Setting off for Camp!

This morning the year seven and eight students at Glenbrae School assembled in the hall as we prepared to set off for camp. The room was abuzz of excitement, filled with baggage, students and family members who were both anxious and excited to see their tamariki set off for five days.

We said a karakia as a group before we boarded the bus and waved goodbye to our whanau and class mates. The year six students of room 8 said farewell before they made their way to different classes around the school, where they would spend their week learning and mentoring the younger students.

Our first stop on our long journey was to Ruapekapeka Pa, a defense that had been used in the land wars. We had read about the land wars as a class and we recognized that this was the site of the northern war in 1845, a war between Ngāpuhi, Hone Heke and the British. While the Pa was strong, the British greatly outnumbered the Maori and were eventually successful at taking over the land.

We then returned to the bus and headed to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. Here we were welcomed with a Powhiri and tour of the museum.

                                       
We also met our Adventure for Good Camp Guides here and played a few sports games with them to introduce ourselves.

We then all traveled to Russell on the ferry for fish and chips on the beach before we arrived at our base camp (Orongo Bay holiday park) and settled in for the night.

Back to School!

Today was the first day of term 2 and room 8 have started our strong! We started the day with an immersion assembly where we found out that our inquiry for the start of term will be on pets. We then headed to room 11 for some team building activities.

When we got there we played a shape identification game as a warm up and split up into two groups.
The groups then played the human knot game, where the students joined hands and had to untangle themselves and the hoop game, where they had to pass a hoop around the circle while joining hands.

We then played a game of hand soccer, where we had to use one hand to score a goal against an opposition. After playing 1 vs 1 we moved on to 2 vs 2 and finally games of 3 vs 3.

We then went to class and took part in an encouragement circle, where we all had to write encouraging words to one another. We then had to think of something about ourselves that we could write to encourage us.

A Day in Room 8

This week, we have been establishing our class norms in room 8 and looking at how our days should run. We thought we would create a video to show our usual class timetable, on days that we do not have Kiwi Sport or Kiwi Can.

For the first half of term 1, our class will have a daily swimming lesson in our school pool. This is something our whole school takes part in, as we think it is really important to develop water safety skills. We also have 15 minutes of fitness (physical education) in between reading and writing. After lunch we cover other curricula areas, such as inquiry, health, the arts and te reo Maori.

                     

We usually blog during our lessons, but we will be blog commenting as part of our reading lessons. This not only improves our reading, but also allows us to connect with students in other schools as we are part of a Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu group.

We hope you enjoy our short video - it's our first for the year and we look forward to making heaps more!

Our First Day

Today was our first day of school for 2017. Our small class of 15 students had a very active day and we were all shattered by the end of it!

After completing a scavenger hunt and  some reading and writing about the Treaty of Waitangi, Room 8 went to the hall and played some team-building games.  We started by playing a game where the students had to cross the hall without touching the floor, instead using pieces of cardboard to stand on.

The students then had to race across the hall without enough pieces of cardboard for each member of the group. This resulted in some very interesting strategies and a lot of cheating in the end!

We next played a game where we had to move a hoop around in a circle while holding hands. Again, this was a great laugh and people were very inventive about the way they passed the hoop along.


Overall it was a great first day and start to our year.