Room 6's Class Blog: 08/01/2011

Aug 31, 2011

Some Homework

Georgie's poster about Kiwis

Kirsten and Megan learn to Tune their Skis

Visiting Bob Docherty at the Hawea Library

Yesterday we went to the Hawea Library and saw Bob Docherty who talked to us about new books that are available at the library or are about to be released.

First he showed us the book, told us the title and author and then he explained about the plot to the story. He was clever and only told us about the plot until it got to an exciting part or a mystery.

Bob then talked to us and answered our questions. We found out that he reads over 300 books a year, travels to schools around New Zealand and he reviews books for the Christchurch Press, Libraries and his own Blog (See the link on our Blog).

He says that his favourite book is “...the next one that I’m going to read”.

Some great writing about Kiwi

Aug 12, 2011

The Grand and Otago Skink

From our visitor last week we have discovered that two of New Zealand's most endangered animals live in our region. These animals are the Grand Skink and the Otago Skink. After having an amazing presentation, where all of our questions were answered we sat down to think about what we knew, what we had learnt and how we could show this knowledge in different ways.

Some of us looked at 'Food Webs', some of us used a Venn Diagram to compare Skinks and other animals and many of us looked at hows to design a special garden for skinks. Once the landscape plans were drawn up a few of the groups went further and created scale models of their designs.

On looking and reflecting on their plans the students decided that they would like to try and build a Skink garden at Hawea Flat School and we are looking into how we can carry this action out over the rest of the term.

This is quite a big task and we will need to...

look at getting permission from the Board and maybe the Department of Conservation (Skinks are protected animals).
decide where to place the garden. Selected spots will need to be assessed for hours of sunlight and wind.
choose a design from our designs or maybe merge them together into a new design. We might also need to talk to someone who is a landscape designer to get some help with our design.
find the materials that we need to build our garden. The children might need to fund raise or write letters to ask for discounts or donations?
contact DOC for advice and look to see if other schools have tried to make a Skink garden before because they might have some advice.

So with all these plans in action and a busy term ahead we will have a lot of work to do. Keep you eyes on this space to see how we progress.

Cross Country 2011

It was a stunningly beautiful day at the Lake Hawea Holiday Park for this years cross country race and we must thank Sarah and Richard Burdon for letting us use the venue every year.

All of the children trained so hard for the event and should be very proud of how they competed and represented themselves.

A special congratulations goes to Rata as she was the winner of the Year 4 Girls race!

Here are some photos of the event below, but as I was on the starter I was unable to take any photos. I saw a lot of parents with their cameras out, so if you have some photos of Room 6 in action could you please email them to me and I will post them here.

Again a big congratulations to all the competitors and hopefully some of us will head to the Central Otago Cross Country in a few weeks.