Bastille Day Fun and crepes for lunch too.

We had chefs, fashion models and designers, cyclists, mime artists, artists, onion sellers and French colours. It was the best day!!!

Mr. Osmond served us Champagne (The non alcoholic variety) DELICIOUS !!

Our Fun French Assembly

We had a fun assembly and we danced to La Marseillaise.

Mr. Osmond has ridden on the Tour La France circuit. He rides his bike a lot and is really enthusiastic about  cycling. He wore his French cycling clothes.

Arriving at School on Bastille Day

Bastille Day was so much fun. We all dressed up in French style clothes and brought French food to school to share.

Another piece of writing from Georgina who is 8 years old and loves writing.

1998 Queenstown Earthquake Nightmare!

The 1998 Queenstown Earthquake was a tragedy. Millions of  people died. I was lucky to survive. It was so long ago but the memory plays vividly in my mind.

I was in school when it happened, as I was only seven. We were doing Maths and I was nearly  dying of boredom. I was drifting off to sleep when I felt the earth shift and I heard the windows smash. I realised it was an earthquake which meant the tectonic plates were moving. My classmate screamed beside me as glass spiked her. But I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about my mother. She died in an earthquake, and now I will die the same way. I felt a feeling that I have never felt before. Fear.

 “Get under the desks!”  My teacher yelled, “because the roof is falling.” Everyone scrambled for their desks but I couldn’t move. I was paralysed with fear. I heard my teacher calling , then I heard the roof creak, and strain to stay on top of the school, it was a  battle between the roof and the earthquake but, finally the roof  surrendered and fell on top of me. It felt like I was in a really fast jet boat in the water and I fell out and broke my back. A bit like that. But 1000 times worse. I winced with pain. I tried to get out but my feet were trapped by an iron beam.

At last, the earth sighed  and the earthquake stopped, and then it was silent. Hmmmmmmmmm. The sound of  a  electric drill filled the air. Hmmmmmmmmm. It sounded like people were searching for survivors in the school!  “ Survivor!!” Someone yelled. “Hang on kid, we’re coming!’ A painful hour later they found me but they couldn’t get me out because I was trapped by a iron beam, not a wooden one.

 

When all hope was lost a man came up with an amazingly genius idea! “Let’s slip her shoe off!”

“Brilliant”

“Fantastic”

“Genius”

They slipped my shoe off and I was free! I was so happy until I came out of the school. Rubble and corrugated iron was all over the place and  lifeless bodies lay on the concrete. A man came up to me and said he would walk with me to another town. I was glad he offered and I gratefully excepted. We walked to Dunedin and now I still live there and I am 50 years old. I feel like I will live forever.

Georgina

Rebekah was student of the Week

       Visiting South Beach

On Wednesday the 8th of June, Fordell school travelled to sandy South Beach to collect pumice.

 First we got out of the cars to the opening of South Beach. The waves were crashing down and the sand was blowing across the beach.

I took ten steps and then finally I found some pumice laying all alone in the sand half buried. I picked it up and started to find more pumice. Soon my bag was full with pumice. The bag nearly ripped because it was as heavy as a junk food eater elephant and I was really struggling to carry it, so I put it down.

Later Tineisha and I wondered around South Beach and decided to play tag. It was very fun playing tag but I nearly stepped on a sharp and pointy stick facing upwards and it would have hurt.

After we ate morning tea. I ate crackers, pretzels and a nut bar. They were yummy like chocolate cake.

After I ate my morning tea, Tineisha and I went searching for unusual looking shells. Some of the shells sparkled in the sun and some looked like one thousand years old. After collecting the shells Tineisha and I set them out on the sand dunes. It was fun because it was like selling seashells from a shop.

Next it was time for me to do something else so I went over to where Georgina and Libby were. I wondered what they were doing ... They were sliding down the sand dunes!!! It looked like fun so I joined in and I had a great time with them even though we got sand up our undies.

 Later in the day it was time to go back to school and start to make the pumice towers.

I enjoyed the trip and I think Fordell school should have another trip to South Beach one day!!!

By Rebekah

Rebekah got student of the week for being commited to working. She works steadily all the time with excellent results. She listens and follows directions very well.

Best work of the week.

Olive did her maths work so neatly this week she got the pencil in assembly. She always uses a ruler well in her maths book and she devised a way of recording her Think Tank answers so it was easy to follow in marking time.

Poetry Readers of the week.

Christian and Georgina both read this week's poem fantastically. The poem got faster and faster and Georgina  did it perfectly. Christian read it so many times before the competition that we couldn't believe it was him reading it. Well done!!!

Kate's Illustrating

Kate is an illustrator for children's books. She also writes and illustrates her own books. She came to our school today to show us how she does observational drawing from photographs to start her ideas. She also showed us how many times she drew each picture as she developed her ideas and put her story boards together. Some pictures she draws 20 times !!!  This is before she begins painting.
We are using story boards to plan our writing so it was interesting to see how illustrations are put together in the same way.


Then we did observational drawing looking at the shapes and spaces people made in photographs.
We really enjoyed learning more about drawing from Kate. 

Observational Drawing with Kate

Kia Ora. This is Maori Language week and we are using every day greetings as best we can in Maori. 

Our language focus this term is French and we have done the Oui programme.

We can now count to ten in four languages. Do you know what languages they are?

Tahi  rua  toru  wha  rima  ono  whitu  waru  iwa  tekau

Un  deux  trios  quatre  cinq  six  sept  huit  neuf  dix

Uno  dose  tress  cuatro  cinco  seis  siete  ocho  nueve  diez

One t wo  three  four  five  six  seven  eight  nine  ten

Best Work of the week.

Georgina has the neatest work for this week. Her homework is done with pride and her book is very neat. She has got a pencil in assembly today for being Studio Two's neatest worker and taking pride in presentation. The pencil says 'Principal's Award' on it and we are graphing who gets one so we can keep track of who takes pride in their presentation.

Georgina is also our student of the week for displaying one of our values: Compassion. She is very kind and invites others to work with her when they haven't got a buddy.

Libby's Homework.

Libby is only 8 and in year 4 and she knows nearly all the basic facts. She practises every night and always does her homework neatly. She is also a thoughtful worker in class. Her Mum wrote in Libby's homework book, "I am very pleased with Libby's math! She flew through basic facts practise tonight! So proud Libby!" That makes us all feel good.

Well done Libby. She was also the most expressive, fluent poetry reader this week.

Learn to paint light and dark

We have been practicing our observational drawing focusing on light and dark and how to achieve contrast to show shape. Now we are experimenting with paint.

How we learn best.

Studio Two have decided on the behaviours which help us learn best. 1. Listen 2. Look 3. Think 4. Do

Ripper

We had a tournament at our school today. The schools who came to play were Hunterville, Saint Annes and  Wanganui East. The 4 schools played each other as part of this winter's tournament. Our best teams will play in an all day tournament against many schools next week.
Our students also enjoyed playing basketball with Saint Annes at Lunch time.
Our Fordell parents made all the home made baking to feed the visitors and others ran the barbecue lunch.
Our year 5 and 6 students really enjoyed their day and Mr Osmond had put a lot of work into organising it.

Ripper Rugby Tournament

Fitness

Every morning we do fitness activities. Today we rotated around 5 different activities. We keep moving all the time. We do fitness at 9 am. every morning. It gets our hearts pumping and our brains working. We enjoy fitness challenges.

More Construction

We have focused all term on construction. After looking at all the ways objects can be attached and different ways of looking at constructions we have finished another construction.

How to Access Us Quickly

The quick way to access our blog is to type Fordell School into Google and click on Room 2. That opens our blog immediately. You might even like to save it in your favourites then. You can also find out more about our school.

Statistics

In Studio Two we graph every piece of information we can on every type of graph possible and we compare data when ever we can. We are now very good at making graphs in Microsoft Office Excel. Here are some examples of graphs we made ourselves.

Famous Mum

Olive and Luka's parents are both well known Australian Artists. They have just been back in Australia for the opening of an exhibition of Olive's Mum's work. The Art Gallery of Western Australia has purchased the entire exhibition of works made by Olive and Luka's Mum. Her name is Cobi and her exhibition of 9 glass panels is called, 'Esse' and it refers to landscapes.

You can get a little glimpse in this picture. 

Olive's Work

We are learning to speak French and we are researching information about France and comparing it with how we live in New Zealand. One of the things we wanted to find out was all about the Eiffel Tower: who designed it? Why is it there? How was it built and what is it made of? 
We have found out all of this information and more.
Olive did the scaled drawing of the Eiffel Tower, she is about to put her information onto it. We were very impressed with the effort Olive has put in to her work.

Homework

In Studio Two we get 40 house points if we have National or International news and can talk about it. Ella and Georgina are real news scouts and enjoy finding out about what's going on in the world. This is their news project which they did this weekend about the Tornado in New Plymouth.

Luka Turns Eight

Luka's birthday and look at the great cake his Grandy has made so everyone can have a piece. It was amazing !!

The Amazing Experience at South Beach

On Wednesday 8th of June, 2011, the whole of Fordell School took a trip to South Beach, to collect pumice, because we were making pumice towers.

We went armed with plastic bags and travelled in the parents’ cars who had kindly offered transport to South Beach and back. There were a lot of puddles on the road so the cars got a rather muddy shower.

When all the cars had driven to the South Beach car park and had stopped their engines, we got our plastic bags and ran down the path to South Beach. I gasped at the wonderful sight. Sand was sparkling, coated with shells and pumice. The waves were crashing down onto the sand, a great big mess of water and foam. Then I saw the pumice and realised everyone was bending down to collect it. I quickly copied them and soon my bag was full of pumice. It was vey heavy so I put it down.

Then Libby and I went to explore. I found a hollow piece of wood that had a hole in the bottom and looked like it was strong so I filled it with beautiful shells and blocked the hole with sticks and sand. Then we were called to morning tea.

After morning tea Libby and I slid on the sand dunes until it was time to leave and got sand up our undies.

I really enjoyed my experience at South Beach and recommend you go there too. The sand dunes are really steep but don't go on them if you don’t want to get sand up your undies.

By Georgina