Newsletter Week 7 Term 3
Sawyers Bay School 8th September 2022
Principal's Message
Kia ora koutou,
It was certainly an interesting start to our Tuesday this week with the delayed start. The decision to start at 10.45am is made as a blanket decision by the Otago Primary Principals Association, and in this instance certainly worked in our favour as we did not have enough staff to start the day! Many of our staff live up high in town, up Mt Cargill and even one who travels from Fairlie! Thanks everyone for being on to it and your support in keeping us all safe. I do however feel like we needed just a little more snow to be able to make a day of it. Everyone loves a day playing in the snow.
School photos this week have been a bit mucky too due to losing our Tuesday morning. A big thanks to Edith and Jannah for making it all happen and getting the job done. We very much look forward to seeing the wonderful results very soon.
This week you would have also received a notice home regarding Otago Polyfest. We are very excited about our performance next Thursday and having the whole school on stage. We have tried to keep the uniforms as simple as possible this time around and really do appreciate families support in trying to find something that is plain black. After a very successful PTA fundraising effort so far with the raffles, we will be looking ahead to something a little more impressive for future Polyfests, however this time around it will be just our performance blowing everyone away.
Mā te wā,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Tuesday 13th September - Board Meeting
- Tuesday 20th - Friday 23rd September - Year Six School Camp
Certificates Week 6 Term 3
Te Akonga o te Wiki
Papatūānuku
Kia Ora everyone!
This week in Papatūānuku we have been learning about capacity in math. We have been exploring different sized containers with things such as rice, water, sand and even jellybeans! Some of us even counted that one container could hold 155 beans! We have also been learning about electricity this week. We brainstormed all the different things we could think of that use electricity and talked about how we use it in our lives. We learnt about the parts that we need to make a circuit and then we were all able to create one using batteries, wires, and a lightbulb to make little light bulbs glow. We have even explored creating some other things that use electricity like small fans and electric bubble machines. This has been very exciting so far and we can’t wait to explore more!
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
Mālō e lelei, kia ora, talofa, hello
This week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi we enjoyed writing about what sort of Superhero we would be and what we would do if we were a superhero. We continue to focus on writing punctuation of capital letters and fullstops. This means the children are now looking back on what they have written and are learning to edit their work for correct places to put capital letters and fullstops.
In Topic we made a light cardboard helicopter and had a practice flight from the top of the big fort. We found the light cardboard a bit heavy and the wind didn't make for the best flying conditions, so we had to change our drop point from the fort. This helped but we still think we could make some adjustments with our measurements, which we will do later on in the week. Yesterday we also began making a class rocket with Mr Fisher, watch out for our end result in next week's newsletter.
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
This week we began learning about telling the time in Mathematics. We have been singing “What does the clock say?” and have made our own fox themed analogue clocks to help us with our learning. On Monday we explored the length of a minute. We played some fun games to see who could make the closest estimation of a minute and made predictions about how many star jumps we could complete in exactly one minute. We put our predictions to the test outside and were treated to a lovely snow flurry while completing our star jumps (see pic!). It has been a rather arty themed week this week. We have been busy learning blending techniques with pastels to create a nice vibrant artwork for the upcoming school calendar and card fundraiser, and Mr Fisher has had the children continue to work on their portraits which are exploring warm and cool colours. Progress has been slow on our electronic quiz boards this week due to Kapahaka practices and weather events, however we continue to work on recording our facts and are now learning how to turn these into questions and answers. You will have seen a notice come home on Tuesday with details about our upcoming Polyfest performance. We are very excited to have the whole school involved this year. We are having several practices each week and the children are looking and sounding amazing!
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora Whanau
We were so proud to share our cinquain poetry on the sun and our amazing shadow art. Our presenters spoke clearly on behalf of us all.
Miss Grewlett Hale began full teaching on Monday. Writing has been inspired by Tate’s great grandad's golden compass. The children are crafting pieces of creative writing centered around the adventures of the golden compass. For reading we have been learning about Pacifica and Maori legends/narratives. The children have made great connections to the text and features of the narrative.
This week's physical phenomena inquiry is about the northern lights. The children certainly have good knowledge and have asked some brilliant 'I wonder' questions that will shape our learning.
Ka Kite
Miss Grewlett Hale and Miss Ruzsa
Hinemoana
Miss Mackay is in full swing teaching us in Hinemoana and we are exploring lots of new learning.
We are learning about different sentence types - simple, compound and complex and all about conjunctions. We have learnt an acronym, FANBOYS to help us remember different conjunctions. Maybe you could ask your child what each letter stands for? And, we are beginning to understand that there is a time and place for each different type of sentence in writing to create impact and interest for the reader.
We have also begun looking at Transitions which is all about reflection, rotation and translations. We are beginning to create our own tessellation shapes and patterns to help us understand the concept of translating (sliding). We are looking forward to seeing these finished!
As a school we are also preparing for our performance at Polyfest. We are performing at 11.45am on Thursday 15th September. All children should have come home with a permission slip and information about uniforms so please sing out if you haven’t seen this or need a hand sourcing black clothes for your child - brittanyl@sawyersbay.school.nz.
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
It’s been an exciting week in Tane Mahuta starting a new Science topic with our student teacher Miss Bennett. For this topic we have been learning about magnets and magnetism. Included in this learning has been some compass work, which is going to help us on camp in a couple of weeks time! We have learned all about the different parts of a compass and how they work together so that the compass is accurate. We have learnt also that magnets have north and south poles, and did you know that the Earth itself is a HUGE magnet! We were pretty mind blown when we found that out. We are excited to continue this magnet learning and do some more hands-on activities with magnets and making over the next couple of weeks! We’ll be sure to update you on how this learning goes and the interesting magnetic things that we make.
Report by Miss Tenci
Community Notices
Sawyers Bay School Board Elections
Voting has now closed for the 2022 School Board Triennial Elections. Final results will be declared on 13 September and the new Board will take office on 14 September. Thank you to our candidates once again and to all of our families who took the time to vote.
Let's go fishing
Otago Fish & Game’s popular Take A Kid Fishing events are back this year.
We are running four free sessions from 10am to noon at Southern Reservoir, Reservoir Road, Dunedin, on September 17, 18, 24 and 25, 2022.
You must register to attend. Go to the Otago Fish and Game Council Facebook page, or follow the link below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MC68SQF
Due to popular demand, participants may register for one day only. Numbers will be limited to 120 children per event.
Spare fishing rods will be available along with experts to help kids get started. Parents or caregivers must be present to supervise children.
Thanks to our supporters at the Otago Community Trust and Oceana Gold.
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