Term 2 – Week 7 – Play Script Writing.

I’ve noticed that plays are the most popular type of text in our school journal. Tamariki often get excited and enjoy the actions and funny dialogues between characters. So, I thought—why not write our own play scripts?

To begin with, we focused on reading a variety of plays to familiarise ourselves with this type of text. We studied the main features of a play script, such as a character list with brief descriptions. We also learned that each character’s name should be written in a different colour to help readers follow along easily. Finally, we brainstormed several possible plots for our stories.

I’ll upload the template—and the extension—we followed here.

Next, tamariki gave it a go at writing their own play scripts – and I was amazed by what they came up with! We had mountain bike adventures, space missions, crime investigations, and so much more. Some ākonga even decided to team up and write a play together. You can see their script here: Play Script Writing Thomas and Lachlan.

Check out a few other play scripts created in Piwakawaka

A long day – by Evander McGarvey.

Sirenhead attacks – Written by Tane Paku

Steve and Alex’s adventures – Written by Felix Irin.

What play would you like to be presented at assembly?

I hope you enjoyed either writing or reading our play scripts.

Ka kire

Miss Cabral.

 

 

Term 2 – Week 2 – Our own Maths Board Game.

Kia ora koutou

I hope everyone had a restful and fun school holiday. In our first week back, we worked in groups to create our own Maths board games. Each game needed to include at least 12 Maths questions, covering times tables, addition, subtraction, and fractions.

We also chose fun themes for our games. Here are some of the awesome creations:
Minecraft Hunt, Hot Air Balloons and Eels, Minecraft Space Race, and Hippo Hunt.

Ka pai for working so well as a team and showing respect for each other’s ideas!

What fun Maths project should we do next?

Mā te wā (see you later),

Miss Cabral

Term 1 – Week 9 – Fantasy Writing.

Kia ora e te whānau,

This week we used our imaginations to write fantasy stories. Our room was filled with evil queens, Fire Kings, princesses, goblins, and ogres! Tamariki had to choose characters and a setting for their story, and plan the plot first to make sure it made sense. Their writing also needed to include direct speech and speech marks.

Even though the world seems to be taking a digital path, we decided to publish our books on paper. There’s something special about seeing their writing in pencil—it’s more personal, brings us closer to the author, and clearly shows their progress. To finish, we created covers for our books using pastels and dye.

I loved seeing how much fun you had and how much effort you put into your writing pieces!

What kind of book should we write next?

Ngā mihi nui,

Miss Cabral

 

Term 1- Week 8 – Hei Tiki.

Kia ora koutou,

After our visit to the Hokitika Museum, we were thrilled to take part in a special project — creating our own hei tiki to be displayed at the museum. How exciting!

Sue, from the museum, visited us and introduced two sculpture-making techniques: “take away” (carving or shaping by removing material) and “add on” (building up by adding material). Tamariki were each given a piece of clay and some tools, and they created hei tiki in many different sizes and styles. It was so beautiful to see their creativity shine!

Miss Lang also brought in different types of pounamu for tamariki to see, touch, and feel the mana (power) held within each piece. Afterwards, the children chose colours and carefully painted their sculptures.

Ka pai, Pīwakawaka! I’m so proud of the way you engaged in this special cultural project with such curiosity and respect.

Ngā mihi nui,
Miss Cabral

Term 1 – Week 7 – Science Experiments.

Kia ora koutou,

This week we focused on Science Report Writing – and it was a lot of fun! Tamariki were given a challenge and a few materials to solve it. The first task was to figure out how to blow up a balloon without using their mouths, and the second was to find a way to make an orange sink.

In groups, they discussed and experimented with different techniques. Afterwards, they wrote science reports explaining their hypothesis, materials, method, and conclusion.

In the first experiment, we learned that combining baking soda and vinegar creates a chemical reaction that produces a gas, which fills up the balloon. In the second experiment, we discovered that the skin of an orange has air pockets that help it float — so if you peel the orange, it will sink.

We’d love to hear from you! Are there any science experiments you’d like us to try?

Thanks for all the fun, Pīwakawaka!

Miss Cabral

Term 1 – Week 6 – Hokitika Museum Visit.

Olá (Hello),

Who doesn’t love a fun school trip? There’s so much learning that happens outside the classroom!

This week, Kaniere School visited the Hokitika Museum to see the Kura Pounamu – Our Treasured Stone exhibition. We listened to amazing stories from members of our community about the meaning of hei tiki and the different types of pounamu. Some of the tamariki noticed that the hei tiki were displayed in a way that formed a koru pattern.

We loved it so much that we decided to give it a go and make our own hei tiki! More details to come—stay tuned for our next posts.

Have you ever been to a museum that you really enjoyed?

Thank you for having us, Hokitika Museum!

Tchau (bye-bye),

Miss Cabral

 

Term 1 – Week 3 – Playing with Colours.

Kia ora e te whānau,

At the beginning of Term 1, Pīwakawaka experimented with using lighter and darker colours to create a sense of depth in paintings. First, we practised mixing paint to create different shades. Then, we used those mixes to paint mountain ranges. Paint went everywhere—but we could tell it was a very fun project!

I would love to hear from you: what other art projects should we try?

Pīwakawaka has been amazing to do fun activities with. You all did so well listening to instructions and making good decisions! I’m so excited to do more fun projects like this again.

Ngā mihi nui,

Miss Cabral

Cricket

Michael,  Sports Canterbury, was in town, so he popped out to school for some cricket sessions. As well as building on the skills coaching session he taught us a new game. There are four batters, instead of two, one bowler and the rest are fielders. The bowler can bowl to any one of the batters, if the ball is struck you must run. Three strikes and you are out, caught on the full you are out, or one hand one bounce is out, or you can be run out. The batters are a team and once the batting team has three people out we swapped in a new team.

It was fast and furious but a great team sport. We look forward to playing it in class.

Have you had anyone visit your school to teach team game skills?

 

Making the most of the weather

As soon as we had completed our work for the week we ducked outside to make the most of the weather.      It is always so changeable in spring. There was a quick game of Seaweed before racing into Paper, Scissors, Rock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a class maths activity, we are weeding the sycamores from the old playground. There are literally thousands of them. Each day we count how many groups of twenty we collect, and multiply this by the number of collectors. Today we estimated the number of seedlings we think there might be and wrote on paper.  We have kept a running total of the seedlings we have weeded out on the board. Mrs Hickford will have a prize for the person who has the closest estimated number.

This afternoon it was a bit drizzly but fine enough for Rōpū Sports. It was lovely to get out before the weather got too wet. Hopefully, we will get a finer weekend and things settle down as we head into Summer.