2016…..What a wonderful year, full of new things, hard work, and most importantly fun!!!

2016

By Hayley Kirkwood and Briana Grace

2016…..What a wonderful year, full of new things, hard work, and most importantly fun!!!

Here we have compiled some of the highlights, lowlights, and all the stuff in between.

This is 2016...as told by Room 20.

So term one… a great way to start the year was the stir fry challenge. In the stir fry challenge two teams from each class were selected to cook in a cook off. The teams were judged on how well they used the class gardens, their presentation and the taste of the dish. Both the teams that were selected from Room 20 got first and second.

Writer’s Week was hectic, with Miss Ryan terrifying us all when she showed up to class dressed as a teacher from the early 1900s! She threatened us with ‘the cane’, and scared us all half to death! (joking… love you Miss Ryan.)

The South Canterbury museum visit was where we learnt about the early settlers and “The Changing Face Of South Canterbury”. At the museum we were showed a demonstration about shipwrecks and shingle build-up at the Timaru port.

Another trip we took was to the Te Ana Rock Art Center, and caves. There, we learnt about what the Maori used to make rock art, and how settlers, both Maori and European, changed New Zealand’s landscape.

The next term was full of highlights, too many to list. There was the Maggi cooking challenge, where teams of 3-4 created their own meal using Maggi bases and their own cooking skills from term one. The teams had half an hour to prepare, cook, and present their meals to the judges (talk about pressure).

Now… Cross Country. That’s a lowlight. We trained for Cross Country by running 1-4 laps around the blocks (You could choose how many you wanted to do). We ran the actual Cross Country track in the scenic, where we could choose 1 or 2 laps (1 lap being 3ks and 2 laps 6ks).

But enough about that, onto another big highlight of the term; the overnight camp at the Otago Museum. When we say camp, you would most likely think of tents, lakes, and sand-flies biting your arms and legs as you slept; except we stayed on tiny mattresses on the floor of the museum. We also did writing exercises, played games, and snuck around the building after dark.

Term two was where we also had our Healthy Eating topic; as a part of that, we had to track what we ate for a week, and draw it into a Food Pyramid, to see how well we were eating.

That term we also had Art Extension with Mrs Wilsher, and the Basketball season.

Three quarters of the way through the year, and we get one the busiest terms. Great. Starting off with Maths Week, which wasn’t very busy, so to speak, but we’re just getting started. We had the Flava Festival, where our Manawanui (Kapa Haka group) got first in the Performing Arts category, and did amazingly, like they always do.

The Tekapo trip was different this year, as we got to go to the hot pools aswell and the skating and snow tubing; featuring a lot of screaming and a lot of falling over. Next up: the speech competition (*dramatic music*). As always we were given five subjects to write a three minute speech about. The two finalists from each classroom then went into the pod final against the other classes. Briana got through both rounds and made it to the South Canterbury Speech Competition, with her speech on ‘Are we losing the art of communication due to texting?’

This term we also went kayaking, abseiling and bushwalking. We were split into groups, and did our chosen activities. Briana went abseiling, and I went on the bushwalk in Peel Forest. We were instructed by helpers from Aoraki Polytechnic, and had lots of fun.

To close off the term, we had a special concert for our families. We were taught songs and how to play instruments by Sheryl Higgs and Alistair Bradley, two amazing musicians (and teachers). Each class had a song and band name. Room 20 were ‘The Band Aids’, and we performed Amy Winehouse’s Valerie.

Now here we are at the end of the year. We started on an individual teach a skill. How a “Teach a skill ” works is a student picks a skill and teaches it to the class and gets a score on how well they did. Hayley did “How to speak the basics of Italian” and I did, “How to make pinata cupcakes”.

Neve Kerslake says, “I made marshmallow playdough. I enjoyed it.”

The AIA healthy kids challenge was let's just say…… Interesting. We were sent thirty pedometers and wore them everyday recording our steps in our book and on the internet. The first few weeks were fun. Our class won a Huawei tablet as a spot prize!

This Year has been amazing and I think everyone in Room 20 agrees and we would like to thank the best teacher (Mrs Grace….. Just kidding. Miss Ryan) for being an awesome teacher and getting all the kids ready for the year to come.