Newsletter Week 4 Term 3
Sawyers Bay School 18th August 2022
Principal's Message
Kia ora Koutou,
I am very pleased to welcome Amber and Charlie to SBS and Papatūānuku. We are so pleased to have you with us.
Thank you to the families who joined us last week for PCT Discussions. We find this to be an incredibly valuable opportunity to sit down with you and discuss your children in a very focused manner.
Next week will be a busy week at SBS. Firstly we have a group of senior students representing us at the North Zone Cross Country on Monday, the teachers will be diving head first into a day of Maths professional development on Tuesday, and another group of senior students will be competing in the Otago O'Mathalon on Thursday (imagine a math's quiz but with loads of running). Good luck to all of our representatives, we know that you will make us proud.
Please do remember that we are closed for all children on Tuesday 23rd, this Tuesday, for our Teacher Only day. Thank you in advance for your support.
Mā te wā,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Tuesday 23rd August - Teacher Only Day
- Tuesday 6th & Wednesday 7th September - School Photos
- Tuesday 20th-23rd September - Year Six School Camp
STARJAM JUMP JAM
Check out the video below, beware the kids are so bright you may need sunglasses on.
Certificates Week 3 Term 3
Te Akonga o te Wiki
Papatūānuku
Kia ora whanau! This week we warmly welcome Amber and Charlie to Papatūānuku. We are thrilled to have you both in our class. It has been a week of investigation, exploring and discovering in Papatūānuku. We started the week learning about magnetic force. We did a lot of exploring in our class to see what DID attract to a magnet and what didn’t attract to a magnet. It was fun experimenting with many different items in our classroom! We have learned about the North and South Poles on a magnet, and learned about ‘attract’ and ‘repel’. There are photos to illustrate our findings!
With Miss Richardson (our University of Otago, College of Education Third Year Teacher) we continued our learning about Floating and Sinking. The ‘Bear’ family needed to get across the lake. Individually we designed then created a floating vessel to get them across the ‘lake’ in our class. Some made it….some didn’t. But we had a lot of learning about which materials make the best floating vessels along the way!
We are excited to learn our Kapa Haka songs, and it is heartwarming to hear that these waiata are being sung at home in some households too.
Just a reminder that Wonderful Wednesday is our Show and Tell day, along with our Library visit day, so you are able to keep our school library books at home for the week for repeated reading fun, but please return by the following Wednesday. Thank you!
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
Mālō e lelei, kia ora, talofa, hello,
This week in Maths, we teamed up with buddies, put the place value blocks out and wrote a number up on the board. Then we had to look at the blocks and go back to our partners and work out the value of the blocks and put the numbers in the right order (Isaac)
We went to tables and we had buddies. Mr Fisher wrote the numbers up on the board and we looked at it and had to put the numbers in the right order of hundreds, tens and ones (Stan)
We made planes out of paper with Mr Fisher and when we were finished we went to the big fort to find out the direction of the wind and where to fly our planes from (Ella)
The wind moved in different directions so we had to change where we flew them from and we knew that the plane needed to fly into the wind.
Report by HRW Tamariki
Tāwhirimātea
This week Tāwhirimātea have been looking at circuits. We are beginning to understand that a circuit needs to be complete in order for it to work. We noticed the connection between the word circuits and circle. We made a simple circuit when we made our electromagnets and are now building upon this knowledge. On Monday we looked at how a switch worked and made our own models to show this using pipe cleaners. Our models included the correct symbols for batteries, bulbs and switches. We also had a small play with a neuron kit - the highlight being when we made a circuit using the power source, lights, a buzzer and crocodile clips. We sat in a circle and held hands to complete the circuit…the squeals of delight were wonderful when the class quickly realised that they were passing the power through themselves and around the circle. If anybody broke our circuit by letting a hand go, then the circuit was no longer complete and failed to work. We will continue to explore different circuits using the neuron kit and see what else we can create!
We have had two wee lambs in our class over the last week - Milo and Marshmallow. The children have been feeding them and taking them out during break times to explore our playground. This week we wrote acrostic poems about lambs. We then drew lambs and had fun using a variety of art supplies including pencils, pastels, watercolor paints, to create realistic pictures of lambs.
We continue to develop our knowledge of fractions this week. We are now using our problem solving skills to solve problems involving fractions…this is also teaching us about division!
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora
We were so proud to share our 3D illusion drawings at Friday’s assembly. Both Ella and Madeline spoke on our behalf and shared what we have been learning in our classroom. We used a focal point to align our shapes to and used shading to show more depth. Everyone enjoyed creating their artwork.
Miss Grellet-Hale demonstrated how to ride a unicycle as part of our writing unit on explanation writing. Well done Morgan!!!!
We look forward to participating in Polyfest this term. We have begun school wide Kapa Haka practices and are learning 3 waiata. The children are amazing.
Ka Kite
Report by Miss Ruzsa
Hinemoana
We are being flavour creators in Hinemoana and coming up with our very own delicious ice cream flavours. Our new flavour creations will be entered into a competition with Duck Island Ice Cream with the winning ice cream being made and shared with the winning class! Some of our flavours are Smores (Quinn), Cornflake Maple (Liam M) and Pavlova (Pyper). With our entry we have to also write a description about what our ice cream tastes like and where our flavour inspiration came from. Here is an example of some of our work -
My inspiration is an awesome camping trip I took with my family. We went to Naseby and toasted massive marshmallows over the roaring open fire and then ate them with scrumptious oreos. It was so fun! By Quinn
My ice cream tastes like a light, fluffy lemon meringue. When you put it in your mouth it will melt on your tongue. You will enjoy chunks of marshmallow and swirls of tangy lemon curd. By Indy
My ice cream tastes like NZ! It has bits of chunky oreo, chunks of sweet and spongy marshmallow and bits of sprinkled flake. It is filled with all of NZ’s favourite sweets. By Beth
Cross your fingers one of our flavour creations is the winner!
This week we have also enjoyed having Miss McKay teach us a lot more. Miss McKay has been teaching Handwriting and taking a group at guided reading time and will be with us every day until the end of term. We are very lucky in Hinemoana to have two teachers!
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
We are wrapping up our Temperature learning for maths in Tane Mahuta this week. We have really enjoyed making new discoveries about temperature and thinking about temperature in different ways. We have completed a range of activities including experiments using thermometers, calculating average temperatures and focusing on weather and climate in different areas around the world. Did you know that the highest temperature recorded in Kenya was over 40℃? We don’t think that Dunedin has ever reached that temperature! Feel free to ask us some questions at home about our temperature learning, we might have some interesting things to tell you about some different climates and countries around the world!
Report by Miss Tenci
Community Notices
School Closed Tuesday 23rd August
Sawyers Bay School Board Elections
Nominations for the School Board Elections 2022 have now closed. A total of 6 nominations were received, which means we move to a voting election. If you are eligible to vote, you should have received your voting paper and instructions by now. Please contact the school office if you haven't.
Sawyers Bay School
School Board Elections Nominations Received
ASHTON Stefanie
CHAPMAN Holly
DAWE Anita
DICK Matthew
GIDDENS Tim
PRASAD Michael
Voting closes at 4pm on 7 September.
Kyla Martyn
Returning Officer
Contact Us
Email: office@sawyersbay.school.nz
Website: https://sawyersbay.school.nz/
Location: Sawyers Bay School 99 Stevenson Ave, Sawyers Bay, Dunedin 9023, New Zealand
Phone: 03 472 8981