will need sports uniform and a change of shoes please!

*  Enterprise - the highlight of Room 9! We have a variety of businesses in progress - some selling lip balms and bathbombs, other selling cookies, cupcakes and sherbet, and even some paracord bracelets too!

*  Science Fair - WOW! What an effort the students have put in to this activity. We will have all boards up for display in the Hall today, so if you are at school, drop in and take a look at our budding scientists! 10 students from Years 7 and 8 will take their boards through to Dunedin on August 3.

*  Speech competition - this will be held on September 7th, 2020. All students will be involved in writing a persuasive speech.

*   Trip to the Otago Museum Thursday, 20th August. We will need some parents to join us on this one! We are off to study Planet Earth and Beyond!

As you can see, it is going to be a busy one, but one full of great learning opportunities, and for this reason, it is great to get up, get ready and come to work! I will admit, it has been hard to leave behind the animals and peace and quiet I have enjoyed, especially the new baby mammoth donkey that finally made his way to my stud from Hamilton during the holidays. We welcomed the gorgeous Awapuni Zaejin to the herd, but because he looks like he has been put together from spare parts (all ears and legs at the moment), he has earned himself the nick name "Frankie" (Frankenstein).

Until next time .... some Matariki Art and the super cute Frankie!

Another Term Almost Gone!!!

This year is flying by, and we are almost at the end of Term 2! Where the time has gone is anyone's guess, but I wish it would slow down and we could catch our breath! It is all go in Room 9. We are busy getting started on Enterprise. Students have almost all applied for their bank loan and have used their budgeting skills to show me exactly how much they need and what it will be used for.  Most of the class are excellent shoppers and know how to hunt down a bargain!

We have also been looking at probability and the language that goes with it - things like It is Certain that Room 9 will be an excellent class this year, it is Highly Unlikely that we will not make a profit during Enterprise, it is Highly Unlikely that we will fail at Enterprise, and it is an Even Chance that all students will hand in their Science Fair project.

Talking about Science Fair projects....we are down to two and a half weeks before end of Term and the due date for Science Fair projects is day one of Term 3. If you don't want to be bothered with working on these during the School Holidays, then it's time to really knuckle down and get this finished. This week and next week I will be working with Room 10 on how to set out their boards, but I am always available to help those that need it!

Technology has been exciting too! Students are now completing their projects and they are really cool! It has been a bit of a messed up term with the whole Covid-19 thing, so it is great to see Room 9 students working really hard to complete their items before the end of the Term, when the Year 7 students will head to Mrs Elder and the Year 8 students to Mr Kay.

Last week we welcomed two new students (well technically only one new one and one returning one), so welcome to Shannon who is in Year 8 and welcome BACK to Hendrix, who is joining us in Year 7. We are now at 21 in Room 9 and they are amazing!!

Words of the Week - Chromatography and Viscosity

Guess what we have been doing???? SCIENCE!  This week, in preparation for preparing our Science Fair Projects, we have been working through writing up science experiments in the correct format and there is no better way of doing that than DOING the science.

Chromatography was a hit, students drew a dot on their filter paper with a felt pen, then let water soak through the filter paper and the colours from their dot they drew were drawn up the filter paper. It got some great Oooohs and Ahhhhs, but also some great scientific vocabulary and discussion. Some great ideas were tossed around and a lot of "I wonder what would happen if....." I wondered too, so the class all chose an "I wonder" and conducted another experiment. The writing was great! The setting out, even better!

Just to make sure we were on the right track - we made a lava lamp in class. Please don't be surprised if your vegetable oil goes missing (but I suggest you hide the expensive garlic infused olive oil!!!) We added oil to a third of a jar of water and then dropped in some food colouring to see what would happen. Me, being me, tossed in some glitter too! We shook it and then sat back and watched the reaction. Okay, I may have overdosed on food colouring, and it was a lovely shade of almost deep purple, but the conversations and language was outstanding. Well done Hannah for coming up with the word of the week, Viscosity! What a great word and one I'm sure I will see in writing from here on in!

These lava lamps are super simple to make, just make sure you secure the lid well because the last thing you want to do is flood the floor with a very "viscous" solution that is close on impossible to get out of the carpet!!! These jars are really calming for those little ones who are wound up or anxious too.

Science Fair topics should be well and truly chosen by now, and we have six weeks to go before they are due in....The countdown is on!

Term 2 - Level 2 - It's good to be back!

Level 2 finally arrived and we are back together again! While I write this blog, I am thinking how lucky I am to have such amazing kids this year, backed up by some amazing parents, who did a fabulous job with the whole "home-schooling" thing!

I must admit, I did have a couple of "Help!!!" emails from parents, when it came to working on some of our Year 7 and 8 Maths, and that made me giggle (just a bit, I promise!) It is so easy to forget that for some parents, working on algebra has been absent from their lives for a few years, and not that easy to get your head around!

I was lucky enough to have shared with me photos of students doing their "thing" at home. It was so cool to see lots of students baking the 2-ingredient scrolls and they looked amazing! I also saw some fantastic Louise Slice (oh I wish I could have reached through my screen and grabbed that), some amazing Anzac cookies and chocolate chips too. Alex, and his family, built an amazing bike track, some moto-x jumps and set up a domino course that resulted in a ping-pong ball landing in a cup! Well done!!! Jacob made a trench (after reading about the Anzacs) out of cardboard boxes and slept the night in it! Such great learning, so thank you all for sharing these with me.

Term 2 is Level 2 - we are all sanitizing hands, soap and water washing as we enter the classroom, and have moved our desks so we can be as far about as possible. I am so proud of these guys, they are doing a fantastic job of managing their hygiene with little prompting! Way to go, Room 9! We have begun to talk about Enterprise, the excitement will build on this venture, and Term 3 we will hopefully be able to showcase our "businesses". Stay tuned for this one!

Congratulations to the six students, Millie Smith, Hannah Burnett, Luka May, Cooper Ollerenshaw, Sam Milne and Willow Goodwin, for making it on to the Student Council. I look forward to the speeches for student leader! Until next time...enjoy these few photos - please send me any photos of your child doing things at home - I love seeing them and would love to share them!

Bannockburn Camp 2020

Wow!!! What a week we had in a very warm Central Otago spot! I have never seen so many happy campers take to the water like Year 7 and 8 did. We were so lucky to have parents with jetskis and boats, so we had a lot of "biscuiting' fun! We really can't thank these parents enough, especially Mr Ollerenshaw and Mr Milne, who came up for an afternoon of fun with the kids. It is the generosity of parents, who put in their own time, petrol and equipment costs, that made our camp the fantastic experience that it was!

We spent a week doing great activities such as abseiling and kayaking with Adventure Southland, and biking with the bikes loaned to us by Mrs Simpson and her husband, swimming in the pool at camp and down at the lake.

Our food was AAAAAMAAAAZZZZZING!!! Thank you especially to Suzie Roy and Andy Murdoch, who teamed up in the kitchen (along with a great team of parents), to provide us with some amazing, delicious food. Thanks to the camp Dads who put together wild food night, where students go to taste duck, rabbit (freshly caught), blue cod, venison, wild pork, mussels and paua.  The desserts were also special! We really appreciate the great camp food.

We have been writing about camp activities and reflecting on our time there and here are some highlights.

"Biscuiting on the four seater was awesome, we got some great air an Chris tried to tip us off, but we stuck on tight" - Bridget

"I loved the abseiling, it was great until I was half way down and my feet slipped, then my heart really started beating fast" - Hannah

"Tenting was really fun, it was my first time I slept out in a tent and I really liked it"

"The bike ride was so hard, we had to bike up a huge hill" - Sam

I have a lot of photos and all the class can access these through their Google drive so if parents want to have a look, get your child to share with you! There are some fantastic photos - and I will put a few here to share.