Kia ora Whanau,

It has been a surprisingly 'normal' week this week!

We are very grateful to have a dramatic drop in absences due to illness, we have had all staff well and back on board, and the kids have been busy in the classrooms and playground engaged in learning and enjoying being with their peers. It has been a pleasant change I can assure you.

On Tuesday, myself, Miss Laing and Mrs Swete were lucky enough to spend the day at George Street Normal School as part of a mathematics PLD (Professional Learning and Development) contract that the school are investing in. It is always very nice to have a chance to look at other schools in action, share ideas with colleagues from across Dunedin, and put some of our own new learning into practice. It is of course always very nice to get back to our own little slice of paradise in our own school though too.

Ka mihi nui,

Gareth Swete

Please contact the school office (4728981 or office@sawyersbay.school.nz) or Kelly Laing if you are willing to spare some time on the day. We will gratefully accept any time, short or long, that you might be able to help with.
Please note, due to the current environment, any volunteers will require a negative rapid antigen test onsite before beginning, we will provide the RATs and really appreciate your understanding here. Thank you in advance for your co-operation and support. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

This week the trophy went home with Elma!

This week, we welcome Miss Richardson back to Papatūānuku, as she starts her 3 week teaching practicum with us. After listening to lots of fairy tales over the last few weeks, this week we decided to write our own. We made a story map outline of a familiar fairy tale, then we changed all of the details to our own ideas. We collaborated to create a story map of our own class fairy tale. Then we had the opportunity to write our own individual fairy tale. First we discussed the ‘good’ characters, what they could look like, how they act and drew a picture of our own ‘good’ character. Then we discussed the ‘bad/evil’ characters, and what they could look like and be like, and drew one of those. Then we put pencil to paper and did our best effort to write our own fairytale using our own created characters. We used watercolour paints to paint a picture of something that happened in our own fairytale.

Miss Richardson read us the Maori legend of Maui and the Giant Ika. We then got into groups and acted out the story using stick puppets. This was really fun. During our maths learning this week, we have been doing lots of activities with dominoes and dice, learning to recognise the dot pattern of numbers quickly. We had a challenge to make the longest domino train. The longest one in our class was 53 dominoes long! We’re thrilled to be able to bring library books home again now from our school library. Our library day is Wednesday, so you can enjoy the books at home for a week and then please bring them back next week to return and borrow some more!

Report by Mrs Campbell

It’s been a great fun-filled learning week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi. The children have been looking at repeated patterns this week, we looked at patterns with one attribute and used a variety of equipment to make these patterns. We used the class Teddy Bears then decided to have a look around the class to see if we could find anything else to make a pattern with. The class was able to put themselves into order of people with a ponytail and people without.

This week was the beginning of our Fairy Tales Topic and the children are making a FairyTale village. On Tuesday we drew a plan of our house with a focus of size and shapes in mind then put designs on paper. Yesterday we began our models and once they are finished the children will discuss if they are suitable for purpose and make any improvements and discuss how they can be made.

Report by Mrs Brewer

This week is my last week at Sawyers Bay School in Tāwhirimātea and what a great end of my time here it’s been. I was so impressed with last week’s Jack and the Beanstalk STEAM challenge that this week I gave the groups a new fairy-tale inspired challenge - To get Little Red Riding Hood’s basket of cookies to Granny’s house by catapult. The planning, teamwork, and growth mindset have been amazing. Not one design looks the same, some look closer to slingshots, some have platforms, and some have two-part designs. I’m looking forward to the final challenge on Thursday afternoon! For math, we’ve been working on a different problem-solving task each day. To begin with the problems seemed tricky, but by breaking it down, taking a minute and using that growth mindset again, Tāwhiri has been doing a fantastic job. Continuing on from our wolf point of view writing (that you may have noticed in the windows outside our classroom), we have been using “would you rather” prompts to convince the reader of our point of view. There have been some very unique perspectives of why it would be better to see through walls…

Thank you so much to Leslee, Tāwhirimātea, and Sawyers Bay for having me for the last seven weeks, it’s been a blast and I’ve learnt so much from you all!

Report by Miss Carston

We have been continuing to develop our learning around Myths and Legends in Tane Mahuta this week. We’ve begun a fun task of story mapping a myth, legend or fairytale of our choice! We started by reading over the stories and deciding on key points for each story in small groups, we noted these down. Then we began our story map plans and thought about how we could best represent each key point in a picture format. When we had decided on some ideas for our images we plotted a path on a draft plan of how we were going to depict our stories from beginning to end, in the correct order. When we had our plans checked off and could tell Miss Tenci about all of our different images we were able to start our good copies! These good copies are looking great, many of us are still working on them but when they are finished we are looking forward to sharing them with you all in assembly.

Report by Miss Tenci

Marching Otago would like to let students and parents know about our upcoming 'Have a Go!' days for some of our marching teams.

Unite Open Free Choice marching team

Ages 5-8

Sunday 12th June, 1:30pm - 3pm

Edgar Centre

Onyx Militaires Under 12s marching team

Ages - 7-12
Sunday 12th June, 11:30am - 1pm
Edgar Centre

For more information see www.marchingotago.org.nz