Term 4 Newsletter

Otawhito Year 5/6 Learning Team

Term 4 2015

Dear Parents/Caregivers;

Welcome to term 4! As is always the case with the final term,  it is shaping up to be very busy and likely to fly by.

We have hit the ground running this term with our RWC Touch tournament in Week 1, and Athletics and tennis in Week 2.  Thanks to all of the parents who came out to support the children at the Touch tournament and Athletics day.  It was great to see the children being such Versatile Players.  A big thanks to Miss K and Mr Jack, who were the chief organisers of both of these events.

This week, we’ve also had Neil Shaskey (artist) come in to take a lesson on how to do cartooning.  The children thoroughly enjoyed working with him and many of them have shown impressive artistic talent.

Term 4 topics

Maths: Proportions and Ratios, Decimals and Fractions, Geometry (3D shapes), Algebra (patterns and rules)

Arts: Cartooning workshop

Writing: Poetry, procedures

Spelling - the children have new lists of words in their notebooks. Please check that these are at home for the children to practise during the week.

PE/sport: Athletics, Swimming (for those who have opted into this programme), Invasion games

Health: Sexuality Education, Food for Thought

Social Sciences: Christmas and cultural traditions

Dates for your diary:

Swimming: Weeks 5 and 6 9th-20th Nov

Zone Athletics: Friday 6th November at Ellesmere College

End of year fun swim: Thursday 17th December 12-2.30pm

Tough Kids: Tuesday 8th December

End of Year Prizegiving: Friday 18th December

Sexuality Education

As per previous communication, this programme starts in Week 4 (2nd November).  The children will work with their T Group teacher.  Please let Mr Burn know, in writing, if you do not wish your child to participate in this programme.

Camp fundraising

This term the Year 5 children will be involved in fundraising for their 2016 camp.  We will be running a general knowledge quiz (similar to this year’s Spell-a-thon).  The children will need to collect sponsors for this.  More information will be sent home about this very soon.

PoP - Projects of Passion

Thanks to the parents who have contacted us about helping with PoP.  Your T group teacher will be in touch to make arrangements.  If there are any other parents out there that are keen to get involved, we’d love to hear from you!

ACTIVE

This term we are focussing on Versatile Players and Achievers.  The children will be developing and working towards goals related to these ACTIVE characteristics.  A lot of the goal setting will relate to working effectively in an MLE and developing self management and social skills.  You may like to discuss with your child what their goals are and how they are progressing towards them.

Please feel free to speak to any of the teachers if you wish to know more about the upcoming term.  Also, keep an eye on our Otawhito blog http://hs-sb-otawhito.blogspot.co.nz/ to see what we have been up to.

Kind regards

Anita Head, Sam Jack, Rachel Dixon, Carolyn Adams, Deb Kingsland and Chris Williams

Otawhito (Y5/6) Teachers

T30 Anita Head (Team Leader) Studio B Kowhai anita.head@halswell.school.nz

T31 Sam Jack - Studio A Koreke   sam.jack@halswell.school.nz

T32 Carolyn Adams/Melissa Barber - Studio A Kowhai carolyn.adams@halswell.school.nz

T33 Chris Williams - Studio A  Koreke        chris.williams@halswell.school.nz

T34 Rachel Dixon - Studio B  Kowhai                rachel.dixon@halswell.school.nz

T35 Deb Kingsland - Studio B  Koreke debbie.kingsland@halswell.school.nz

High Jump 2015

The first jump was easy but slowly it got harder and harder! By the fourth jump most of the other kids said it was near impossible. But not for Jalen and Leo, we never stopped trying. As soon as the bar hit 1.26 m we could not jump any higher so it came down to a tie.

Jalen 1.24m and also Leo 1.24m. (10yr Boys).

By Jalen and Leo

.

Art workshop with Neil Shaskey

Cartooning with an Artist!

On Tuesday 20th October Neil Shaskey came in to teach us how to draw cartoon characters.First Neil  showed us some famous cartoon characters.Then we copied what he drew. First we did the eyes, then the nose, then mouth and eye brows.  After that, Neil showed as how to do more complicated faces. We then had to draw a cartoon spoon - that was really fun to draw. To end with we drew a tough man. That was a bit difficult.

The whole session was pretty fun and we wished he could stay longer.

By Alex Stewart & Amy Bycroft

Otawhito/Kowhai

Neil Shaskey teaches Otawhito cartoon animation.

Drawing cartoon faces

Thanks to Neil for coming to teach us to draw

cartoon faces : )

So it started when everyone was down on the mat 20 minutes before school starts then we hear the music go. Yay, time to learn about drawing cartoon faces. We started by looking at some cartoons and cartoon faces. We then started on the outline of our faces on a piece of paper and drew eyes. We did so many different faces- happy, sad really sad, normal angry and old men.

Next we did some lips. When we were done you could easily see what they were feeling. It looked better and better when we put hair, ears and noses on. Wow when we were done I could not believe I just drew that.

Then Neil got me up to do a running pose and also like I just won the lotto... $5 million dollars. He told us that we can use things from around the house to get a outline. We were using a spoon. I thought wow this is going to look so bad, but it looked really good. I was so surprised then we drew a huge, strong guy.

Once we had done that we put our faces and drawing up so he could see it. Last we did a professor. I didn't like it as much but I still tried my best I thought it was good but I think if I had a bit longer I could have made it amazing.

Overall our art class was amazing and thanks to the teachers for organising such a great morning.

By Sam Kelly T31.