Newsletter Week 3 Term 3
Sawyers Bay School 11th August 2022
Principal's Message
Kia ora Koutou,
It has been another great week of learning at SBS this week. We have been very pleased to have good numbers of well children at school as we continue to see the winter illnesses hopefully subsiding.
The classes have been very busy with their inquiry topic, "What's going on here?" - Exploring physical Phenomena. We have had a range of explorations from learning about machines such as bikes, right through to wiring together our own electromagnets! We all love a good hands on science topic.
I would like to remind all families that while we love having our community share our school grounds outside of school hours, we strongly recommend that you actively supervise your children while they are using the grounds. We have recently had a situation where children have been approached outside of school hours in the playground and made to feel uncomfortable. While this matter has been referred to Police, followed up intensely and resolved, it is a timely reminder to us all. I would encourage you to have conversations with your children about keeping themselves safe and staying visible to their families while at the school, or anywhere else for that matter. We believe that our school grounds are a safe and exciting place to be for kids in their weekends, and we want to keep it that way. Your support is of course greatly appreciated.
Mā te wā,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Tuesday 23rd August - Teacher Only Day
- Tuesday 6th & Wednesday 7th September - School Photos
STAR JAM FRIDAY 12th AUGUST
We challenge all children to wear their brightest clothes to school!
Dress up in your brightest gear to help get in the Star Jam groove.
Certificates Week 2 Term 3
Te Akonga o te Wiki
Papatūānuku
Kia ora whanau! We’re having a fun time in Papatūānuku exploring more about floating and sinking. As you can see from the photos, we tested a variety of objects to see if they would in fact float or sink. But first we had to make a prediction. This was new to some of us as we were initially just keen to investigate, but by the end of the afternoon, we had learned more about predicting first, then experimenting to find a result!
As part of our Junior Team Arts rotation, we have been really enjoying the Dance, Drama and Music learning opportunities we are getting to explore on Thursday afternoons. This prompted us to get the Ukuleles out in our class so now our whole class is learning together too. We can already play a song! This prompted others in our class to want to have a go too, so we are teaching each other! Our Maths learning has been all about knowing five and using five. We are learning to recognise five in many different forms, write equations about five which include subtraction as well as addition, use classroom equipment to show different ways to make five, count in fives, and to quickly recall basic facts using 5.
We are learning to write descriptions of items in our classroom. Today we used a ‘Show and Tell’ photo as the prompt for our descriptive writing. It was wonderful to see the variety of vocabulary that members of our class thought of, to use in their writing.
We have started some art work that required us to think about bright colours, and adding patterns to our art with pastel, before dying it. The theme is “What floats on Otago Harbour?”
You’ll get to see these when they are finished, and already they are starting to look fabulous!
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
Mālō e lelei, kia ora, talofa, hello
This week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi we have been busy working on our writing and adding detail. When the class has been writing they have checked over their work making sure we have written in Who? What?Why? Where? When? and How? This helps us tell our readers what we did on the weekend with more detail, and with a focus on capital letters and fullstops.
In Math the class has been looking at place values of numbers up to 1000, we have made MAB monsters using hundreds, tens and ones. The children decided which of the charts they wanted to use and had to tell it's worth. Literacy has taken off in Hine-Rau-Wharangi. What has been happening is the children are spotting words that I am reading and telling me what sound they are hearing while I read. This would be a good opportunity for them to play I spy using sounds of things they see around home.
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
What an exciting week of exploration and discovery in Tāwhirimātea! We have continued to work on our instruction writing skills by looking at how an apple corer/peeler works. We named and labeled all the parts and watched how it works. Then we set off to write our own instructions to teach others how to use it. We were able to test out some of our instructions at brain break time….it certainly made eating apples much more exciting (and easier with all the loose and missing teeth!). In Maths we have begun to learn about fractions. On Tuesday we explored ½ while working our way around 10 different activities. These had us finding half of a ball of kinetic sand using scales, finding half of a set of objects, working out how we could find exactly half of a cup of water, finding out how long it took for half the sand to fall through a sand timer and much more! Below is a video of us hard at work with our partners, discussing what strategies we could use and what the answers might be. We will be working on all 10 of these activities again, but this time we will explore ¾. The children have shown a real interest in electromagnets while learning about magnets over the past few weeks, so this week we have made our own electromagnets. We begun with a nail, which had no magnetic force at all, and ended up with a nail that could attract several staples at once! Each group was given some simple instructions on how to make an electromagnet circuit but were given time to explore, experiment and problem solve until they had a working electromagnet. We all quickly learnt the importance of making sure our circuit was connected correctly - having a lightbulb in our circuit helped us to see if our circuit was working, however a few quickly realised that by taking the bulb out of their circuits, their electromagnet was much stronger! We then took our nails out of the circuit and had a play with making our nails magnetic by running a magnet down the nail in the same direction causing all the electrons to orbit their atoms in the same direction - thus creating a magnetic field. We were all VERY excited to have made our own magnetics in two different ways!
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora from Ranginui,
We have had fun with our shadows this week - dancing on the top court, making them run, jump, and hide!
We have discussed My Shadow, a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson and discussed the meanings of each stanza. Miss Grellet-Hale will be joining us until the end of the term and she is looking forward to working in Ranginui.
Today we worked with Tawhirimatea learning about refractions. Mr Fisher and I set up an experiment; ‘Spear Fishing’ The students created a model fish and aimed four straws at it. They then slipped skewers through the straws to see if they had speared the fish. Most realised that they were under estimating where the fish was. (see our photos)
It has been really good talking to you about your child's progress and their successes.
Report by Miss Ruzsa
Hinemoana
This week in Hinemoana we have been checking in with when and how we should use commas in a series (or commas in a list). Commas in a series separate each item with the last item separated by the conjunction ‘and’. The children are working hard to make sure they have all their commas in the right place.
For our topic, Physical Phenomena we are starting to look at Sight and Light. We have brainstormed all the things we already know and completed some experiments that turned us into light benders to explore the idea of refraction. These are all super simple experiments that I’m sure the children in Hinemoana could wow you with at home. You could even test their scientific learning further by asking them what refraction is!
For music, we are learning all about percussion. We started with body percussion and learning to keep the beat and rhythm with others and now we are learning to play some different tunes on the glockenspiel (which fits quite nicely with all our learning about sound). The children are doing a great job working in groups to play classics like Mary Had a Little Lamb and Row Row Row Your Boat, with some children already being brave enough to perform for the class. Well done Hinemoana!
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
This week in Tane Mahuta we have been extending our knowledge further about Science, we are specifically linking to our topic of the Physical World and our Big Question “What’s Going on Here?”. We are connecting with this topic in many different ways, firstly we’ve been looking at weather and temperature around the world for math. Secondly, we’ve connected with different Science topics for writing - including the eye and writing an information report about how our eye works and how we see. Finally, we are in the process of creating 3D models to represent the anatomy of the eye in our Inquiry time at the moment. This week, we wanted to share some of the new Science facts we have learned with you all about the eye because there have been a lot of them! Ask yourself as you have a read “Did I know that before Tane Mahuta told me?” because we have been quite surprised by some of these new facts!
Fact 1: “The ciliary muscle helps to control the size of your lens in your eye so that you can see things that are close and far away.” - Jorjah
Fact 2: “After the light comes through your eye and hits the retina, rods and cone cells help us see the colour and the shape of the objects around us. The rods help us see form and black, white and grey and are better at seeing in the dark, whereas cones help us see colour but need more light.” - Pip
Fact 3: “The pupil is actually just a hole into your eye which is protected by the cornea. The pupil’s job is to let light through.” - Rhys
Fact 4: “The optic nerve sends messages from your retina to your brain. This helps us understand what we’re seeing.” - Chaya
Fact 5: “Initially the things your eyes see are actually viewed as upside down and your brain flips them up the right way to help make sense of them.” - Jack
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