MATARIKI
                  Oopsie one we forgot to share with you all.

                   Welcome to our own matariki celebration. As some of you know we
                    walked up the field as the Kapa haka sung the karanga to call us down toward the pou                           which mark the entrance to our Matariki garden.
                    Anyway room 9 had fun buddying up with room 5 who were our buddy class. We                                 worked with them to make Matariki stars.
                 
                    Firstly we dyed some paper and made it our night sky then
                    seven of us made gold stars for the the seven sisters. We drew them, then cut    
                    and painted the gold stars. For the little stars we wrapped  them in                                                         tinfoil and placed them around the seven sisters. Some of you might have seen our
                    artwork in the hall. We enjoyed working with the juniors on this project.

                    In class we have also been doing some art for matarki including matariki lanterns
                    room five (our buddy class) has been doing starbursts as again you might
                    have noticed in the hall.
  
The celebration was awesome.  We hold it at dawn each year.  This year it was the biggest gathering of people and we were pleased to see representatives there from Early years child care, Geoff Shephard principal of Kuranui and some Kuranui College students. The college students called us on toward the Matariki pathway which represents our learning journey and leaving for college. This year our senior leaders also spoke. Afterwards we enjoyed kai together in the hall, a sausage sizzle and hot chocolate! If you haven't yet shared a Matariki dawn celebtation with us you may like to put it onto your calendar for next year. 

by Charlie


                      

                 

Term 3 Welcome back - Rippa Rugby

Rippa Rugby Tournament

We went to a primary school's Rippa Rugby tournament in Masterton by the netball courts, we all had a fantastic time playing against the other teams. Every team did really well and we had a fabulous day despite being covered in mud when we came back! We were part of a yr 5 and 6 team and we are all keen to do it again next year.

by Imogen

Sharing time in Room 9

Bold Enough To Be Bald

Bold Enough To Be Bald

A few days ago in the Shave Off, James Morland, Mr Walker and Mr Hammond went completely bald! As the shaving ended there was hair littering the hall floor and there was an atmosphere of cringe in the air. Brown and black hair was falling everywhere as Mr Hammond took constant selfies of his mid-hair-cut look. The student Dan says'The Cringe is real'. Many people couldn't bare to watch as the hair flaked off there now clear foreheads. All I could think of while watching it was 'CRINGE!' Even though I knew it was for a great cause and was a majorly helpful donation to those with deadly cancer. It was extremly brave of them even though Mr Hammond knows it looks like it would take 2 years to grow back.  No one could stop talking while the Shave Off was commencing because of the exitement. Different Students Had Different Opinions. My Opinion is that it is Really Brave of them to be Bald. Raised around $1460 before the shave off was complete. 

       

Totara Speches

All of totara have been working on speeches, students have been able to choose what they want to speak about. Topics so far range from: Cheetahs, computer topics, to the environment, science experiments and people of the past.
We have had this week and next to write them both in class during reading time and at home for homelearning.  We will present these in the last week of term. 
Good luck to all of you writing your speech.

Matariki

Matariki is when the seven stars can be seen in the evening sky and represent the start of the Maori New Year.

Our school will be celebrating Matariki on Friday 30 June at 7:15am.  All families are invited and are asked to meet in the school hall to have a cup of tea and look at the classes art work. At 7:15 am you will be led out onto the South field by the yr 8' s and our celebration will begin. This involves short speeches and karakia from Paora, Miss O'Connor and the yr 8 leaders. We have a symbolic tree planting ceremony and waiata from the kapa haka and students.

Kapa haka is asked to meet in rm 4 at 6:45am for a practise prior.

We suggest you bring your gumboots and warm jackets. There will be a sausage sizzle afterwards.

We hope you can come and have fun with us on our Matariki Dawn Celebration.

By Cody & Patrick.

Brains, Cross Country and Portraits.

Room 9 Blog

By Imogen and Francesca

BRAIN INQUIRIES💡

This term we had a lot going on. We have been updating our brain inquiries that we started last term with new information and are now nearly finished presenting them. All the students in room 9 made a paper version of the brain to wear on their heads like a hat. It was a lot of fun making the brain and labeling the parts of it. We were all wondering what to do with them after we took a photo. Mrs Jones let us decide how we would display them and we decided to put them on the top of balloons and made molds of our faces with tinfoil to put over the balloons so it looked a bit like people.  We have started to hang them up and they are looking very cool and quirky.

VISUAL ART 🎨

We have also finished our portraits. There is a big difference between our first portraits we did alone and our final picture, we drew after a skills lesson form Mrs Jones. You can really see the improvement. We have learnt about the placement and proportions of features on the face and how to add detail and the shapes and sizes of our face. We have ended up with three pictures. We traced the second one on the window to end up with a portrait that didn't have the placement lines. Judging from peoples self assessment scores everyone is proud of their fantastic portraits, we are proud of ours! 

INTERSCHOOL CROSSCOUNTRY 🏃

We were so happy when we found out how Greytown School did at interschool crosscountry. We would like to congratulate everyone that went and ran at Rathkeel this year because the number of competitors running was a lot bigger than last years course at Kahutara School. We were very surprised when we found out that almost half of the qualifiers for Regionals from Greytown School came from room nine! 13 people qualified and 6 came from room nine! The qualifiers were those that placed in the top 20 from all the Wairarapa primary schools. Those in our room were: 

Maddy 2
Emelia 3
Charlie 3
Seb 13
Jethro 17
Annabelle 18

We wish them all the best for their continued training and we will let you know how they do at the inter regional race held this year in the Wairarapa at Solway Showgrounds.  It is a flat course so it will be fast and students training for it will need to do some sprint work.

Thanks for reading our blog 

Imogen and Francesca

Keeping ourselves safe

Keeping Ourselves Safe

by Maddy and Pippa

Last week was our last lesson with constable Keeley. Every Wednesday for the last three weeks, constable Keely has been coming in and teaching us how to keep ourselves safe. For an example if a person was in a car and following you, she told us to go to a friends that live down that road so have a safe place to go.. or we could go to a public place like the library or the supermarket. 

Another example,  I'm at a friends house and his parents start drinking alcohol and I feel uncomfortable, you could get the mobile phone and call your parents and say 'mum I have a headache can you pick me up?' When you are at home explain everything and let them sort it out. Constable Keely has given us a few activities on keeping ourselves safe such as 3 worksheets on what if scenarios, family rules and identifying types of touch that are good types of touch or confusing touch.

A worksheet had been sent home with your child to be filled out at home. We thank those parents who took the time to run through the questions with their child.   

That's all for this time from Maddy and Pippa.

New student in room 9.

We have a new student in class which is Daniel and we welcome him to room 9.  Daniel has come to us from Sydney, Australia.

Last week was cross country and it was great! We had really good results and everyone ran hard out.
We are very proud of the following students who made it into interschools from our class.
Maddy, Petra, Imogen, Pippa, Phoebe, Emelia, Francesca (who unfortunately can't run due to injury) Seb, Jethro, Angus, William, Tom, Charlie, Annabelle and Ribh who all qualified from room 9.

WOW 15 students from our room!  What great focus and training they put it. Parents please support them to train at home also over the coming month so they are ready for the interschool race which, this year, will be held in Masterton at Rathkeale College and will be against all Wairarapa schools not just those in the South Wairarapa.

At school we have been busy doing our inquiries. We have been learning lots about the brain and adding new information to our old inquiries.  We have also started another inquiry this term and that's about Anzac as you will know if you have read the previous blog, then you would know that Mr Plimmer came in and had a chat to the syndicate about ANZAC.

SHARP   RAP! We have all been working on these raps in groups of 4. This is trying to remind us what to do in class time, playtime and in the community to show SHARP behaviours. We will share these sharp raps with the class and choose which one is the best and perform it in assembly. We will also share them on seesaw with you when we have finished.

This term at school rm 9 has been learning about debates. We have been choosing teams and a topic to debate. There are two sides in a debate. The affirmative which means you agree and the negative which means you don't agree. The whole purpose of a debate is to try to have better arguments than the other team and be able to argue against their argument.  This is called rebuttal. Mrs Jones used a rope and stick it notes to show how each person's argument can sway the opinion and move the rope further in one direction or the other just like in a tug of war.

We might have some interesting conversations or debates with you at home over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for joining us.
Petra and Abigail.

 Welcome to term 2 

 A fresh start and hopefully you didn't leave your sharp manners somewhere in the holidays. 

The class has come back very enthusiastic and positive and we have a great vibe in the classroom.  Long may it last! As you are aware in the last week of term, we all went to Te Pāpā and Pāpāwai  Marae as a culmination for our Inquiry studies and to kick off to our new inquiry surrounding ANZAC. We all had a great time there and learnt heaps of information. We saw the Gallipoli war scene, it looked very realistic. We were amazed by the huge lifelike models of soldiers and a nurse that we saw.  There was loads of information to find out and some of us didn't want to leave the exhibition.

 We also went into the maori exhibition where we had to fill in some worksheets. (We are continuing with these in class now.) There was also the giant squid who Ella Fenwick's (last year's head girl) father worked on.  Some of us also visited the earthquake house. We had loads of fun and no one in rm 9 was sick on the bus!

The same week we also got to go to Papawai Marae.  We did several activities while we were there.  we learnt about some of the history but our highlight was seeing the eels. 

By Isabel and Annabelle

ANZAC

Yesterday Mr Plimmer came in to speak with totara syndicate about the ANZAC soldiers and told us some of the history of Gallipoli and the battle fought at Passchendaele. It was very interesting and we learnt a lot. Some of the things we learnt were that the mud in Passchendaele was really deep, it was about knee deep. Before Passchendaele was attacked it was a  town, but after the war in Passendaele the town was gone. It had been destroyed by all the fighting and bombing. The war started in 1914. Soldiers on each side dug a system of trenches. Hitlers invasion of Poland in September in 1936 led to the out break of the second world war. We are doing inquiries in class.

by Phoebe and Emelia

Winner of the Writing Competition

Hi again and welcome back.

About 4 weeks ago Hiwi the Kiwi came to Greytown school and taught us a few things about fishing. We all wrote stories about fishing safety and entered a writing contest and if you win you get a fishing rod. One of the things we learned is that you need a ruler to measure the fish and if they are too big or too little you have to throw them back. We also learnt about the importance of wearing a life jacket.

We have just heard that Imogen Wilton from our room who placed second in the writing contest. Congratulations to her and to James Wall from the senior school, who placed first and will have his work published in a fishing magazine as well as receiving a fishing rod.

We were very excited to learn that one of our class mates had placed in the competition. It was a great narrative and had lots of descriptive words in it. Miss O Connor read out some of her story during assembly.

You can see Hiwi the Kiwi entertaining us at assembly, as well as giving us safety messages for in the water he also told us stories and had us sing songs which helped us to learn about caring for our environment.

From Annabelle

Hi and welcome back to another post.

                                                                                                                              

Te reo: The teachers have been participating in Te Reo maori staff development sessions before school every Tuesday morning.  They did this last year as well.  As they learn they are sharing their knowledge with the students in all classes and Whaea Suzanne comes in to help with the lesson. We worked with partners to ask questions about our age and how many tokens we have.

E hia o tau?

How old are you?

E hia o mea?

How many (things) do you have?

We had lots of fun and our te reo is improving.

That's all for this week.

from Ribh and Lara    

Welcome to another week in room 9.
Literacy: In room 9 we have been having fun with balloons. We hope you saw our balloon video we posted last time, we had lots of fun! We wrote about the balloons describing what we saw, how they moved and felt.  We used lots of description words. Our favourite part was when we were allowed to bounce the balloons and yell out descriptive words.

Later we wrote about the activity and published our writing on balloons which we will hang around the room. Come and read our writing anytime.

Another lead in activity we did was to watch a video on ice calving.  This is when ice breaks up quite dramatically because of global warming.
This is Francesca's story:

My knuckles turn as white as the big wave of ice moving hostily toward me. It crumbles and breaks as it sinks into the raging sea. As the bright mudslide moves towards me my body shivers and my hands brush the cool ice.  Ice shoots in all directions like a volcanic eruption. The white sticky sand dune hurdles in all directions. 

It reflects on my eyes as the jagged mountain breaks up like a roller coaster, then ice breaks up and down before melting into the ocean. It makes a crumbling stormy noise before another mountain is gone.

Eager to keep going another crumbling noise is heard opposite me.  Ice shoots out of the ocean, colliding and breaking up again.  Blue, black and white smash together creating an amazing experience. What a serendipidous encounter!

Swimming:Our last session of swimming was great fun as we got to do some life saving practises. One of these was to have a turn with the life jackets.  You can see some of us here in a group huddle all wearing life jackets in the pool.

Thanks for reading
Ribh and Lara

Check out our exciting balloon video lead into writing!

Apologies, my computer froze and was completely inaccessible until it had been re-imaged. Hence we lost our draft of Friday's Blog and you have had to wait for our blog update, but we are sure it is well worth waiting for...

Check out our exciting balloon video lead into writing!

Thank you for joining us for another blog update.

Hi and welcome to another exciting week in room 9.  

This week we used balloons for our literacy. We described what they looked like, felt like and moved like.  It was a wonderful experience with all the inspiring colours. We got some interesting describing words.  It was a really fun and exciting way to learn!

Some of the words and phrases we came up with were: shockwave of colour, burst of colour, soft gliding, drifting, squishy, floating, transparent, pops of colour, puffed up raindrops of colour.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8NvWTYrQ6FeOWFYSE1QOUo1aUU/view?usp=sharing


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8NvWTYrQ6FeR2NBVmJwUTRBSVU/view?usp=sharing

As you can see on these videos we had lots of fun calling out descriptive words to describe the colourful balloons that we were punching all over the place!

                                    Just wait until you see the writing we do about it!.

                                                                 SWIMMING

First we are going to congratulate the people who placed in their swimming races and are now going through to inter school swimming next week, which is held at the Featherston pools. Room 9 was particularly successful and had 11 people qualify. Congratulations to Abigail, Pippa, Francesca, Jethro, Seb, Sam, Ribh, Imogen, Charlie, Evelyn and Annabelle.

An update to our Inter school swimming. Seb, Francesca, Pippa and Imogen have all made it through to Regional Swimming Sports which will be held in Masterton on Wednesday 15 March. A fantastic effort and great to have 4 students going up from room 9.

Moving March Is a fun and exciting way to get kids to do exercise. It can be quite challenging if you bus to school but walking to the pools and swimming is all exercise so it can count toward moving March. Every student has a moving March card and can get this stamped every day they do some form of exercise. Scootering, biking, walking to school all count toward a stamp on their card. We are aiming to fill the card with stamps and go into a draw for a prize. This is a way we can help kids to get fit and strong. It also cuts down on gases from cars and buses and improves our environment. Parents please encourage your child to exercise on their way to school.

from Ella and Evelyn :)*

ROOM 9 BLOG

Welcome to the coolest new blog of Room 9 !  

Really?

Yeah!

The way the room 9 blog works is, the class brainstorms all the exciting things we are doing in the class and decides as a group which aspects we think you will be most interested in. Two students will then write the blog every Friday and share these with you. Today we have Jayden, Sam and Tomoki who have especially written the rest of this for you.

Today we’re going to be talking about Wakas!

In the class we’ve been making a waka and each of the paddles has our names on them. Can you imagine that!

We have been making jigsaw pieces. We wrote our name on the jigsaws, drew 3 things that we liked and coloured it in! We made our jigsaws so that we can learn about each other, what our likes and interests are, and display the for others to see and help get to know us. We made a comparison of our class being like a jigsaw. Each of us is a part of the class and the class is not complete without all of us.  We each have something to offer. We were divided into groups and had to work together to solve the jigsaw a row at a time. This meant we had to cooperate with the others in our group to ensure our pieces were in the right place. Very confusing if someone had theirs upside down!

We also made paddles to represent each of us which have been added to our class waka to represent that we are all on a big learning journey together.  

In our cloak bay we made a mat that shows we are all interwoven into a class of 29. You can see the theme happening in our class at the moment is surrounding getting to know each other and working together to help each other with our learning.

We also did an all about me poster with every piece of information you need to know about yourself. Here are some photos of some of the posters and other bits and pieces.

                                                                                                                                                     Class mat representing our connectedness with each other.    

PHOTO COLLAGE (To be updated next wk with missing photos)

A few days ago we went to swimming sports so people could show people how fast they could go. (even though it was mainly all standing around on a hot hot day watching, it was a great day and went very well. 21 students out of 28 in our class competed in this.
We will update you their results when we know.

Thanks for tuning in. 

Jayden, Tomoki, Angus