The Castle in the Playground!

Fort Building in the Playground

The fort in construction:

A group of productive, inspired senior students have been building an amazing fort using the materials we have in the playground.  It is incredible: using fences and trees as structural supports but building on and outward above the playground.  It appears like the most fantastic of structures, one which might continue to grow, step by step till it reaches the clouds.  And the kids who built it? It has become their Castle!  

Interesting that this Castle is not unlike the Castles we built earlier in the term as an experiment to look at power.  Many of the same themes are playing out too and questions are being asked.

What was the design process?  Did somebody take charge is she or he the Queen or King of the Castle?  Are there some kids who have more power than others?  Are there some kids who have more rights than others?Who owns the fort?  What about the materials the Castle is made from?  How long will it remain there?  Can only the builders and designers, the inhabitants of the castle use it?  Does it have its own set of rules?  Where do the Worser Bay Learner Attributes and out value of Respect fit in?    

We are doing some thinking about these questions over the next few days.

Our Orange Day Parade Banner

The banner is looking great! Only a few days until Orange Day.

Our Year 5 and 6 Road Patrollers will march for Road Safety from 10am to midday on Friday 1st September. Students will leave school at 9am and will arrive back by 1pm. 

Please provide permission via Online Payments on our website. There is no charge for the bus. 

Planting veggies and LEARNing about physical health

 The Garden Student Council group has been busy planting leeks, peas, lettuces, broccoli and capsicum. We had to be careful to dig deep enough to give the roots enough room to grow and read the information carefully to see how far apart the different plants should be put. The soil is very rich and dark after all the new compost that was put in at the end of last term.

These plants will give us lots of good nutrition which our bodies need. We've all been learning about how to care for our bodies using the acronym LEARN:
L - Learn to reflect and give yourself feedback
E - Exercise
A - Attitude
R - Rest
N - Nutrition
What do you need more of?

Here are some of our reflections...

Goal: my goal is to get more rest so I can can be more happy during the day and I can do that by trying to set an good bedtime that I can do. a good time might be 7:30
Bethen

physical health my gola is to do runing with my mum .
Hana

I am good at exercise because I do gymnastics and that helps me exercise and stretch my body I would like to try to do pull ups soon and that is my goal.
Ruby

I am good at running around in the morning I think I need to work on my rest By sleeping more.
Edward

My goal is to be less lazy and get more active at school by not sittng on the tree outside during lunch
Thomas

I am good at exercise/sport and what I need to work on is Rest and Nutrition.Eating good brain food so I can focus at class and know what I am going to do.
Liam

80's DISCO 15th September!

This September we are having an ‘80’s disco at the Salvation Army Hall in Miramar.

This disco is gonna be full of crazy dress ups of 80’s singers, stuff that was made in the 80’s, and much more!

We are having this crazy disco on Week 8 Friday 15th of September.

Remember to show up in your best  most epic and craziest 80’s costume!

But always remember this disco is optional  so you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.

Costume ideas:

Disco dancer

Record

Rubik's cube

Fluro or Highlighter coloured clothes

Glitter clothes

Afros or big hairstyles

Anything crazy!!!!

Also remember to have fun at this crazy party!

Parent Wellbeing Workshop

Wellbeing Workshop.

Thanks so much to all the parents who came to the Wellbeing Workshop and participated with such enthusiasm and energy. What a buzz there was in the room with all the character strength discussions, the breathing exercises to enhance positive emotions, looking at Kaizen steps to break down the goals for a positive purpose, recognising the benefits of positive relationships when solving maths problems, being positively engaged by working collaboratively to construct a house, understanding the schooldocs, recognising the advantages of exercise and meditation for positive health and accepting the challenges involved in positive accomplishment when using chop sticks to move around a range of strangely shaped objects. Plus all the motivational speakers and discussions.

It sure took a while to unwind from the excitement and get off to sleep that night, but so positive to be realising the message is reaching the children from both home and school.

Thanks for coming! Shona

EPIC WEEK OF DRESS UPS!

HELLO!

We have the EPIC WEEK OF DRESS UP coming up next week (Week 6) from Tuesday - Friday.

The different dress ups are....
Tuesday - SUPERHEROES
Wednesday - ANIMALS
Thursday - FAMOUS PEOPLE
Friday - PYJAMAS (and ORANGE DAY for Year 5/6s!)

This is optional. We are doing this because it is fun, it makes us feel free, and we love dressing up! It also helps our Wellbeing because it gives us an option to have fun and dress up together.

       By Evie, Caitlyn and Kate.

TUESDAY - SUPERHERO

WEDNESDAY - ANIMALS

THURSDAY - FAMOUS PEOPLE

FRIDAY - PYJAMAS (or ORANGE DAY for Y5/6s)

Orange Day Parade Banner Design Competition

Next week (September 1st) there is a Orange Day Parade that marches from the Beehive to the Town hall. This is for all of the year 5 and 6’s. I am doing a competitions for design of the Orange day parade banner, we need some designs to represent our school. We would like it to be double sided so you can do as many drawing as you want! Please give the designs to me (Alex) by Monday morning tea.

Remember we will be wearing as much orange as possible on Friday 1st September and be prepared to chant with your loudest voice.

By Alex P

This is us with the banner! A blank canvas: Be creative with your design!

Island Bay School trial Lily and Matilda's game: Fox Invaders

As part of our Inquiry, we have been thinking about why people have rules. We begun by making our own games. Matilda and Lily made up a game called, "Fox Invaders." Students in Matai Hub at Island Bay School trailed their game.

Fox Invaders By Matilda and Lily

This is a made up game that as a lot of activity running and FUN!!! It's good for kids to learn about different predators and prey.

The ball is used for passing to your tea

Objective

The aim of the game is for the bunny team is to get the fox's tagged by the farmers without them getting caught and to save the bunny’s in jail without getting caught.The fox's aim is to get all the bunny’s in jail by tagging them or the fox catches the ball the bunnies meant to catch.

Players and Equipment:

This game is a 7-100 player game each team has to be even or it won't be much fun for the other teams,You will need a ball or 2, there is a time limit to do this and that is 15 mins.

Winning the game:

For the foxes to win the game they need to get as many bunnies in jail as possible and for the bunnies to win they need to get the farmers to tag as many foxes in the time

Rules:

• Stay in the boundaries
• Be honest when you get tagged
• Dont cheat
• Have fun        

Dear Matilda and Lily,

Thank you for sending us your game to review.

Here is our review of your game.

This is a picture of us having a go at playing the game:

We hope this helps.

Ngā mihi,

From Matai Hub, Island Bay School

Our Review of Fox Invaders:

We liked:

• The game is fun and helps us to keep fit.

We are not clear about:

1. How do the bunnies get to jail? Bunnies get to jail by the foxes tagging them or the fox catching the ball the bunny is meant to catch
2. What does 7-100 mean? It means how many plays can play
3. What do the fox do when they get tagged? The go to the farmers jail until another fox saves them
4. Why do the farmers not go to jail? The farmers go to jail because bunnies and foxes can't hurt farmers
5. What are the balls for? The balls are for passing to your team.

Hi Matai Hub,

Thank you for playing our game. It is exciting that you played our game.

We have written our answers above in red.

From Matilda and Lily

How much rubbish do we have in our lunchbox?

 We've been looking at what kind of packaging our food comes to school in. We're learning about how to conduct a statistical investigation. In Nicola and Gabrielle's maths groups we thought of three categories our food could be wrapped in: food with no wrapping that will only leave compost, food with reusable containers or plastic, or rubbish. We got out our lunch boxes and tallied up the totals, and ...
83 items of rubbish
52 items with a reusable wrapper or container
113 items with compost material

Can we do better, yes we can! Please help us to reduce the number of things with single use plastic.

How Can We Change The Way We View Mistakes?

Mistakes help your brain to grow!

Students crumpled a piece of paper and threw it at the board (maybe with some feelings of frustration.) Students retrieved their paper, smoothed it out and traced the creased lines with a coloured pen- this represented the brain growth. Synapses grow in your brain.

We will display the paper to show them the importance of making mistakes.

Mistakes.

You usually think that mistakes are bad, But they actually they help your brain grow.
when you make mistakes, it makes your synopsis fire up, which help brain growth.
For example. Edison created the light bulb, and other cool inventions. But actually his teacher said he was to stupid to learn. But Edison persevered and made 1,000 mistakes. When a reporter asked him about his mistakes, he said they weren't mistakes, they were small steps.

By Alex B

Irene Van Dyk coaches Worser Bay Ferns and Worser Bay Unicorns!

We were incredibly lucky this Monday morning to have Silver Fern Superstar, Irene van Dyk, come and coach our 2 Netball teams.

We did lots of drills and then had question and answer time with her.
We learnt that....
- if you want to be a Silver Fern shooter, you need to practice AT LEAST 100 shots a day
- that her nickname is 'eyes'
- it took her 9 years to get into a rep team!!!!
- when someone has their arms up blocking you - just push them down!
- being short is good cause you are nippy and quick
- if someone is pushing you - SKILL ALWAYS BETS ARGY BARGY
- that she is very very very tall
- she travelled NZ, Australia, Malaysia and  England to play for the Silver Ferns

Huge thanks to Deb for organising Irene to come to WBS and to all the parents who helped out!

Gratitude

As part of our Positive Education Programme, we like to take the time to say what we are grateful for. 

Student Wellbeing Parent Workshop - Tuesday 22 August

Come along to our Student Wellbeing Parent Workshop is on Tuesday 22 August at 6.45pm in Tautoru.

Student wellbeing, or actually wellbeing in general, is being talked about, written about, thought about wherever we turn. Wanting our children to grow up resilient, adaptable, open to new experiences and feeling good and doing good has to be something we all want. It's not just a grab bag of feel good 'stuff' - there is a science behind this.

Eighteen months ago we introduced what is known as Positive Education. “Positive Education is the bringing together of the science of wellbeing with best-practice teaching to enable individuals to thrive.” We are looking forward to sharing a bit of background, the model we use and some of the outcomes we have had with you on the 22nd.

We will hear first hand from some children, get to experience some of the activities and a couple of our parents will also be linking this with life outside school. Plus, Board members will introduce you to our Online School Policy site 'Schooldocs', many of which link in some shape or form to student wellbeing.

I'm sure you will have plenty to contribute to the discussion. It's a great chance to chat about what you do at home already in this sphere and also learn from others. That's what a community is all about. Let's grow and work together to build a strong foundation where our children can flourish.

We aren’t making a choice between wellbeing or academic pursuits as there isn’t a choice to be made!

From IPEN - the International Positive Education Network

Hope to see you there. (Hope is actually a great predictor of wellbeing and performance!)

Taking Action: Peace Week

Today we spent the day Taking Action. Last week, we learnt a lot about nuclear history and why New Zealand is nuclear free. Today we used what we have learnt to take action. We made plays, movies, songs, art, persuasive letters, poems...

These are some of the things that we came up with: 

By Mateo and Anatole

By Alexandra: "I felt sad that animals were dying from pollution!"

By Nell and Isabel: Peace Poem

By Charlotte: Comic Strip about Chernobyl

By Charlotte: Comic Strip about Chernobyl

By Rim, Ari and Hunter T

Visual Art about nuclear weapons

By Jessie

By Bethen

By Parker

The Creative Process: We are writing a song!

Peace Art: By Haare

By Kaia

By Luca, Nick, Ollie and Oscar

By Alastair and Hugo W

By Alastair and Hugo W

By Janne

By Orla

Iko Iko Band

Iko Iko Band

We have learned a new song and we taught it to the rest of the school at assembly this morning! It’s from New Orleans and has a Funky New Orleans rhythm. It is about the different Indian tribes in New Orleans who compete to steal each others flags.  They do this every year during Mardi Gras, a big festival.

The kids who are playing the song are funky kids!  We are learning to use drums with different rhythm patterns playing against each other, coordinating the guitar players and we even have some kids on the spoons.

We are learning some more songs so that we can visit the library and some other local places to share our love of music.

Come and join us, learn some new tunes and get into the groove!