Tawa Schools Cultural Festival

Our fantastic Kapa Haka and Pasifika groups will be performing at the Tawa Schools Cultural Festival at Tawa Intermediate on Friday morning.  Today we saw them all dressed up in costumes and thought their singing and dancing was pukana!

Our Cultural Library Display

Room 7 have been busy reading and reviewing the books we purchased with our Library Grant from the Asia Foundation.  We enjoyed reading about different cultures and points of view.  Some of us have been able to share our languages with other students and it's been fun to share our special stories too.

 Thank you, Asia Foundation for making this possible!

Buzzing with digital learning!

Room 7 is buzzing with digital learning!

We have been learning to use Google docs to present our reports about our trip to see the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's 5th symphony and Brahms' Hungarian Dance #5 at the Michael Fowler Centre last month.
We've also been doing Typing Tutor with Alma.  She is teaching us to use all our fingers when typing.  This makes us much faster and the typing is more comfortable.  We're going to be so fast when we get onto the new netbooks and i-pads next term!

The fantastic thing about Google docs is that by sharing our documents we can give and recieve feedback from other students and our teacher.  We can also open and work on our documents

from any computer...anywhere!

And then, when we finish writing, we share our wonderful work with our families!

Artsplash Festival

                                                              We were all on stage at the Michael Fowler Centre on Monday evening for the 2013 Artsplash musical concerts.  We were very proud of our wonderful singers, musicians and puppeteers!

Our Cultural Pagoda

Our pondering, planning and painting has become a wonderful new space to play together or take time out.  Come and enjoy our space with us

!

Pearly Shells

We're practicing hard for Artsplash 2013!  SFX ukulele players are going to be in stage at the Michael Fowler Centre!

Our Hero

Our hero Jacob is going to Wellington Zone Swimming to represent Tawa!

Syndicate Reconciliation Liturgy

Reconciliation Liturgy will be celebrated with Rooms 6, 7 and 8 at 1-30pm this Friday, 30 August, in the school hall. Parents are very welcome to join us for this special liturgy.

Decorating our Pagoda

We have begun work on this term's playground design..... some children have designed and painted symbols from their cultures for the walls of

our pagoda.

Celebrating Maths achievement in ALiM

Our ALiM

students, Meg, Owen and Erika were rewarded for all their hard work on the ALiM project with Mrs Parr.  They have learned to ask maths questions like Fibonacci did - and use their numeracy knowledge and skills to  investigate answers!

Magnificent Beethoven and Brahms!

Yesterday we visited NZSO at the Michael Fowler Centre and experienced music makers up really close! 
Lehlani:  "It was really loud because we were up really close to the front"
Lily:  "There were three pieces of music and each used different instruments"
Brandon: "It was the best piece of musin I'd heard in my entire life!"
George:  "There were exciting instruments playing"
Faith:  "It was very classical and it changed my mind about liking classical music!"

Different ways to solve a problem....

What if you had a movie theatre with 26 seats in a row, and 26 rows in the theatre.
The front row begins with seat AA, then AB, then AC... and so on, to seat AZ at the end of the row.  They sold the seats in order (from the front).
How would you find out how many people bought tickets before seat BC was sold? 
Parent challenge:  What was the 351st ticket sold?  The 545th?
Take a look at our problem solving think sheets!

Today Blue Guru came to school and showed us what it takes to be an Indian dancer or musician.  We learned about instruments like a sitar, drums and bells.  We practiced rhythms and graceful hand movements and even used our feet to imitate the drum rhythms.

Parveen looked exquisite in her "blue beauty" sari and Josh's flowing costume allowed him to play and move around the stage comfortably. Parveen's costume glittered and sparkled as she moved her arms, and spun around the stage.  You could hear the bells at her ankles tinkling as she tapped and stamped her feet. 

Josh explained how each of his instruments works.  We tried "speaking" the rhythms he was playing.  We were fascinated by the way the sitar strings were designed to give a whole range of sounds.

We thought this was a really good show and you should see it if you can.  We are going to practice the dance moves and drumming rhythms which were truly inspiring!

EOTC Expo

Please drop by Room 7 tomorrow afternoon to share our learning from our recent Education Outside the Classroom week.  We would like to share the stories, sketches, paintings, photos and maths questions we have been working on!

Matariki Lanterns

We will be showing off our Matariki Lanterns and Fun Family Times stories at tomorrow's school assembly.

Today we went to a reserve,
The length we walked was absurd.
It was amazing fun,
I was glad we had a warm sun.
I went to skim some stones off down the river
but it would of been easier if the stones had been thinner!
At the top of the hill the view was breath-taking,
but the darn thing was that my legs were aching!

By Riley Macdonald

Today at Willowbank Park

The humungeous trees took my breath away!  The sun was shining into our faces the whole way.  I felt exhausted 'cause it was a really long and tiring walk.  The  On the way there and on the way back, we walked through bushes and I saw like a million trees.  They looked as tall as the Eiffel Tower.  We saw a whole bunch of red, spotty mushrooms that Abbey's Dad told us were toadstools.  The mud was so brown, squelchy and slippery underneath my shoes,  it made my feet slip.  We agreed that it was a very fun and tiring day.  Can't wait to walk Redwood Bush tomorrow!

Fantastic Home Learning

Nine students had home learning challenges signed off today!  Lauchlan told us about special names in his family history, Jacob write a story and presented it in Google Translate,  Lehlani, Riley and Abbey invented a dice maths game,  Brandon and Jakson entertained us with guitar solos and Ethan told us about his basketball mini-league.  Faith and her support crew "The Whole Class" were "Impossible".
.....Can't wait for the next bunch of presenters next week!

 

Ka Mate!

Today we worked on a new haka with Whaea Nirvana.
It's pretty serious- Te Rauparaha was trapped under ground and his enemies were searching for him!
We know the chant and practiced the movements.  We need to make our fiercest faces so people understand that we're serious about haka.

When do you like to write?

Today we had a conversation about when and where we like to write. 
We thought writing was good for

• if you want to be a writer when you grow up
• so you can get better
• you get to work your brain and improve your memory
•  tell other people what you did in the weekend
• helps keep your memories alive
• practicing your spelling and neater handwriting

People in Room 7 like to write

• on the computer
• in your room because it can give you peace and quiet to think
• in the office at home - there's a desk
• in my book
• on bikes or on buses

We like to write

• by myself so I can keep personal stuff for myself
• I like writing with my friend
• with a buddy cause we give each other ideas
• I like to write with my imagination
• with my Mum and Dad cause they can help me when I get stuck
• the statements on trophies
• with my auntiy because she gives me lots of sentences if I don't have any
• with my family- so I have ideas for my spelling sentences
• My cousin is really fun to write with 
• on the couch at home where its cosy...it gives me good ideas.

SO.... WHERE DO YOU LIKE TO WRITE?????

Shoo Bop....

We go together... like good music always does!

Our whole school got together this morning to practice the rhythms for our school show. 

Creating our Show

We've been talking about different ways of getting to school.  Some children walk, ride a bike, catch a bus, a train or take Mum or Dad's taxi.  Today we explored various dance moves with the Pushbike Song.  Lehlani says this is her Dad's favourite song!  Watch this space for developments...and come along to our Picnic on the Field at 6pm on Thursday 14 March.

Learning about getting nutrients into our muscles!

Yesterday we saw the Heart Central video and learned how nutrients from food are converted into the energy our bodies need to live, learn and grow.

Pancake Races at St Francis Xavier

We celebrated Shrove Tuesday with fun activities, pancake making and races.  We had to run a relay, flipping our big pancake- and keeping an eye on our competitors.  Lots of fun for Room 7!

Kiwi Tryathlon

look at these smart Room 7 sports stars who represented us yesterday!

Room 7 Expectations

Today we talked about creating a class in which we could all be happy, have fun and feel included.  We're pretty self smart and know what we need in order to learn.  We're going to make sure we're well organised, eat good food, get plenty of rest and lots of practice of basic skills.  In Room 7 ........

We are polite, kind and helpful.

We do our best every time.

We stop and listen when the teacher asks.

We keep hands to self.

We listen to the each other.

We move safely around the classroom and school.