Senior Highlights Weeks 8 - 10

Swim zones - Charlotte, Zac, Joe, Anthony and Tilly. We are extremely proud of our five Year 7/8 students that were selected to represent our school at the North Zone Swim Competition at Jellie Park. This event as you can imagine was very competitive. On the day the students' teamwork and support shined as they consistently demonstrated our school value of CARE congratulating each other on individual efforts, regardless of the result. 

Swim centrals 

A huge congratulations to Anthony and Tilly who were successful at Swim Zones and made it to the Canterbury Swimming Centrals Competition at the Selwyn Aquatic Centre on Thursday. Both students did an outstanding job, demonstrating their phenomenal swimming skills. Both students swam with incredible focus and determination, showing great sportsmanship throughout the event. Well done Anthony and Tilly, for your hard work and commitment!

"I really enjoyed Centrals because I love competitive swimming" - Anthony

"I enjoyed Centrals because swimming is my passion." - Tilly

Languages

Hola! Bonjour! Konnichi wa! The Senior Team has continued their language studies, and it’s been an exciting journey so far. Students have been exploring basic greetings and introductions, as well as learning about the cultures behind the languages. The French class, in particular, has also been focusing on numbers.  If you have strengths in any of the languages that we are offering then we would love to hear from you. 

‘Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom’ - Roger Bacon. 

Geometry/Inquiry

Our Geometry/Inquiry unit is well underway with students using their ‘math eyes’ to find different shapes (2D and 3D), angles and lines in some of Christchurch's main attractions/landmarks. Groups are about to begin building 3D models of their attraction/landmark. These models will be on display during our learning celebration in late Term 2. The students will be very proud to show you their work - we can’t wait!

Basketball

Our hub has been buzzing with excitement as the basketball season is beginning. There was such a huge interest that we have 4 teams of basketball players in our space. Our athletes have had a practice session with the Canterbury Rams. We are so excited to cheer them on as their games start and we hope they have a blast of a season.

Year 5-8 Hui

It was great to see another one of the Senior Students raising the bar. Jessica Brown from Tāwiri 2 was presented with a ‘Blues Award’ this week for her achievements in Marching. Jessica was part of a team that went to Invercargill recently for the Marching National Championships, where her team came 5th overall, which was an incredible feat. 

Congratulations to the students that were selected for the School Council. It will be great to have their student voice and we look forward to the mahi that they will be providing over a number of projects we have this year. 

Technology 

Today our students start up their newest rotation. Each rotation lasts for 6 weeks. We know this is definitely a highlight for our year 7 & 8’s. Have a look at these happy faces. 

In Reading we have been focusing on learning about natural disasters and their effects on our communities. This is linked into our Inquiry of People and Places that we are learning through our localised curriculum. We have learnt about Cyclones and focused on how Cyclone Alfred affected the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Then we learnt about a similar system Tornados! This one has been really interesting to unpack and the students have worked well at learning how to inference and break down the text! Did you know that New Zealand gets 7-10 Tornados a year!

In Maths, we’ve been covering a variety of topics with different teachers. In Miss Bell’s class, we’ve been learning about decimal place value, understanding how to read, write, and compare decimals. Mr. Gold’s class has been focused on simplifying and converting improper fractions, making fractions easier to work with. Meanwhile, in Miss Rogers’ class, we’ve been practicing a mix of addition, subtraction, and working with decimals. Each topic is helping us build strong number skills!

In Writing we have been focusing on building our knowledge of various figurative language features. Personification (check that out below), Similes, Metaphors and enhancing our descriptive writing skills to make our stories more interesting. Each new skill we learn we have been adding to an ongoing story that started with the prompt of “There was a Scary House”. Have a look at a snippet of Kaylee’s story. How awesome is it!

“As he drove into the old abandoned town he could immediately tell which house he was looking for. It had a black metal gate taller than the house with big rusty spikes on top. The house itself was covered head to toe with cobwebs and old cracked paint. The town smelt of dust and dead animals with not one person to be seen. As the detective walked up to the house he realised that the house was an old prison or some kind of place to hold people hostage. 

As he opened the door with a loud creaking sound he noticed small rooms with rusted padlocks and blood on the floors. There was a  shallow breeze coming through one of the broken windows and he felt a shiver down his spine as he walked into one of the rooms with a pile of skeletons in the corner. Some of them didn't even look a year old. He heard a clock ticking in the distance so he decided to follow the sound. As he got closer he heard a faint voice in the distance. He took out his weapon and slowed down as he came to a closed door. He yelled, is someone there? The deep voice stopped and the ticking clock was the only thing he could hear.”

Personification Art

Last week we looked at personification. Personification is where you give human qualities to an object. We each created a piece of artwork showing personification to help this idea stick in our heads! Be sure to check out all the artwork on our wall the next time you pop in.

From the Seniors Desk

Written by Grace

Kia ora everyone and welcome to From the Seniors Desk,

What we have been doing this week…

In Reading this week we have been learning about Tornadoes we had to do a rubric witch has three stages of development. Stage 1 is unistrctural Stage 2 is multistructural and Stage 3 is relational.

In Writing we have been doing a scary house story and every week we add a different key thing to make stories better. This week's key topic is similes and metaphors. Here is an examples that I did:

He left thanking me like a dog giving me puppy eyes.

In Mr Gold's math class we have been doing top heavy fractions and converting them into whole numbers and their simplest form the back to a top heavy fraction. In Miss Bell and Miss Rogers class they have been doing decimals Mr Gold’s Class will be doing decimals next week! 

In Inquiry we  have been doing projects of places around New Zealand and finding math in the image of the place. In Term 2 we will start creating them!

On Fridays we go to Tech and today we have new courses every 7 weeks. We change tech classes. I was in art. Now I'm in Design in the 7 weeks we are making clocks! 

Thanks for reading 'From the Seniors desk' See ya next time!