Kauri Big Splash 2018

What a gorgeious day for a fun swimming day! Kauri did an amazing job today and had a heap of fun. Teachers did an amazing job with the organisation and running of the day. Great day had by all.

Check out the final results.

Students will also post their own recount of the day so check out their blogs soon.

Hip Hop Dancing

We are having 2 sessions of Hip Hop from the YMCA team. Check out the awesome moves of Rm23 after only 1 session!

Destination Art

Check out our Destination Art! The students had to create a piece of art of a destination they would like to visit. It could be a real place or a completely imagined place.

Where would you like to visit?

What Rm23 is up to...

We are reading the book 'Tui Street Tales' by Anne Kayes which is a modern day NZ twist on the classic fairytales we all know and love.
Along with our reading activities based on the book - check out the Art and Writing/Tech activities we are doing too!

Athletics

Last week we had a fantastic day at Lovelock Track for the Year3-6 Owairaka athletics day. It was awesomely organised (thanks Mrs Mudgeway) and everyone did a fantastic job in all the events. Events included shot put, discus, high jump, long jump and 100, 200, 400 and 800m track runs.

Everyone put in a great deal of effort and determination and did themselves, and Owairaka, proud.

Special mention to Joyce, Taimalie, Solomon, Leo, Harry, Savannah, VJ and Kingston who took out placings in, sometimes several, events.

Another special mention to Solomon, Savannah, Harry and VJ who competed in the class relay representing Rm23 - and coming first! Awesome stuff.

Good luck to students who will be representing Owairaka School at the Eden/Albert Athletics. Go team!

Duffy Awesome Grandparent

Big congratulations to Wayne, Lucas' grandad, who recieved the Grandparent Duffy prize for 2018. Showing great support and and commitment to Lucas' education at Owairaka School - your efforts are appreciated! Lucas is very lucky to have such great grandparents!

Camp 2018!

Last week Kauri Team went on camp to Chosen Valley - despite some dubious weather we all had an absolutely awesome time. Check out the student blogs for their camp reflections (soon to come).

Blog Blasting

Here is the class brainstorm Room 23 did looking at what makes a positive, quality blog comment.

We are flocusing this term on connecting with the other Kauri classes blogs.

Rm23: How are you finding this so far?

Philopsophical Question of the Week

Here's our philosopical question of the week to get you thinking about what you are thinking...

At what age is a person an adult? Why do you think so?

Comment below with your answer and make sure you tell us why you think that.

Big Rubbish Clean Up

On the last week of Term 3 Rm23 took part in the Big Community Clean Up where we joined Room's 19 and 25 in cleaning up around our school and all the way up to the top of Mt Albert.

It was great to be able to do something for our community and the students did an amazing job getting in the bushes and behind all the debris to collect a large amount of rubbish!

Hopefully when we do it next year we won't find as much rubbish!! Challenge Owairaka community!

Dawn Raid

This term we have been reading the book 'Dawn Raid' by Pauline (Vaeluaga) Smith.
We were lucky enough to have a character from the book 'Tigi' come in and talk about his experience as a Polynesian Panther and how they fought the injustice of the Dawn Raids in the 1970's.

Rm23: Tell us what was most memorable about Tigi's talk. Comment on what it made you think/feel.

Here are some of the questions we wanted to ask Tigi.

Room 23 video about change entry - Ako Hiko

Credit to Leo, Solomon, Harry, Joel, Rico and Charlie. Awesome work boys!

Mexican Group

Here is the slideshow with the Mexican dances the Mexican group will be doing for Cultural Festival.

Congratulations to the speech winners

Firstly congratulations to Solomon and Rawiri who represented Rm23 in the Kauri Speech finals. They did an amazing job representing us. Kapai!
Solomon's speech was on 'Nuclear Weapons' and Rawiri's was 'Rebellion not the Empire'.

Big congratulations to all the Kauri Team finalists that did an amazing job representing our cohort.

Big thanks to the amazing judges Mrs Fletcher and Mrs Cramer who had a very hard job picking the winner.

Finally a massive congratulations to 3rd place equal winners: Alodia and Zoe

2nd place equal winners: Luka and Licha

and 1st place winner: Bruno.

Author Visit

Today we had a visit from the talented author Anne Kayes who wrote 'Tui Street Tales'. 

She read us an snippet from her book which had us all hooked in and wanting more.

Rm23 - Please comment on what you thought about the sound of the book or a question you would like to ask her.

Check out more information about Anne and her book here: https://www.annekayes.com/

Book Review

Congratualations to our awesome Rm23 certificate winners!

Tongan Language Week 2018

Learn some fun and useful words and phrases in Tongan for Tongan Language Week!

Bee Performance

We were very lucky yesterday to have 2 very talented actresses come to do a performance about Bee's and how we can help them survive.

Rm23: Write a comment about what you learnt from the show.

Friendship P4C

For Philosophy for Children we discussed friendships.

We talked about whether it is okay to have a best friend? Is it okay to ever break a friendship? What makes a good friend? 

We also set the scenario: 'If there was a friendship bracelet you could give your best friend that meant you were best friends forever, no matter what, you could never take off the bracelet or break the friendship' - Would it be a good idea? Would you give one to somebody? Would you accept one from somebody?

Rm23: In the comment section - write a comment about your thoughts during this session (it's like our final thoughts round).

Cook Island Language Week

Kia Orana. This week we have been celebrating Cook Island Language Week. We were lucky enough to have Hamida come in and teach us some basic phrases and some awesome dance moves. Thanks so much Hamida we really loved it!

Check out the video below:

Here is a slideshow with some quick videos to help practise Cook Island Maori phrases. Enjoy!

Owairaka School Drama performance

Yesterday we were thoroughly entertained by the amazing performance of the Owairaka Performance Group. They all acted confidently and convincingly in The Silly Goat Gruff performance. 

We wish them luck for their travelling performances. 

Awesome work Mr Greenfield on organising and directing such a talented team.

Big shout out to Rm23's Charli who did an amazing performance as the baby goat. Awesome!

Tae Kwon Do

We are very fortunate this term to take part in Tae Kwon Do with our awesome instructor Pete. We loved our first session and are looking forward to learning some more awesome skills.
This session we learnt to stand, walk, punch and kick in Tae Kwon Do.
We are really looking forward to learning some self-defence skills!

Our last Garden to Table session

On the last Wednesday of the term we had our last Garden to Table session - Pizza making!

A big thank you to Sarah and Trudy who do such an amazing job organising the kitchen and garden activites and a massive thanks to the volunteers that help as well - the students absolutely love the experience and have learnt so many valuable life skills. Thank you!!

Arataki Fun

For our Kauri Team trip this term we visited Arataki to learn about invertebrates and how they are great recyclers. Massive thanks to the education guides at Arataki and the awesome parents who helped us and made the tip possible.
Here are the photos:

Game of Moostery

On Thursday 5th July we set up a Google Hangout chat with our Game of Moostery Buddy Class. We took turns at asking yes or not questions where we tried to guess each others: Island. Region. City or Town and School.

It was really great narrowing down places on Google Maps to try and locate them and asking them questions such as “Are you North of Dunedin?” and “Are you within 100km of Hokitika?”

Our buddy class did amazing and managed to guess our school first. We came in a few questions after with their school “Paroa Grey School”.

Check out the photos!

Here are the links to our Buddy Class students blogs. Click on the names to check out their blog. They have just started learning to blog so check out their awesome start!

Talented ex-Owairaka student in photo competition

Check out this awesome photo taken by Vinnie - an ex-Owairaka student. To vote for him click on the link. (page 5)You have to click on the star number you want to give him (e.g. if you want to give him 5 stars then click on the 5th star).

He entered a couple of photos in the 2018 Auckland Photography Festival's - Auckland Photo Day Contest a couple of weeks ago and one of them was selected amongst 149 picks from 1000 entries to be put on line for the "People's Choice Award" online vote.

This is his photo (taken on a freezing weekend morning in the hood just before trudging up Mt Eden to get dawn photos):

Awesome stuff Vinnie! Keep up the amazing work.

Arataki Trip

The first Arataki trip scheduled for Tuesday 26th June has been postponed due to expected bad weather. We will go next Tuesday instead (3rd July).

For the Arataki Trip:

• Closed toe and comfortable shoes that you don’t mind getting dirty.
• Warm clothing
• Raincoat if it looks like it might rain
• Healthy morning tea and lunch
• Water bottle
• Pen
• We must take all of our rubbish with us when we leave.

We will be leaving school promptly at 9.10am and returning by 2.30pm. Please be at school on time. Any questions please ask your classroom teacher.

Matariki Buddy Class

We were lucky enough to have Matariki celebration kai with our buddy class. So much food to share and some great qulity time with our buddies. We also got to see Whaea Puhi's amazing cloak and we made one of our own using paper feather templates and water colour pencils. Happy Matariki everyone!

Big Foot bikes

We were very lucky to have Big Foot Bikes come and give us a couple of sessions on bike safety. We learnt so much and had so much fun riding around safely on our bikes. Thanks Big Foot!


 

World record breakers

We have been taking part in School Kits 'World Record Breakers' unit where we create our own world record attempt and try to beat each others. It has been lots of fun with lots of creative ideas being thrown around. Check out our results and watch out for the next ones to be posted!

Goodbye Tatham!

Our awesome Tatham is leaving us to head back to Australia. He has been an amazing member of Rm23 and we are very sad to see him go. We wish you all the best Tatham. Don't be a stranger - blog us and let us know what you're up to 👍

Bee day for Green Week

Today was our Bee day in celebration of Green Week. The students have been learning about bees and how valuable they are to our enviroment. 

We had an assembly that celebrated all the awesome things our students are doing to help our environment including walking, biking and scootering to school. We even had the travelwise mascots join us for our walk/bike/scooter to school!

It has also been Samoan language week so alongside all the Green Week fun we have been learning some basic Samoan vocabulary - including greetings and colours. We will be posting a video of us practising our new learning next week.

Congratulations to Zoe who won our Kaitiakitanga certificate for her awesome work in our gardens and looking after the broad bean shoots.

Well done Ronan's dad, Ron, for winning the prize for adult travelwise walk to school participant.

And finally well done Jarad who has done 300 'walk to school with the school bus' trips. Awesome!

We also had some talented actors come in and do a show for us called 'The Turtle and Plastic Bag' which showed us the importance of using less plastic so we can help save the turtles and our environment.

Samoan Language week

Yay, it's Samoan language week! Big thanks to Kristie and Nicole for the Samoan Language Learning Slideshow.

Check it out and learn some key phrases in Samoan.

World Record Makers!

This term, with the help of School Kit, we are attempting to come up with, and set, new world records! We will be posting about our progress and success soon...

This term we are learning about invertebrates

Community Garden Visit

Here are some snapshots of our awesome day at the Owairaka Community Garden building huts and bug hotels and making mud pies. So much fun and some great exploratory learning taking place. A massive thank you to Heather for organising and running today. We are definitely looking forward to the next one.

Check out the students blogs for their recount of their experience from today.

Congratulations certificate winners!

Here are four of our awesome certificate winners so far this term. Congratulations Savannah, Leo, Charli and Charlie!

Animals in Te Reo and New Zealand SIgn Language

We have been learning how to say several different animals in Te Reo as well as New Zealand Sign Language.

Check us out giving it a go!

New Zealand Sign Language Week

Last week was New Zealand Sign Language Week. Room 23 really embraced the challenge of learning some sign language including the NZSL alphabet and greeting others by saying "Hi, my name is _____. Nice to meet you."
We have loved learning it so much and think it is such a valuable skill to know that we have decided to continue with our sign language learning for the rest of the term (and beyond). Keep an eye out for our posts about our learning but for now why don't you give it a go...

Garden to Table

We are lucky enough to be taking part in Garden to Table this term. It is a great way to learn about growing our own food and cooking healthy nutricious meals. The students absolutley love it and are learning invaluable life skills. 

A BIG thank you to our awesome G2T organisers Sarah and Sarah G and all our fabulous volunteers that make the experience possible (we are always looking for volunteers if you can spare a few hours!)

Here is our NZ writing buddy school work...

Massive thanks to our buddy school Rm7 Kapanui School, Wellington, for their awesome similes and metaphors. We really enjoyed reading them and checking out your fun info on the Found Sheet.

Check out the video we made of us reading your similes/metaphors.

Community Garden visit

We were very lucky to visit the Owairaka Park Community Gardens on Friday to help weed, clean and build to our hearts content. Big thank you to Oisin's mum Heather who organised and ran it all. We absolutely loved it. 

Looking forward to the next visit!!

Credit to Jenny Morris for the song used on the video Aotearoa.

Get Writing NZ

This term we have been lucky enough to take part in the Get Writing NZ initiative where we buddy up with another school in NZ and share our awesome writing.

We worked over the last couple of weeks filling in the Found Sheet with lots of cool information about us and about Owairaka School and the students wrote a simile/metaphor poem about them selves (check out their blogs to see the full poem). They picked their favourite line and wrote it on the back of a postcard which makes up a jigsaw picture. Today we sent our work off and are now eagerly awaiting our buddy schools parcel in response.

The school that is our buddy class is Kapanui School in Wellington (check out the link to their school site)

Congratulations to our Caught being good certificate winners

Congratualtions Luke and Joyce. Great work!

Duffy Assembly with guest speaker Daniel Faitaua.

We were very lucky to have Daniel Faitaua in speaking to us for our Duffy assembly. He gave a very inspirational speech about the importance of reading and told us how many opportunities it opened up for him.

Here is his bio:
Daniel is a graduate from the NZ Broadcasting School and the University of Canterbury. He’s a familiar face on TV as the newsreader for TVNZ Breakfast and 1News Midday. Before that he developed extensive experience as a broadcast reporter for ONE News and Close Up.

Questions we hoped to have answered:

1. What was your most exciting news report? This is the question we submitted to him.
2. What is your favourite sport?
3. What's the best thing you have cooked?
4. What's the worst thing about your job?
5. What do you like about your job?
6. Who is your role model?
7. What do you like about your life?
8. In the breaks do you go get a coffee? If not, what do you do?
9. Where is the studio?
10. Do you have a mansion? 
11. Do you play Fortnite? Or any video games?

Race Relations Day 2018

Crazy hair day

Our very awesome Mrs Mudgway, supported by Mr Lyons, Mr Greenfield and Mr Faulder, shaved off her hair fundraising for Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand by doing 'Shave for a Cure'.

Such an selfless act which took a lot of bravery and committment. Kapai Mrs Mudgway and the male teachers who took part.

Owairaka School helped support them by having a Crazy Hair Day and bringing in a gold coin donation.

If you would like to donate to this awesome cause please visit this link.

Certificate winners

A big congratulations to our awesome superstars of Room 23, Joel and VJ, who won the 'Caught being good - Duffy certificates' the other week.

Keep up the great work!

                        

Holiday blog blasters

Big congratulations for VJ who won a certificate, and a fidget spinner!, for her awesome blogging over the summer holidays!

 

Chapter Chat trailer

Check out this awesome trailer done for the Chapter Chat book we are reading - 'There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom' by Louis Sachar.

Awesome work!

An extra Green Day clean up activity

 Cleaning up the field - definitely not as much rubbish as last year!