We had a Duffy Role Model come to our school today and we all received 2 books.It was former World Champion Black Fern, Regina who is still an active rugby player and has played overseas on many occasions. She spent 2009 playing and coaching rugby and living in Long Beach California. She is very focused on keeping physically fit and healthy and encouraging young people to do the same. Regina enjoys working with all ages and helping people to learn the fundamentals of preparing themselves to do their best to achieve in life, whether it be on the sports field or the academic field. She loves assisting others to set themselves up for the future  this is a skill she prides herself on. Regina still plays club rugby and coaches at McAuley Girls High School in the Auckland competition. Regina was a Police Officer for many years. Regina says if she was Prime Minister for a day she would raise the salaries of Police Officers and Teachers! She was really interesting and motivational to listen to. Some lucky students got to wear her Black Fern World Cup jerseys and hold her gold medals.

School Assembly

As part of our oral language some of our students organised and took assembly on Friday. We started with the NZ National Anthem which we do it in sign language as well as singing it.

We have a start of the week from each class - they get to sit at the front and have a special reward.

Teachers give awards and Duffy Caught Being Good awards. We sing songs (we sang Love Love Love and Count on me).
Assembly usually goes for 40 minutes.

 Classes present items and show things they have made during the week. It is really fun taking assembly as we get to spend a couple of hours on Friday morning sitting in the staff-room preparing and then setting up the hall. The students in our class take turns at taking assembly. We use the microphone so that everyone can hear but still have to think about making eye contact and speaking clearly. We also need to be prepared so that everything flows. sometimes we use notes but it is better if we are confident enough not to need them.

We went on a whole school visit to Shantytown as part of our inquiry study on toys through the ages. We voted and decided not to dress up in Victorian Costumes this time so we were really comfortable. Our school only has 65 students so we enjoyed doing lots of things together, although the seniors did get to do some different things like stilts. We were really interested in a timeline that the teachers had made out there with examples of the toys through time. They got a lady to come and show us her doll collection which was fascinating even for the boys. There was also a man who had stream powered models which were really interesting. We played lots of games and had an awesome day while learning new things and having new experiences.

    

-----Mihi-----

We are really sorry you can't see these we will try to change the setting so you can.

The Blaketown Garden  Club

Here  are some students   from our class they are cleaning up and planting some new plants in the garden. This garden is so cool they clean it up and plant new cool stuff in the garden like foods that we can eat.  At lunch on Tuesday the garden club meet up and sometimes they give us food like dips and good fresh vegetables,  bread rolls with  vegetables, lettuce rolls and muffins made with the produce. A lot of  students go to garden club and work on growing seeds, wedding and craft projects.  We have made mosaic tiles for the gravel area and painted  gumboots we have filled with plants as decorations around the school. We have a bath that we grow carrots in and as part of our sustainability unit we recycled tyres to make a herb garden.

  

     

At our school we are really into cycling as we are right beside the West Coast Wilderness Cycle Trail. This means we do lots of biking. Each Monday our class bikes to the local Aquatic Centre for swimming, this is part of our fitness. After swimming we have a vote about which route we will take back to school. One way involves going down a steep hill called Brewery Hill as its beside the Monteiths Brewery, this is probably our favourite as we can cruise down really fast. Our other favourite way is biking into town to the Grey River and getting on the Cycle Trail at The Warehouse, the biking around the harbour, fishing boats and down to the Tip Head (river mouth) to see if there are any fishing boats coming in then back to school. The third way we often choose is to bike past our local aerodrome (on the cycle trail) and stop at the local BMX track to play.  The longest trip we have done was at the end of term one and as our last day treat we went on a bus and biked 42km along the trail back to school. It was an awesome day with lots of laughter. Some people learnt more about resilience on the hills and as they got tired in the hot sun.

Every second week the year 7 and 8 students from our class go to High School for technology. They are away all day so we get to do different challenges. As we are studying toys through the ages at present, today we have had to design and build a balloon powered car. We are testing to see whose car will go the further-est. We have all had lots of different ideas and had to make lots of changes as we built them. We are trialing different sized wheels and thinking about wind resistance.