Poetry

Over the last few weeks, Rūma Kererū has been busy learning a different range of poetic styles. Each student has written and illustrated their own book of poems that they are now beginning to narrate. Look out for these on individual blogs. In the meantime enjoy reading a selection of poems by Rose. She's done a great job putting matching images to her words.

Westland Milk Products - Westgold Winners.

In term two, Westland Milk Products gave all primary school students in Hokitika the opportunity to enter a drawing/design competition they were running under the theme, '12 days of a West Coast Christmas'. 

What the students had to think about was how their design would look on a packet of Westgold butter, and more specifically what their design represents about life in Hokitika and how they spend Christmas with their family on the West Coast. 

In line with the '12 days of Christmas', the 12 winning entries have the honour of having their design and name on a packet of Westgold butter over the Christmas season.  

We are really proud to celebrate the success of six Rūma Kererū students who along, with Isla from Rūma Weka, had their designs picked as winners! Well done to Marnie, Rose, Nate, Mackenzie, Ngaio and Rebekah. These students have won four movie tickets and been given their winning designs in postcard form. In a couple of months, they will see what their design looks like in a Westgold butter wrap and no doubt shortly after that we will see them appearing for sale so keep an eye out for them. Thanks, Westland Milk Products!

The winners . . . Ngaio, Marnie, Rebekah, Nate, Mackenzie, Rose and Isla.

Below you can see the winning Ruma Kereru designs printed in postcard form. Isla's design will feature on Weka's blog.

Designer: Ngaio

Designer: Nate

Designer: Rose

Designer: Mackenzie

Designer: Marnie

Designer: Rebekah

Matifics - Confirmed Results

We knew we were the champion school this year and now we have the official results through!
As the newspaper articles states, "Kaniere School has won the Olympics of the maths world." Our school was not only the first placed school in this year's Matifics Competition, but we also topped the champion classes leaderboard.  This has been a great achievement for us. Congratulations again to all our hard-working mathematicians.

It was great to read about our success in the West Coast Times today! 

Matifics Competition

Our whole school is competing in 'The Matific Maths Game' competition this week. Students have to complete a range of maths thinking tasks that they receive points for. Schools from out New Zealand and Australia are competing and currently Kaniere School is coming FIRST!!  All class levels throughout the school are also currently in FIRST PLACE! 
Ruma Kereru is extra proud to hold 7 out of the top 10 places with Che currently first and Nate 2nd.

Year 6 - Leaderboard

Rose, Maya and Kaycee are working hard to beat each other's scores.

Kade and Cooper have both made it into the top 10. Woohoo!

Nate and Che - current two place getters!

Belinda - currently 2nd for Year 5, Maya and Faith. Go, girls!

Top Schools - Leaderboard

West-a-Maths

Go Team Kaniere! 

Rūma Kererū students have their fingers crossed for Abby, Greta, Caleb and Andrew as they head off  to the West-a-Maths competition at Grey Main today. They have a tough task ahead. They will be using all their maths skills to answer 20 questions within 30 minutes as they compete against other Year 6 teams from across the West Coast. We are waiting to hear how they do.

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Learning to Save Lives

Last week we were really lucky to have Kathryn come into our class to deliver St Johns 'People Savers' course. Ruma Kereru couldn't believe it when a whole heap of bodies came out of the bag that Kathryn carried into class.

Before they knew it the students were down on their hands and knees and doing keeping time to the song 'Staying Alive' while they did chest compressions to pump air into the models. After they have done the 30 compressions they needed to blow air into the models.

Things got really exciting when Kathryn got a model called Brayden out of her bag. Brayden lit up when enough oxygen was pushed through to the brain. It was exciting to see who could get their timings accurate enough to make this happen. Here are some photos but keep an eye out for the videos that are coming soon!

Kade gets his hands on the 'live' model Brayden

Rotating around the models - it got tiring!

Covering the mouths on the titled heads.

Kathryn demonstrates how the 'live' model will work.

Learning to Create Flow Charts

28th May

Drawing Flow-Charts 

So far this term the class have been learning to write explanations that tell their reader how or why something happens. After watching a small TED talk video clip that explained how baby turtles grow. It also showed some of the dangers that turtles face. Students discussed in buddies all the steps they could remember. They wrote notes about these and then watched the video again. The next step was to break the different steps and stages down into a flow-chart of events that chronicled the life of a sea turtle. Drawing pictures using google draw or the shapes tool on google slides allowed the students to 'see' the different steps.

You can see below examples of Belinda, Greta and Jaidon's learning so far. Keep watching for future updates!

Jaidon, Belinda and Greta's Planning Flowchart

Sign Language with Ruth

15 May 2019

We were really lucky to have Ruth come into our class this week to give us a 'taster' session on New Zealand sign language. From the time Ruth stepped into the class she didn't speak - a very different experience for everyone. Using picture cues and modelling with her hands the class learned how to sign the letters of the alphabet and sign their own names. It was great learning how to sign simple greetings and ask questions such as, "Your name what?" and "You have animals what?" As Ruth explained to us all the 'little' words are not used when signing.

Kaycee spelling out her name. 

Rebekah masters the sign alphabet.

Flynn learning how to ask questions.

You can almost see Aaliyah's brain working!

Kid's Lit - Greymouth 2019

14 May 2019

We are super excited to share the news that our team of Year 5/6 four students WON the Year 6 Kid's Literacy competition in Greymouth today. Check out some of the photos of the action below. The smiles say it all. Congratulations Abby, Belinda, Caleb and Andrew - you did us proud! Enjoy reading your book prizes.

Write NZ

Over the last couple of weeks, Rūma Kererū students have been busy writing descriptive poems based on colours. After that, each of the students wrote an eighteen-word poem based on one of a small object that they were given. These ranged from a small ship in a bottle, a puzzle piece and a candle. Postcards were written and these were decorated to form the design that you can see on the 32 postcard pictures. Our poems are now winging away their way to a school in Auckland and we are eagerly awaiting our package from another school. Thanks School Kit. We really appreciated the coloured pencils and equipment you gave our class.

Cards for Constable Jos

The whole school 'turned out in blue' yesterday in recognition of Constable Jos who, along with Constable Terri, has been coming to Kaniere School over the last 15 years to teach our students valuable skills. Rūma Kererū students also look forward to the safe cycling lessons and biking around the challenge course on the turf, before practising their new skills out on the roads. All classes also made cards for Constable Jos and know he is going to be kept pretty busy reading them! Rūma Kererū students put thought into designing their cards on google draw and thinking about what they wanted to write. Well done, Abby, Rebekah and Kaycee your cards look great!

Year 4-6 Swimming Sports

Thanks to the wonderful support from our school community the Year 4-6 swimming sports ran like clockwork. It was fantastic to see our not so confident swimmers 'give it go' and enter all of the half-length races that were on offer. Some of the length swimmers were in back to back events but everyone still swam their hearts out. A big shout out to those parents and grandparents who stepped into the role of timekeeping. It really is appreciated!

Whakataūki

This week's whakataūki. After our class discussion regarding what it means to you add your comments below.

Arahura Marae

It was a simply amazing experience to visit our local Arahura Marae yesterday. Rātā Hapu thoroughly enjoyed the range of activities that they took part in. They particularly enjoyed hearing the stories of the carvings in the wharenui. In keeping with Maori tikanga, we couldn't take photos in the wharenui to share with you. The kai we ate at morning tea was a special treat. and much appreciated!

Hockey Time

We were really lucky to have Jack and Luke from Canterbury West Coast here at school today. They travelled done from Greymouth with Colin Chester, a very generous man who has donated $28,000 worth of hockey equipment to schools and organisations throughout New Zealand with the aim of generating interest in the game amongst younger people. The hockey gear donated will be based in Greymouth and our school will have access to it. We have a hockey tournament coming up at the end of this term and I know we will appreciate using some of the new equipment now available to us.

Swimming Time

A big "thanks" to our amazing swimming coaches at our first lessons for the year. We really couldn't have done it without you. Ruma Kereru very much appreciates you giving up your time to help us today. As you can see from the photos everyone was finetuning their swimming techniques for the upcoming senior swimming sports.