Thursday 21st September

Otago Daily Times - EXTRA! Newspaper Published Writing from the Senior Room
It is awesome to have some of our writing published recently in the Otago Daily Times EXTRA! Newspaper that we are subscribed to. We use this resource for literacy activities and we sent away some of our writing to see if it could get published and quite a few letters did! Julienne, Cooper, Koben, David, Brayden and George's letters were all published.

Well done to George who got Letter of the Month. George received a special parcel in the mail from Ivan Behrnes who is the editor of the Extra! Newspaper! Congratulations George, this is awesome!

Wednesday 20th September

Kyle Mewburn
On Monday we were very lucky to have a visit from Kyle Mewburn who is a New Zealand author. Kyle lives at Miller's Flat which is about an hour away from our school.

Kyle shared some of his books with us and talked about why he writes the books he does. He mentioned where he gets his ideas and inspirations from for his books. Being an author isn't an easy task, you never know if publishers are going to accept your books or not so you can not rely on making a huge income from being an author! It can take up to two years to write a book.

Kyle took three groups of students doing some writing workshops with them. It was really neat for students to get to work through a different process for writing a story. Kyle got these students thinking really hard and they did some cool writing!

We also had a book character dress up day. Caitlyn who was Harry Potter and Esther who was Cat in the Hat won $10 credit at Scholastic for being best dressed!

Thanks for coming to see us Kyle, we look forward to getting more of your books for our school library in the future!

Tuesday 19th September

Ruth Ratcliffe Visit
Today Ruth Ratcliffe came to visit us. Ruth is such an awesome person who is full of enthusiasm, along with being one of the loveliest people you will ever meet.
Ruth comes to see us once or twice a term for a relaxing and informal session of doing teamwork activities along with activities around getting to know each other a little better. Today we played a few games based around this with the ultimate activity being having to put together a story, using only clues we spoke about from each of the two or three cards we had. We worked awesomely as a team and got the job done! It was chocolate treats all round after that!

Thanks for coming to visit us Ruth, we will catch you in December! :)

Monday 18th September

Clean Up New Zealand Week
On Friday we participated in Clean Up New Zealand Week by picking up rubbish around the Waiwera South district. It felt really good to do our bit, picking up rubbish but it is disappointing that people dispose of their rubbish in our beautiful countryside. Thanks very much to Donne, Julie, Leanne and Anna for helping out on the day.

Friday 15th September

Planning Our Own Days
In the Senior Room we have been planning our own days. We have a real variety of work to be completing that includes:
- Statistics work called Nosy Parker for maths
- Safari art
- Volcano safety work for reading
- Safety inquiry projects of choice for inquiry
- Curriculum Vitaes for writing

On Thursday 21st September in the afternoon we are going to pick one of the pieces of work we have been doing from a chosen curriculum area and share this with the rest of the class.

We are really enjoying planning our own days. When we get to school in the morning we get our devices and plan our days on our daily planner. We have to check the whiteboard first, incase there is something that might affect a part of our day, for example we are doing Clean Up New Zealand Week today in the afternoon therefore that is a set activity that we have to do.

It is really neat to do what we want, at the time of day we want to. People are doing all sorts of different curriculum areas throughout the day which is awesome to see. If we are collaborating on something we make sure we plan to work on that area at the same time throughout the day. Miss Ward is teaching us at the moment and she pulls people out to work with them as the day goes on, helping them with their learning.

Here are what some people think about the work we are doing and planning our own days:

"I like planning my own day because I get to choose what curriculum area I want to do at certain times" - Koben year 8

"I like that we can fit in whatever curriculum areas we want at whatever time. I know I have to fit in all the areas Miss Ward has set us" - Ashley year 7

"I like that I get to choose the work I have to do when I want to do it" - James year 7

"Getting to choose the work I do and at what time is awesome and I am enjoying the work that Miss Ward has set me to do" - Holly year 8

" I am very impressed at how well the Senior Room students have picked up the concept of planning their own days. It is fantastic to see they are enjoying the work they have been set and how hard they are working. The Senior Room is an awesome place to be!" - Miss Ward

Jonny doing his art.

Ashley working on his Nosy Parker maths work!

George doing his reading work and Cooper doing his writing.

Koben doing his Nosy Parker work for maths.

Students doing a variety of different work.

Alex working on his art.

Sports Activator - Golf

Yesterday Greer was at school for another Sports Activator session. Our focus this time was on golf, with the upcoming Tony Tourell Golf Tournament in Clinton on Wednesday 6th September.

We learned how to grip the golf stick correctly before we started hitting the ball.  We then began by hitting a large soft ball to get used to swinging and hitting the target. After a few practices at this target, we then started hitting a tennis ball and continued to do this for the remainder of the lesson.

There were some pretty interesting shots happening!!