Cricket at Riwaka

On the weekend we went to Riwaka to play cricket.  We played against Nelson girls.  They batted first.  I got a maiden over.  They meant they got no runs off the over that I did/  In the end they got 190.

Me and  started the batting.  Daniel faced a few then he got out.  Then I faced a few then I got out for a duck.  Then Pax came in and hit a four.  Then he got out.  They had a person more than us so I got too come back in and I started to hit it.  Then I realized that there were two balls left so on the second to last ball I hit it for a four then on the last ball I hit for a six.  Then we had to go find it in the bush.  It took a while to find it but we did.  We lost by 84 runs but we got 106 so that's pretty good for us.

By Daniel

First Post for 2014!

Wow!  This year has been busy.  We have had many school events and I have not blogged about any of them.  It is time to turn the task of managing this blog to the students.  The students have been writing on their individual blogs so check out what has been happening.  Hopefully we will get some new posts on this class blog soon.

Careers Education through sailing

We got to go sailing and kayaking for two whole days this week.   We discovered capsizing is fun.  Salt water stings the eyes and bruises appear from nowhere.  Great fun was had and the instructor told us we should keep learning.   It was rather windy but our tacking, gybing, reaching, and downwind sailing got very good for beginners very quickly.  We are all great at capsizing and righting the boat.  Some of us can do this 5 times in 10 minutes in an opitimist which is hard to capsize.  Students showed their ability to take risks, persevere, and be courageous.   Mrs Feron also turned it into a lesson on working together even when we are tired, hungry and cold.  The carreers education bit: Working to help others out so the whole group can get into and out of the water quickly.  Group goals take priority over individual wishes.

Structure building.

An interesting time overcoming challanges with  creative solutions while we were building structures today.  They had to hold our group up 1 metre off the ground with only the materials provided.  Everyone thought there wasn't enough string!  Mrs Feron thought this was all about cooperation and contributing ideas.  We thought it was about avoiding any more work and having fun.

Fathers Day

We are learning to PEE when we write paragraphs.  Each paragraph has to have a point, an explanation, and examples.  I asked the lads and lasses in my class to write 5 peeing paragraphs about a parent. At this point Sheree reminded me it was Fathers Day on Sunday and asked if they could make cards.  I surprised them by bringing in my cardmaking stuff.   This resulted in a Friday morning and lunchtime of creativity and messes.  Halfway through the morning I had the bright idea of making this part of our upcoming unit on friendships.   I made the students write a complimentary description about a class member that I chose.   It was a much harder task thinking of ideas. We suddenly found a learning reason to use Google chat so Ihad to lift the class wide ban.  In The past Google chat has proved a major distraction.   Today, however, it was extremely helpful as it allowed students to discreetly queriethe friends odd the person they had been assigned to. A very successful way to get students collaborating with people they don't usually seem out.   They then made another card to  contain the published writing.

Chemistry Experiments

One of the lads in my class asked if we could blow things up.   I dutifully looked up the recipes and talked to our science teacher.   On Wednesday we spent 2 periods in the science lab discovering what chemicals change the flame color and making some bombs.  We soaked some pinecones in the chemicals in preparation for our Friday adventure.
Friday afternoon we gathered the pinecones and smoke bombs and rushed to the beach.   We learnt about fire safety,  the needs of a fire and how to safely extinguish fires.   The smoke bombs were a success but the pinecones didn't work.   We will discuss why on Monday.

Why students need an education.