Newsletter Week 6 Term 2

Kia ora Whanau,

We have had the best week for children being well and at school that we have had in a very long time this week! It is so exciting to see full and almost full classrooms again. Thank you everyone for playing your part to help stop the spread of bugs, flus and illnesses within our school. Our priority has always been to focus on the needs of our children, and continuity and consistency of learning is absolutely vital.

The highlight of the week for me this week was definitely a trip to Orokonui with Tāwhirimātea. The weather was beautiful, kids completely engrossed, adults enthusiastic and the wildlife also played their part too. Thank you to Mrs. Campbell who has coordinated all of these trips that have now spread over two terms, and to the Orokonui team for inviting us into their pretty special place.

Don't forget that we have a cheese roll fundraiser coming up. We desperately need as many helpers as we can to get through the day. We will gladly accept any offers of help, big or small. The funds that we raise through the cheese rolls go directly back into the kids. Thanks to the PTA once again for undertaking this mission.

Ka mihi nui,

Gareth Swete

• Tuesday 14th June - PTA AGM
• Tuesday 21st June - Board Meeting No. 4
• Friday 24th June - Matariki

The PTA Cheese Roll Fundraiser is a popular fundraiser and relies on family and friends of the school volunteering their time to help make them.
This year we are making them on Sunday 19th June, at the Harbour Rugby Club in Port Chalmers, beginning at 9am.

Please contact the school office (4728981 or office@sawyersbay.school.nz) or Kelly Laing if you are willing to spare some time on the day. We will gratefully accept any time, short or long, that you might be able to help with.
Please note, due to the current environment, any volunteers will require a negative rapid antigen test onsite before beginning, we will provide the RATs and really appreciate your understanding here. Thank you in advance for your co-operation and support. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Congratulations to Jack, Isabella G, Liam Hes, Isaac R, Stan and Alexie who were their classes Akonga o te Wiki.

This week the trophy went home with Isaac!

This week we have been reading the legend of Maui and the Giant Ika. We created art work using pastel and dye about a part of the legend and we shared these in assembly. We used salt dough to make our own fish hooks, and after they were cooked, we made them into a necklace. Our creativity was put to a challenge to make fishing equipment that would catch a ‘puffer’ fish in a bowl of water. Some of us managed to create something that would do that. Others of us know what we need to change or improve for this to be successful.

We have continued to learn about 2D shapes by making shape monsters out of paper shapes, and created our own pictures using a variety of different felt shapes. We have been learning to throw and catch balls and challenging ourselves to throw and catch the ball to each member of the class without dropping it! We succeeded in that today!

Report by Miss Richardson

This week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi we have enjoyed writing about our long weekend holidays, having done some really fun exciting things. We wrote with the focus on punctuation of capital letters and fullstops. The children are beginning to look back on what they have written and are learning to edit their work for corrections. We have continued this week looking at patterns but with numbers and have been looking at the rule for when we skip count or add on.

This week's session at Kelly Sports on Tuesday was awesome, we had warm up activities to get our hearts pumping. Then we played a game of elimination, where you had to lie on the ground and jump up when there was a command and beat your opponent to the end of the court.

We have been reading lots of fairytales and putting our ideas together on how we can critique our houses for the fairytale village. We are able to bring library books home again now from our school library. Hine-Rau-Wharangi's library day is Thursday, so the children will be able to bring books home for the week and return them the next.

Report by Mrs Brewer

What a way to start the week! The Tāwhirimātea children were very lucky to have such amazing weather for our trip to the Orokonui Ecosanctuary on Tuesday. We were treated to such a wide range of experiences including meeting and feeding Waimarae the eel, finding what else was living in the pond, seeing a huge amount of kaka, tui, korimako, takahe and more. We spotted quite a few geckos out bathing in the heat of the sun and some of us even managed to spot an endangered jeweled gecko. Craig very kindly offered (with some audience encouragement) to dress up as a kiwi. He hid outside with a radio transmitter. The children went on a kiwi hunt using the radio signal to guide them. We had a local spider scientist take us on a hunt to meet some of the smaller creatures at Orokonui such as the tunnel web spider, the watermelon spider and even a millipede that defended itself with an acid that can burn your skin. Did you know that spiders can use electric fields to repel themselves high up into the air and float around with the help of their silk strands - almost like they are flying way up above us?! We are going to use our Orokonui experiences to begin writing descriptive passages including similes and metaphors which we will hopefully share at assembly on Friday. Below is a short video collation of photos and video footage from our trip for those of you who weren’t able to join us. A big thank you to those of you who gave up your day to come along with us to support our learning and make our trip possible!

Report by Mrs Swete

Kia Ora

We just have to tell you about our wonderful day at Orokonui Eco-Sanctuary. First we want to thank all the parents and our guides who made our day even more wonderful. We were greeted and led into the main room where we watched a video on the development of the eco-sanctuary. Ranginui was well prepared with lots of interesting questions. We then split into two groups and one went to the eel pond with nets to catch micro bugs and to see the eel! We found boatmen, snails, and damselflies. The other group went to see the Takahe and the lizard on the grass land area. We all made seed balls and threw them into the native bush area. Let us hope that one day we see our own native plants growing there. After lunch, we followed either Taylor or Steph who took us on a nature walk and talk. As we neared the feeding stations we could hear the calls of Tui’s. We sat and watched them boss each other around trying to get the best feeding spot. We got to taste the pepper tree and smell the STINK WEED! (Some of us did not like it at all!)

Overall we had a fantastic day learning outside the classroom at a very special place. Great work Ranginui, I would definitely take you anywhere.

Report by Miss Ruzsa

A short week but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to do just as much!

We had another great Kelly Sports session where we worked on our speed and agility. We participated in a fun drill where we had to start lying down and then follow different commands of clapping and stomping to run to different coloured cones. We had to make sure we were listening carefully to Coach Terryn and run in the right direction.

We have been learning about synonyms - different words that mean the same or nearly the same thing. For example the word big, we could instead use words like colossal, mammoth or gigantic. To help us find synonyms for words in our writing and try new vocabulary we have also learnt how to use a thesaurus. We are having lots of fun finding new and exciting words to use.

In Maths, we are expanding on our fraction knowledge and learning all about decimals and percentages. We noticed that fractions, decimals and percentages are like synonyms! A different way to say the same information. We have learnt a new dice game - Three in a Row, which has helped us to order decimal numbers and are making lots of different decimal numbers with blocks to show how many ones (the whole) and how many tenths (the fractional part of the number). We have also learnt how to convert fractions to decimals and then to percentages. Did you know that ½ is the same as 0.5 (no ones and 5 tenths) and also the same as 50%? There is lots of amazing mathematical thinking going on in Hinemoana!

Report by Miss Laing

We have been focusing on Instructional Writing in Tane Mahuta for the past week. Today we challenged ourselves by following ‘high quality’ clear instructions to make two different crafts inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. We made sure to pay attention to the different conventions of these high quality instructions for example: the titles, materials lists and subheadings, which helped us to follow our instructions. The crafts we had to make were origami wolves and/or popsicle stick cottages. We were surprised that the popsicle stick cottages were actually really quite fiddly and took us longer to create than the origami wolves! Some children were quick with their original origami wolf and so were allowed to make some extra wolves and create wolf packs! We were proud of our creations and our ability to follow these high quality instructions.

Report by Miss Tenci

Hi all,

With Queen’s Birthday weekend this month we are pushing book club to the next week. Book club will be held this month on Monday 13/06. We will be having some games along with the usual books and snacks.

Hope to see you there,

Port Chalmers Library Team

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