Ko te Raapa 9, o Mahuru

Today 40 senior school students spent a highly enjoyable day at Walter Nash Stadium participating in a basketball blitz competition with Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Ara Whanui. It was an awesome opportunity for the students involved to be active and to get to know students from another school. It was a big learning curve for many of the students with some never having played basketball before. The improvement in skills and the ability to work in a team was clearly visible as the day progressed. I look forward to further events where the senior school students can participate with such a positive attitude.

~ Mr Chadwick

Ko te Rahina 24, o Here-turi-koka

One day down, another one and a half to go. Today we had our first of our finishing days in which the students of the senior school worked on their costumes for the upcoming Wearable Arts show. It was great to see all the students being as creative and inventive as possible. There are many fantastic art works being created and I can't wait to see the finished products being displayed on the cat walk.

Ko te Raapa 12, o Here-turi-koka

Today the Year 7/8 Muritai waterpolo team had their last game of the season. It has been difficult, but enjoyable, playing against some very strong teams in the hardest grade. Despite this the students have continued to persevere and have been constantly improving individually and as a team. Thank you for all your help and support and I look forward to next season.
~ Raihania Chadwick

Ko te Ramere 7, o Here-turi-koka

Today we had a fantastic morning at the action indoor sports centre. The students were split into teams and then competed against the other teams in a range of different sporting activities. The drawn winners of the day were teams 1 and 9 however everyone should be pleased with the commitment that was shown by all. It was also great to see the positive support and good will of all the students who competed in this event. Some of the photos taken today can be found below.

Ko te Rapare, 30 o Hongongoi

On Tuesday as part of our inquiry unit about 'what contributes to making us into who we are today' the teachers each created a speech/presentation depicting a small part of their lives. Each class spent 10-15 minutes with the teachers and were able to ask questions relating to the content and discuss the different approaches to writing speeches. We were all amazed at how engaged the children were and how much there is to talk about when you are sharing what makes you 'you'.

Mr Eames shared an old intermediate photo and talked with the children about how small he was and yet what a positive experience he had during those years. Ms Berry shared a series of incidences in her life that effected her and explored the many roles and jobs she has experienced which lead her to teaching today. I shared family photos, a personal mihi and talked about the importance of family in my life. You can see the family photos below.

In all presentations there was reference to the importance of having a supportive family, being allowed to be who you are and explore the different aspects of your passions. This was a hugely positive experience for the staff and children and was an excellent was to model how to create a worthwhile and meaningful presentation that has the ability to make others feel good about themselves too.

We look forward to hearing the children's presentations which are due in week4.

Tuesday 21st of July

Today we explored some of the key inquiry questions:

• How do others influence who we are?
• How do we influence others?
• How are we perceived?
• Do we make a conscious choice about who we are?
• Is our image who we really are?
• Can we really be ourselves? Be the best we can be?
• How do we have different roles?
  
• Are we always true to ourselves? (Integrity)
• How do we stay true to ourselves in different situations?

We had a big discussion and then wrote down our thoughts on these questions. What are your thoughts?

Monday 20th July

Big Idea: Who am I and what do I want to be seen as?
Mana Tangata - The power of the person.

Key Concept:
• Making a difference by being ourselves (positive influence) and letting others be themselves.
• Making sure people view us in a positive light.
• Mana Tangata – is the power acquired by an individual according to his or her ability and effort to develop skills and to gain knowledge in particular areas (Self Pride)

Other Focus Areas
Literacy: Narrative and Speeches
Maths: Fractions, decimals and percentages
PE: Gymnastics and Jump Rope
Art: Masks and Wearable Arts
Te Reo: Mihi & Mana Tangata

As well as developing essential skills in handwriting, basic facts, accuracy for writing (spelling, grammar and punctuation).

Also there will be a range of other sporting and academic opportunities including: Otago Problem Solving, ICAS tests, netball, rugby, basketball and indoor sports events.

Friday 3rd July

Miss Postma's leaving video

Monday 20th June

Today the year 7 and 8's went to Wellesley School to view an opera produced by Class Act. The opera had the usual tragic love story where boy longs for girl and is rejected. Girl then meets other boy who doesn't work out being such a great match. Only for the girl to realise in the end that the original boy is the one for her...(I hope that made sense :) ) The opera was enjoyed by all especially when Mrs Mills-Smith was serranaded by one of the singers (as seen below).

Monday 8th June

Today room 21 went on its Take Action for Water explore day. We spent our day testing two very different streams and exploring what creates a healthy stream. Catchpool Stream in the Rimutaka Park was very healthy with lots of mayflies and stoneflies to be found. It also had lots of big rocks in the stream bed and trees to provide bank stability, shelter and food for the aquatic animals. Black Creek in the middle of Wainuiomata was very different with lots of human impacts to be seen.

Tuesday 2nd June

Today the class had to plan an explanation on a wacky machine from a book (Castles by Colin Thompson.) We got into groups and then came up with our own ideas for what the machine was for. Then we split up individually and wrote what we thought it was and how we thought it worked and so on.

Thursday 28th May

Today was for many students a very tiring day. Firstly we started with the school cross-country in which the year 7/8's ran around twice around the Williams Park track. Then a group of year 7 and 8's left to compete in another cross-country. This time we were competing against a number of other schools in the interzone cross-country competition at Trentham Memorial Park. It was amazing to see that although many of the students were already tired they were able to dig deep and compete to the best of their abilities. Congratulations to all the students who competed especially Lucy, Kenzy, Georgia and Natalie who placed 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 8th in their respective races.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Tuesday 5th May

Today we did a tsunami drill. We did this in case a tsunami hit the Wellington area. After we lined up on the courts and took the roll we all made our way up the Mackenzie track where we were 20 metres above sea level . We now know where we need to meet should a tsunami come.

Thursday 30th April

This Thursday was the start of the Arts Rotation in which the students of room 21 were learning about movies and movie making. The students are off to a great start with scripting and concept boarding their movie ideas. And in a couple of weeks they will be able to start filming and then editing their short movies.

Monday 27th April

On Saturday 25th April, ANZAC day, many people from the Eastbourne community turned up to support and remember those who had died. This year was especially important as a number of people from Eastbourne who paid the supreme sacrifice were finally honoured with an update to the memorial.



Some of the year 7/8 students from the schools Kapa Haka group were asked to show their support by performing a stirring opening haka and closing waiata. This is a fantastic achievement for the group and continues the trend of consistently successful performances. Keep it up guys.

Monday 6th April

Today some of the year 7/8 students competed in the Hutt Regional Swimming Sports Competition. It was a great day and some of the students had highly successful results.

The below video shows the year 7 and 8 girls racing towards their fantastic second placing.


The photo evidence:

Thursday 26th March

This morning Room 21 did Te Reo Maori, we learnt how to say how we felt in Maori.
In Room 23 maths we are figuring out how to multiply long equations and in Room 21 we were learning about using bus and train timetables with the 24 hour clock.
In literacy we are designing our own islands. We have to draw them up and describe it in the report we are currently writing.
After that we worked on the laptops, some of us finished our Alien Invasion report and the others had the opportunity to work on our wiki pages.
This afternoon we had Kapa-Haka and went out for a game.

By Josie and Angelique

Wednesday 25th March

Today some of the year 7 and 8 students were able to participate in the Southern Zone Swimming Sports. It was a great day with many of the students having successful results. Many of the students had a fantastic time as they were able to socialise with a range of students from other schools and were able to partake in a range of swimming strokes that they may not have previously been confident in.

Monday 16th March

Today is our first day without swimming so we are sadly back to a normal timetable. Many of us are currently editing and publishing our alien reports. Here are a couple of brief examples:

When Aliens Attack

Today on the 9th of September 2598, aliens arrived on planet Earth. Local residents say that they saw a large flying saucer heading straight for Paris.
The saucer landed and within seconds mutant wasps flew out and started feeding on the brains of the living. Despite efforts from local police and army, the people of Paris were forced into the many safe zones around the city...

Troublesome Terror for Town

On Monday 16th of March 2009 aliens landed in the small town of Roswell, a small town millions of miles away from civilization. It is still unknown why aliens only land in America.

The aliens first arrived by a U.F.O that came from Planet X from the Solana galaxy. Planet X is hidden millions of miles away from Earth it has only recently been discovered but astronomers describe it as a useless dusty rock, like Mars, except it’s green with an asteroid belt surrounding it. The planets diameter is 1,602, 083,201 kilometres wide and 1,602, 083, 200 kilometres wide. It is believed that more life forms live on this planet...

Monday 2nd March

Today room 21 edited our wikis. We put in them lots of stuff like our hobbies, stuff we liked, stuff we disliked and any other stuff you can think of. We also put in photos and videos (from youtube). Later on in the year we will use our wiki pages to share and publish our work.

Here are some great wikis so far:

Sam's wiki
Josie's wiki

Friday 27th February

Today some of the students played cricket against St. Bernards (Boys) or Naenae Intermediate (Girls). The girls played their second Milo Cricket game at Naenae Int. and while they didn't win they should all be proud of their efforts. Player of the match was Lucy Stotter scoring an impressive 8 runs with the bat.

The boys played their first Milo Cricket game at Te Whiti Park and had a very successful game winning by 49 runs with 4 wickets in hand. Player of the match was Sam Brandwood scoring a healthy 39 runs.

Congratulations to both teams for participating fully and on being the best that you can be.
~ Mr Chadwick

Tuesday 24th February

Today in room 21 we did artwork in the style of Henri Matisse's painting 'Green Stripe' which he did of his wife.

We first took photos of ourselves then we painted over them. We were not allowed to use the real colour of our hair and we had to use other colours to make the colour of our hair. Then we used pastel on the background.

Friday 20th February

On Friday we saw the Monet Exhibition at Te Papa. It was very interesting. Monet is a fantastic impressionist artist, which means that the painting is like an impression not realistic like a photo. Verity liked the painting he did off his wife.

At Te Papa we also went and saw the Blood, Earth, Fire exhibit and the glass Treaty where we had lots of discussions about the impacts both these exhibits had on New Zealand.

Monday 16th February

Today after our library time we met our buddy class! It was really good. They were all really cute. We went through thier spelling test with them. This morning we went swimming and we all had to swim 30 lengths of our choice. Then we had free time.

Thursday 12th February

Today in the morning we walked down to the Eastbourne swimming pool and got put into our ability groups. They are the most confident swimmers, the confident swimmers that just need to work on specific swimming styles and the not so confident swimmers that need to work on swimming styles such as freestyle, breathstroke and backstroke. At this time of the year we go to the swimming pool to train for the swimming sports.

Monday 9th February

Today in our ICT lesson we created our class wiki pages. Most of us created vokis and we all had to choose our passwords. It was funny to see what every one thought of. We also watched a short film about the Treaty of Waitangi and we took notes in our inquiry books. One of the main things we talked about were the whalers. The whalers were people who traveled to places where no one had been before, they came to New Zealand and they went fishing for whales so that they could use their blubber to burn things but they often took more than they needed.

We also went down to the pool and had to do some lengths to find out what swimming group we are in and then some of us played in the small pool and played a bad version of water polo. It was fun while we played water polo but it got a bit rough. It's going to be good when we finding out what group we are in.

Phoebe and Grace

Wednesday 4th February

It's the first day back!

Room 21 is up and going with the new students and the new year. We started today by going through the rules on the senior side of muritai school and playing a couple of cooperation games. Then we discussed the new school curriculum. We talked about the key competencies; thinking, managing self, relating to others, participating and contributing and using language, symbols and text. We then did an exercise and afterward discussed what the exercise might have to do with these competencies and how they ft in the classroom. After morning tea we had a syndicate meeting. Mr Eames, Mrs Berry and Mr Chadwick talked to us about the opportunities that will show up in the term and most of the year. Some of the opportunities that we brainstormed are as follows: