Student Learning
Junior School
After running around and playing with our friends all lunchtime, room 19 and 18 has really enjoyed our swimming sessions in the pool.
For some of us this is our first time in the school pool environment. There are lots of things to remember from where we left our clothes and what they look like, to coping with lots of splashing noisy children. For our children, it’s always important to have some basic water safety skills early on once they become more comfortable with water. We teach them how to carefully slide into a pool and climb out safely, as well as generally rules like no running next to the pool. These early skills are important to make them feel safe around water and our school pool environment.
Over the course of the swimming season we are teaching the children to streamline their body position in the water and we introduce straight leg kicking leading to more efficient gliding. More confident children are introduced to breathing techniques and different arm strokes.
In an island nation like New Zealand it is important for us all to develop a healthy respect for water safety.
Middle School
Our lovely school pool has been put to good use so far this term! The middle syndicate classes have been eagerly awaiting their class sessions and are relishing the opportunity to cool off in this hot, muggy weather. This term, students have been further developing their awareness around water safety and safe practices in the pool. With the swimming sports just around the corner, each class has been working on improving stroke techniques and stamina to extend their swimming distance. It has been pleasing to see lots of happy faces in the pool and a positive attitude towards learning new skills. We welcome whānau to view students swimming progress at the middle syndicate swimming sports on Friday the 7th of March (Week 5). Please note that this is a new date (previously Week 6). Information regarding timing will be sent out shortly. We look forward to seeing you there.
Senior School
Self Portraits in room 6
Room 6 has already finished their self portraits!! So our job is to write about one of the LOTS of steps in the process.
Hello, we are the reporters of room 6 and we’re going to tell you how our self portraits were made.
First, we had to get out a plain white piece of paper then we sketched out ourselves with chalk. It was a little bit tricky because the chalk was very thick so we had to narrow things down a bit to get a thin line for our details.
Next we had a white piece of paper and wrote our names in bubble letters so it will POP out of the background. Soon after, we coloured our names in coloured pencil and then sharpied the names in black. Then we glued the name on the piece of black paper and then… TADA WE FINISHED OUR NAME!
Then we chose unique colours that represented us. It was challenging because everyone found it difficult to blend the colours with pastel and we learnt not to give up!
You take a toothpick and a black piece of paper 2x bigger than your actual self portrait. You take your pastels and make a brain bubble and make it colourful with at least 3 colours. After you're done you cover it with black paint. If you prefer you can wait for it to dry for clean hands. Butttttttttttt WE ARE NOT CLEAN PEOPLE, WE ARE MESSY. Take a toothpick, scratch it, not too hard though otherwise the paint will Disappear!
Finally, we made a metaphor about the colour and why we chose that colour to represent us. We had to think about the reason why we chose that colour to represent ourselves. I chose red because of my culture and Chinese New Year. This is important to me.
Written by Dissala, Jessica, Eric, Assel, Ariana
