T30 and T11 had a great time doing some activities outside together.
The T30 children had planned some fun games for their little buddies to do. The big buddies did a great job of helping, supporting and encouraging their little buddies.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Friday Fun with Buddies
T30 and T11 had a great time doing some activities outside together.
The T30 children had planned some fun games for their little buddies to do. The big buddies did a great job of helping, supporting and encouraging their little buddies.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Alice in Wonderland
Alice In Wonderland
The moment I saw such a little slim girl walk through the doors, I froze and knew this was the Alice I was looking for.
Her long, luscious golden hair swayed in the light breeze and also it was as thin as silk and as gold as a trophy. Her eyes glimmered in the reflection of the sunlight and her dress was sea blue.
ALice is the most understanding person you would have ever met, she never makes bad choices and she is everyone’s friend.
This is what we went to watch on Wednesday and Lucy was starring as Alice. The Year and ⅚ were lucky enough to go to this amazing concert of Alice in Wonderland as a dance. We watched it at the Isaac Theatre Royal. It was an amazing trip. The theatre was so big and the walls were decorated with statues on them.
By Mya Wolfenden
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Flexible learning spaces
Yay!! A gorgeous fine morning, perfect for opening the doors and working outside!! We are so lucky to have such amazing learning environments.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
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
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
.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
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
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
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.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Otawhito Speech Finals
Congratulations to the winners of our persuasive speech finals.
1st Kendall Jones
2nd Rosa McNeil
3rd Asha Molloy
The standard of the speeches was extremely high this year and all of our finalists should be very proud of how well they did. Special thanks to Mrs Zelas for being our guest judge. It was also lovely to have so many parents in the audience.
Full list of finalists:
1st Kendall Jones
2nd Rosa McNeil
3rd Asha Molloy
The standard of the speeches was extremely high this year and all of our finalists should be very proud of how well they did. Special thanks to Mrs Zelas for being our guest judge. It was also lovely to have so many parents in the audience.
Full list of finalists:
Kate Hill T30
Asha Molloy T30
Ameya Raut T31
Ashley Perdersen T31
Gabriella Dorgan T32
Claudia Edy T32
Kendall Jones T33
Mya Wolfenden T33
Georgia Harris T34
Kyle Flint T34
Rosa McNeil T35
Emma Malins T35
Monday, August 10, 2015
Rolleston Sport has finished!
Dear Parents,
Y5/6 Rolleston sport has now finished for the year. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank the parents who helped with our teams this season. With 17 teams and only 6 teachers, it is the parent helpers that make it possible for all children to participate.
Uniforms: these can now be returned. Uniforms must be washed and brought to school in a NAMED plastic bag. There are bins in the Otawhito learning centre for the return of uniforms. It is very important that uniforms are in a named bag so that we can keep track of who has/hasn't returned their uniform.
Thank you.
Otawhito Teachers
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Zone netball and rugby
Congratulations to our Zone netball and rugby teams who represented Halswell last week. Netball A came 2nd and Netball B came 1st. Rugby A came 5th and Rugby B came 7th. You can all be very proud of your efforts! The A netball team will now go on to represent us at the Canterbury tournament.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Learning about Maori Technology at the Canterbury Museum
The moment we got off the bus there was a lot of excitement in the air. Everyone was buzzing with happiness, we trekked through the museum doors where our guide awaited us. The guide taught us about how Moa became extinct, how they were hunted and what their main predator was. We also learnt about the HUGE Haast eagle. It had a wingspan of 2-3 meters!! That’s mad!, I’m glad it’s not around now days.
After we learnt about the Moa, we looked at display cases, and were shown ancient Maori tools and supplies such as:
-A snare (we used that in the activities later)
-Fishing hooks
-Backpacks made of flax
-spears
Everyone was intrigued by these but when we were led into this small room at the back everyone’s eyes dashed around the room. We were told that we were going to use the Maori tools that were in front of us (they were replicas that the museum had made, not real ancient tools).
There were about five drills, a largish rock with small sharp stones beside it, a greenstone axe, and some paper with a few crayons beside it.
We were told what they were used for and then given instructions on what to do. This is what the tools were used for:
-the drill was used for making holes in the wood.
-the small sharp stones were rubbed on the big stone with water to make them nice and smooth
-the greenstone axe was used for hitting wood to carve the wood out to make the inside of the waka, except today we were only using it with a small log, just for the fun.
-the paper and crayons were used for ancient maori designs, we didn’t have to sign with our names because when the Maori drew it, everyone else could identify who it was by because of the way they drew.
Overall it was truly enjoyable. We had heaps of fun while using the Maori tools and learning about the moa. We all thanked the wonderful museum staff for making it an incredible day, for not just our classes, but for the whole of Otawhito.
By Georgia Harris and Kate Hill
T34 and T30
Monday, July 27, 2015
Football Zones
We arrived at the park and Mrs Williams had to get a tarpaulin so we didn’t get our bags wet and didn’t have to get wet butts when we put our boots on! When we first touched the icy ground, our boots wouldn't sink in the ground. It was hard to kick a ball when it was so slippery.
The ref blew his whistle and we kicked off. When the first game started I was too scared to slide tackle because we thought our pants would get holes in them from the sharp ice on the ground.
After half time I passed the ball to Sam and he took a shot and the keeper saved it but it went for a corner so we got 1 point. At the end of the game we won 1-0. We ran into a circle and celebrated, then we went to our next game against Akaroa. We won 5-0. I went to hand the score card to the official and we got our last 3 cards. In our last 3 games we played Prebbleton, Broadfield and Burnham. We beat Prebbleton 3 -0. We beat Broadfield 4-0 and we beat Burnham 5-0.
In the end, Halswell school A team came 2nd out 12 teams. The B team came 2nd as well but only the 1 team could get into Canterburies. We all were disappointed but we were still happy with 2nd place. On the bus ride back to school we were talking all about the football.
In the end, we all had lots of fun, no injuries and we got lots of chocolate and lollies!
By Cameron Bunz, Sam Clince, Matthew Sheridan and Ethan McIntosh.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Term 3's newsletter
Otawhito Year 5/6 Learning Team 
Term 3 2015
Dear Parents/Caregivers;
Welcome to term 3. We hope you enjoyed your couple of weeks with your children over the holidays. They have come back recharged and raring to go. The first 2 weeks of school saw all of our classes enjoy a successful visit to the museum.Thank you to all the parents who gave up their time to help us on this trip. The children showed how they were ACTIVE by having impeccable manners and soaking up all the information that they were taught. This unit on Maori technology will continue over the next few weeks.
Term 3 topics
Maths: Multiplication and division, Geometry - 3D transformation, Algebra – rules and patterns.
Arts: Visual Arts (calendar art), dance and drama for this year’s production.
Writing: Persuasive (preparation for speeches), reports.
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: Rolleston winter sport, Invasion and target games, gymnastics, athletics.
Athletics training will start towards the end of the term as school Athletics will be held early term 4
Social studies: Pre -European Maori (museum visit), Rugby World cup.
Rippa Rugby inter-class competition - later this term.
Dates for your diary:
Rolleston Sport continues until Week 3 5 August (No sport Wed 29th except for Rugby and Netball trials)
Whole School Production Week 9 14-17 September
Rippa Rugby Tournament Monday 27th July
Netball/ Rugby Zones Week 3 - Thursday 6th August
Speech finals Week 4 (TBC)
Star jam Week 4 14 August
Rolleston Sport
Rolleston sport will be finishing soon (end of week 3) and children will need to bring their uniforms back to school washed and folded. Children will need to listen out for the notices oas to when these need to be brought back to school. A big thank you to all the parents who helped referee and coach. Special thanks to the Netball parents who went every week without a teacher!
Halswell Rocks!!
This year we are having a whole school production based on Halswell School’s identity. As we are Otawhito, (Halswell Quarry), we are going to be presenting items based on the history of the Quarry and the Sister Cities. Each child will be given the option to choose which item they would like to take part in. Later in the term, we will be asking for help with costumes etc. The production will be taking place in the week of September 14.
ACTIVE
This term we are focussing on Communicators, to work hand and hand with the children participating in speeches this term. 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 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
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