Last Friday morning as part of the New Zealand Book Council’s Writers in Schools Tour, Room 12 went to Raroa Intermediate to hear Des Hunt talk about his novels and his writing process. Des was really interesting to listen to, we learnt that he used to be a Science and Technology teacher before he became a writer and that he always tries to include aspects of science and technology into his novels. Many of Des’ novels focus on conservation, and issues that impact the lives of young New Zealanders. He even performed some cool physics experiments using magnets and other forces as a metaphor to explain the development of a story.
During the New Zealand Election we have been learning about the New Zealand Government political system and as part of our unit of work we invented new political parties that had a target demographic of young people between the ages of 10 and `13 years. We had to make up a name, slogan, logo, policies as well as television adverts. Here are some examples of what we came up with.......
Last night we had the Team Toru Dance and the church hall. It was a great evening and everyone had a great time. The dancing was amazing - even the teachers danced!!!
A big thank you to the Student Council for organising the dance. It was a lot of work and we know you worked hard to make sure the dance ran smoothly. On Tuesdays Team Toru is taking the train to Nairnville Recreation Centre where we are balancing, tumbling, jumping, landing, pulling, pushing, hanging, climbing, turning, leaping, jumping and having a thoroughly good time. We have three rotations and an instructor at each who is helping us to develop our confidence and skill in gymnastics. There are so many great pieces of equipment to use at Nairnville and it is fun to use these in the warm ups and lessons. This week we got to build up our upper body strength on the rings as well as showing our skill in trampolining. We are reflecting on our level of participation and our skill level and have a self-assessment sheet we will fill in.
Remember our PJ Day last term and how we raised an amazing amount of money which went to the Child’s Ward of the Wellington Hospital to help children with cancer. Well, here is a photo of Georgia handing the cheque of $600.60 to a representative from the Ward.
Thank you to all who contributed to such a worthwhile cause. Student Leadership Team 2014 On Friday, 52 Year 7 and 8’s from St Brigid’s joined 1200 other primary school students in the annual Orange Day street march. The march is a celebration of the great work done by these students to help improve road safety around our schools. We marched from Parliament along Lambton Quay and Willis street to Civic Square and ended our morning with a show at the Michael Fowler Centre where we showed off the banner we made. Although it was a bit windy everyone had a great time. We made a lot of noise and it was an interesting experience to be walking on the road rather than the footpath down those busy streets.
A big thank you goes out to all of the St Brigid’s Road Patrollers who give up their time to ensure we can all cross the road safely. Keep up the good work!!! In Week Seven, Team 3 performed a production called Stop the Cyber Blues. We performed it for the school and for our parents. The production was to show that cyber bullying is bad. Being part of the performance was a lot of hard work. We would like to thank our teachers for writing the script and helping us rehearse and also Mrs McHalick for playing the piano and helping with the music.
What we loved about the performance was getting to see all the other classes scenes and their dances. We hope everyone enjoyed the performance. We had a lot of fun performing for you. By Cherie and Ella On Monday 18 May Team Toru went up to Alex Moore top field and we competed in sunshine in the Cross Country running event. We participated with enthusiasm. Although the course was quite different to what we are used to, we took on the challenge and everyone completed the course. Well done to all those who raced and good luck to all those people who made it to the Northern Zone event which is to be held on Wednesday 28 May. By Danielle and Robin Over the last three weeks Room 12 have been looking at different types of puppets from around the world. We learnt about Vietnamese water puppets, Chinese shadow puppets, French marionettes as well as heaps of others. We decided that we wanted to create our own puppets and perform a play for some of the younger students in the school. We have been busy making our puppets and practising our shows for the last two weeks and on Friday we performed them for Room's 2 and 3. We had a great time performing and the students in Room's 2 and 3 were a fantastic audience. |