Newsletter Week 8 Term 3

It seems like some time since we have sent out a newsletter. We have quite a few people to welcome. I am really pleased to welcome Benji, Alexie, Olivia and Tegan to Papatuanuku and Braxton to Tawhirimatea. We are really please to have you on-site with us again.

You might have noticed that School Photos were scheduled for the Lockdown period. We have now rescheduled these for Week 10 (Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th September. We are very pleased to have Edith Leigh back onsite to take photos once again. There will be a more specific notice coming out regarding the organisation including sibling photos.

Another significant change since we were all together last is that we have farewelled Tracy from our School Office. Tracy is going to be busy with other challenges, and we thank her very much for her service to the school. Tracy has assured us that she will not be a stranger and pop in when she can. There will be a new face in the office starting next term and we will confirm the details very soon!

There will be a bit of a gap in the school next week as Miss Tenci and myself take our Year 6 students to Camp Columba for the week. We are so pleased to be able to run the camp under Level 2 and not have to face a cancellation. We will do our best to share a few highlights with you during the week but will of course be back on Friday to share a very exciting week of adventure with you all.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to everyone for their input and patience with the recent distance learning. We try extremely hard to find a balance in terms of communicating important information, and not overwhelming already very busy families. We also try to strike a balance with keeping kids connected, engaged, and allowing the breathing room to do what works for your family. As we did last year, we are incredibly appreciative of our supporting and understanding community. I would also especially like to thank our Teachers and Teacher Aides. It is extremely challenging to deliver distance learning as well as managing their own families too. I know that many teachers were in front of their computers from the early hours of the morning, until the late hours of the night seven days a week. To manage all of this, and keep the needs of our kids at the front of our thinking is terrific, thank you Teachers.

To finish on another positive, how about the new digital newsletter!

Nga mihi,

Gareth Swete

Follow this link to find out all the information you need about upcoming photos with Edith Leigh Photography, including information on how to book sibling photos

https://www.edithleighphotography.nz/sawyers-bay-school-info

Kia ora!

We are so pleased to be back at school!

In Papatūānuku we extend a warm welcome to Tegan, Benji, Alexie and Olivia who have all started school within the last month.

We’ve all started back with enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn. Our whole class are learning new waiata and accompanying actions alongside the school Kapa Haka group. In our own class we are also learning Te Rakau as we play along to E Papa Waiari, which is a familiar rakau waiata. We’ve also had the ukuleles out again and the children request to play along to their favourite school songs! We are also learning the fingering for a couple of chords too. In our visual art learning, we spent some time learning about clay. We talked about where clay comes from, what gets made out of clay, then we had some fun ourselves, moulding and shaping! We have made animal heads and pinch pots and hope to extend our clay skills next week to do more creating. It was lovely to see the enthusiasm everyone had, creating with our hands. Our maths learning this week has been about positional language (on, beside, in front, under, behind, through, over). We have used a variety of things to help us with our learning! We read a Hairy Maclary story called Scatter Cat where the animals all ended up going somewhere and we picked out the positional language in the story. Then yesterday we used chairs, classroom furniture and equipment, and we’ve even used the playground to help us describe the position where we are, or where others are. Speaking of playgrounds, we all enjoyed exploring the new playground equipment too. Our Kelly Sports session was focusing on rolling, forward rolls, cartwheels and balancing. All really good foundation skills we need and that we enjoyed practising. If there is a safe place at home to practise, maybe the Papatūānuku children would like to show you what they can do!

Report From Mrs Campbell

This week in Hine-Rau-Whārangi we have been working on getting our ideas down on paper in our writing rotations, seeing amazing work being produced. We are wrapping up our Japan/Olympics topic by learning about Kimonos, Geisha and how to write our names in Japanese. And working on our clay medals, which are soon to come home!

Report From Miss Finnie

Over the last few days in Tāwhirimātea we have been creating our own wigs in preparation for our upcoming wig Wednesday. We used plastic bags and tape to get the shape of our heads. Then we used the plastic moulds to attach different materials to create the hair feature. We are super happy with how they turned out, they look awesome.

We have also been working on writing instructions. So far, we have identified important features that need to be included in our instruction and they are a title, list of the things you need, steps on how to complete the task, and bossy verbs. Learning about how to create instructions will help us develop our games that we will be creating.

Report by Miss Sims

Kia Ora From Ranginui

It is so good to be back together with our friends and all the people at Sawyers Bay School. In Ranginui we have started report writing, and have become news reporters, trying to find the best ‘scoop’ to write an article about so that we can create our own newspaper. September is Bee awareness month, (although we should always celebrate and promote these most amazing creatures) We are gathering knowledge and asking lots of questions to explore further. Of course we have all shared our best BEE JOKES for news items as well. In math we are identifying lines of symmetry in shapes, continuing to apply our skip counting skills and groupings to learn the times tables. We are reading articles about bees, the environment, and plants. Please contact me via email if you have any questions.

Report From Miss Ruzsa

Hinemoana has been exploring personification. Personification is a language feature that adds human qualities, an action or feeling, to a non-human thing. Check out some of our personification sentences (the children have done a great job!):

The forest whispered to those who entered it. By Arden

The stars in the night sky winked and blinked at me. By Chaya

The tunnel opened its wide gaping mouth. By Oscar

We are finishing off the term with a wee mini topic around Spring. The children have used their knowledge of syllables to write their own Springtime Haiku, where they worked hard to show the reader and not tell! We have also started to grow our own seeds and explore parts and functions of plants. We are looking forward to seeing these germinate!

Report From Miss Laing

Kia ora - this week is Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori. In Tane Mahuta we have celebrated this by connecting with the “Share a moment” challenge put forward through ReoMaori.co.nz. Our ‘moment’ was singing and recording Pepeha, by Six60 and uploading this to the portal where many other workplaces, schools and people from the community have also stopped to take a moment to acknowledge te reo maori and keep the language alive! It was great to see how beautifully and confidently the children sang. Fingers crossed that they will be able to go ahead and perform this song as part of our Kapa Haka performance at Polyfest at the beginning of Term Four. Thanks for your enthusiasm and awesome singing Tane Mahuta!

Report From Miss Tenci

For Term 4 2021, we will be offering two extra-curricular sports options, Touch Rugby and Futsal. Both sports will be strictly dependent on our ability to be able to make teams with he correct number of children (e.g. if there are not enough Year 5 and 6 touch players for example, we will have to look at other options).

When we confirm teams, you will be invoiced for the competition per child (If this is a challenge, please do come and see me in confidence and we can work something out).

We will also be asking for help with coaching. This is really essential for us to be able to offer these sports. If you have no experience with coaching, or the sport in question, don't worry we can help you out there too! All we need is someone enthusiastic and organised.

Once we have all registrations in, we will make teams as soon as possible. All teams will be final and will have a balance of ages across the Year bands (e.g. Year 5 and 6), a mixture of experience, and a combination of friendship dynamics.

Touch Rugby is played at the Oval on a Thursday afternoon.

Dates: Thursday 21st October through to Thursday 9th December

Times: Years 1-4 - 3.45pm, Year 5-6 - 4.15pm or 4.45pm

There are various grades available but are generally in Year 1/2, Year 3/4, Year 5/6 groupings

Registration fee for Touch= $25 per player

Futsal is played at the Edgar Centre on a Tuesday for Years 1 -4 and a Wednesday for Years 5 and 6

Years 1-4:

26th of October - until the 7th of December

Tuesday Time: 4.00pm to 7.00pm

Years 5-8:

27th of October - until the 8th of December

Wednesday Time 3.30pm to 6.00pm

Registration fee for Futsal= $45 per player

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO GO TO THE REGISTRATION FORM

• Year 6 Camp - Tuesday 21st - Friday 24th September
• School Photos - Tuesday 28th-Wednesday 29th September
• Last Day of Term - Friday 1st October

Email: office@sawyersbay.school.nz
Website: https://sawyersbay.school.nz/
Location: Sawyers Bay School 99 Stevenson Ave, Sawyers Bay, Dunedin 9023, New Zealand
Phone: 03 472 8981