Rock Band

Last Monday in assembly there was a rock band performance. It was really fun and the songs were cool. The songs included 22 and I knew you were trouble by Taylor Swift, Troublemaker by Olly Murs, and Treasure by Bruno Mars. Our personal favorite was Treasure by Bruno Mars. The singers were really superb and sang till their hearts content, and the musicians were unreal. They have been practicing since the start of term 2 and have achieved alot. From an audiences point of view, the music was spectacular. The rock band could host a concert and it would blow the audience away. The rock band participants received excellent feedback. In my opinion, I think that we done an exceptional 10 out of 10 performance. I am really proud of my feedback and hope that I will be able to improve better and continue my journey with music.
By Gibby :)

Kapa Haka

Last night was the last night of many excellent performances by Tamatea Intermediate's Kapa Haka group alongside many other groups who showcased some outstanding talent. 

Here is a personal experience by one of the performers, Naomi Wharehinga:

Well it was very nerve wracking. It was always hard to try and find the right note for starting off a massed item, or any other song, but at least people would have a go at it. Some of the Kapa-Haka people were sick and did not have enough energy or voice to sing a whole song by the time the last show came around, but for a last night of performing we done our best, and sung our lungs out, we made sure that we did what we were told by our tutors and that showed the respect we have for them. 

The Kapa Haka team would love to thank Dee Goldsmith and Ms T for their time and effort into getting the Kapa-Haka group to where they are now, and to Mr Schaumkal for being the best guitarist in the world, and for also being who you are. It is good that all of you tutors were honest with us. Thank you again for all your blood and sweat that you put into our group, we are so grateful that you all were there with us all the way and you were fully committed.

It just goes to show that through hard work and perseverance, you can have a great time and achieve your goals.

High School

This year is speeding past and as much as we may dislike, soon we will be at high school. It's important to look at your many choices of wonderful high schools we have to choose from in Hawkes Bay and choose the one that is right for you. It's good to have an open mind when you look around the high schools and spend the time to go to their open nights. The upcoming high school open evenings are as follows:

Taradale High- Monday 9th September at 6:45pm
Tamatea High- Tuesday 10th September at 6.00pm
Napier Boys' High- Wednesday 11th September at 7.00pm
Napier Girls' High- Wednesday 11th September at 7.00pm
William Colenso- Thursday 12th September at 6.00pm

There are many more schools within Hawkes Bay that have already had their open evenings but it's definitely worth having a look at those schools as well :)

Upcoming Events

This term is very busy with room 11's community involvement, the ski trip, open evening and much, much more....

30th August- Barefoot 7s
3rd September- Tamatea Intermediate Open Evening
6th September- Ski Trip
11th September- Inter Intermediate Cross Country
16th September- AIMS Tournament

So as you can see, there is a lot just within the next 2-3 weeks. Keep an eye out here and in the school newsletter for more upcoming events! :)

Production

Tamatea Intermediate's production is getting well under way. Room 11 have been practicing for their act in the production which is still very secret. Our mystery act will be revealed on the day of the show and we are sure that it will 'wow' the audience. Our act includes some music as well. We don't want to give too much away so be sure to come and see Room 11's act in the production! The whole school is involved in the production in one way or another, whether it be behind the scenes or actually on stage. This year, the audience has been invited to dress up for the occasion in some glitter and glam.  The show will be around 23-27 September. :) It will be a special night to remember for everyone including the students, parents and staff. We hope you are as excited as we are! 

MY LEARNING

As a class we have been working on becoming self - regulated learners.  What does this mean for us....?

Well... individually we select goals for our learning on a weekly basis in all areas of the curriculum (currently with Mrs Howard's support).  We then decide the steps that we need to put in place to help us achieve these goals within our weeks learning program.

We do this by designing our weekly timetable and setting up our target grids so that we have a clear direction of what we want to achieve as learners each week. The cool thing about designing our timetable is that we get to decide when we want to work on our set goals throughout the week.  So we might decide to do reading for three periods one day and none the next.  One condition to this is that we achieve the targets that we have set ourselves in our learning each week.  We get to conference with Mrs Howard each week to share our learning, create our next steps which is good because we get to drive our own learning  and decide how we want to do it.

We like that we are still able to work in groups and set learning intentions for ourselves in these groups.  So if there is a group of us that are working on evaluating and drawing conclusions based on text we can work together to achieve this goal.  We have some good discussions about a variety of text that we have selected to read.

Canoe Polo

Tamatea Intermediate's canoe polo teams have had an outstanding season of sport. Although the season is over, a lucky 7 were chosen to represent Tamatea Intermediate in the Hawkes Bay Champs competition which was hosted on the 10th August and11th August 2013 over at Swim Heretaunga.

 The Hawkes Bay Champs team consisted of : Dylan Bishop, Nikita Binnie, Logan Haliburton, Caleb Thompson, Jack Gardner, Jayden Petersen and Sophie Davis. These 7 have showed growth in their skill in this sport throughout the season and some of them were selected to trial for the Hawkes Bay Under 14 Canoe Polo Reps team!

The Hawkes Bay Champs team was coached by 2 wonderful coaches who happen to be Mrs Howard with help from her husband Chris.

As a team we felt proud to be able to represent our school at the Hawkes Bay Champs Competition and to also receive a shirt with our last name and  special number printed on them!

The team had a relatively good first game and drew 3 all. The first win was the second game of which they won 6-3. A 1 all draw was next. That concluded our games for Saturday and on the Sunday we had our best win yet with 6-0 against St. Mary's. That win was due to our outstanding teamwork!

Our team is now planning to go to Levin later this year to compete in an under 14 year old  tournament.

Inter Intermediate Speech Competition

Towards the end of term 2, 3 students from Tamatea Intermediate were given the opportunity to go to Radio Kidnappers and take part in the Semi-finals of the Inter Intermediate Speech Competition.

     Jessica's chosen topic was RETT Syndrome- A syndrome that only girls suffer from, boys pass away at birth. There is only approximately 50 girls in NZ with it! People with RETT Syndrome have a chromosome missing in their brain that affects their walking, talking and gives them slow development.

     Zack decided to do his speech on procrastination- procrastination, for those of you who don't know, is when you put off doing something or making a delay so you don't have to do it.

     Pypah selected OCS as her topic- OCS is Only Child Syndrome. It is about her life being an only child and how it affects her. Also it includes the advantages and disadvantages of being an only child.

The judges then choose which contestant from our school would go through to the finals and represent Tamatea Intermediate against entries from the other intermediates. That contestant was Pypah! :)

The 2nd week of term3 Pypah went over to Radio Kidnappers to compete in the finals of the Inter Intermediate Speech competition. She faced students from Hastings, Heretaunga, St. Marys and Taradale. The judges decided that Pypah had won the inter intermediate speech finals!
Well done Pypah we are all very proud of you.

Miss Isaacson

This term we have welcomed the arrival of a candidate teacher from EIT. Her name is Miss  Isaacson and she has photophobia. We were going to get a photo of her for the blog but unfortunately her photophobia kicked in and she made us delete it.

     One of the activities she has run is called the dream giver. We had to brainstorm what comes to mind when we first think of dreams. Then we chose 3 out of all of the ideas we had. We ended up with creativity, imagination and  sleep. After that, we split into 3 groups and each group researched one of those three ideas. Soon after we had discussed our results, we were then instructed to do the most fun part. This stage was the drawing page. Our instructions were simple- to draw our idea of a dream giver (a person who gives us our dreams) and colour it in with coloured pencils. This inspired creativity and imagination- 2 of the main points that we thought of when it comes to dreams. This was an exciting activity!

      It has been great having Miss Isaacson in the class and I think she will make a great teacher!

Our New Topic - Electricity

Room 11 has recently started a new topic in class and that is electricity. At first, most people weren't too keen on that particular topic but as we started getting in to it, we really enjoyed it. Now we love it!! We have been doing a lot of fun things to do with this topic and have learnt a lot! We can't wait to do some more :)

     More to come.... :)
 Our class have really enjoyed learning about circuits and how to create them.  In groups of three we created and built a variety of working circuits.  My group particularly enjoyed creating a circuit with a switch so that we could turn on and off an LED. 

Next steps in this learning for Room 11 is to find out about alternating and direct current.  I believe that we use alternating current every time we switch on a light.  We will get back to you on this learning.

RadioShows

Recently, students from Tamatea Intermediate have been pre-recording their own radio show at Radio Kidnappers in Hastings. Teams of 2 or 3 are becoming radio presenters every week and listening to their own pre-recorded shows the next week.

 I am one of the students who were chosen to do a show alongside Elijah and Logan. We have made substantial improvements since the first week. We even had a special guest on one week which was very exciting. He was a christian singer/ songwriter from Kenya and his story was very interesting :) We got through the show in a short amount of time and it was our best show yet!

     We have to be prepared for what we are going to say beforehand as otherwise we make mistakes and the show doesn't turn out very well. We have to be fast at thinking of replies to say back to the other hosts as well because that makes the show more interesting :)

     It's a great experience doing a radio show and I hope to continue :)

Me2 Positive Choices

So Term 2 is now well underway and it's been awesome so far! We are coming to the end of our Me2 Positive Choices programme. Last Tuesday we had our activity day where most of us had a heap of fun. I went tramping up to Sunrise Hut in the Ruahines with the police team. Once we got up to sunrise hut, we had some lunch and found a great viewing spot. We saw a little bit of snow but didn't get very close to it unfortunately.

     Other activities included trout fishing, metal, food, biking, golf and scrapbooking. It was a fun-filled day that everyone enjoyed. I can't wait for another experience like that!

Student Market Place (SMP)

Last term Room11 took part in (SMP) Student market place. Our class made wonderful products that we sold to teachers, students from in the school and parents that came for the day.

In our class, we put ourselves into groups, and thought of ideas like pretty colourful lip gloss, video games, wooden gun paint dull black, pyramids made from marbles, bubble mixture that worked very well and wooden black chalk boards with designs on them like "Surfing into learning"

But we couldn't of done this, without learning about business, and how it worked and how to managed our money. So it would help us with how we used our money and create a product that would sell. Also a way to get people to come and buy the product.  

On the day the whole school were excited because inside the hall,  the shop keepers had set up their  stands ready to sell their product.  Our class managed to sell their products and made lots of money (Paper Money). 

Swimming Sports

On Monday the 18th of March, we had the Year 8 swimming finals. All the year 8 students walked down to the Onekawa Pools apart from the ones in the finals who were transported there. Room 11 had some students in the finals. It was a very hot day down there but all the students who swam cooled down in no time!

Room 11 are especially proud of Lily Tremain who came 3rd in the Year 8 girls finals. Everyone who swam put in an amazing amount of effort.

Overall, Ruahine won the swimming finals and Huiarau won the House race. It was great to see the students win against the teachers in a teachers vs students race!

In the end, it turned out to be a great day!

Writing

Lately we have been writing narratives. We have been studying what some language features that we can use in our writing are. We have learnt what Hyperboles, metaphors, similes, personification and onomatopoeia are. We have also chosen which emotions we are going to use in our story and put a picture showing it and a colour which usually represents it. We have some excellent writers in Room 11.

Here is an extract from Amos' narrative:

'He hunts me down like a lion but I’m faster. I weave through and around all the streets. Everything is blurry. I’m going so fast. I race round the corner and sit down. I can feel my heart pumping, the whole town probably can, it's beating so hard. I slip a piece of priceless candy into my mouth. I had paid with my life but it was worth it. I dribbled out of my mouth, it tasted better than I thought. A thought paused the deliciousness. I had better be getting back to school, slip back and no one will even notice.'  
                                                                                   Amos Plumpton

I'm not sure about you but for me, this makes me want to read more. I would have never guessed at the very start of this extract that it is over a piece of candy. It sounds like a race, but then as you read on, you find out more. In my opinion, it really drags the reader in and makes them want more.

Writing Narratives have been challenging but rewarding at the same time. It's been a heap of fun!

Extension Mathematics

On Monday this week, we started extension maths in Room 11. We currently have a mix of both year 7 and year 8 students. It has been very fun!

     We started our betting today, which is where we have to choose a ratio and the amount we want to bet. We got to start off with $500. We could win more money from answering  maths questions correctly but we could also lose money from getting them wrong. This teaches us ratios, keeping track of our money as well as the maths questions we have to answer.
    
      Mrs Howard has said that she will teach the year 8s that were in extension maths last year Trigonometry. That's going to be awesome!

      We can't wait to have heaps of fun this year and I'm sure there'll be lots of AHA moments!





      

The Amazing Maze 'n Maize

On Monday the 4th of March, Room 11 and some other classes went to the Amazin Maze 'n Maze for a whole day of maths.

 We were put into groups of 3 for a problem solving challenge which consisted of us answering  maths questions that had been placed around the day maze. There were 20 posts with 2 questions on each of them. One was a challenge question and the other one was a knowledge question.  We could complete both sets of questions or choose which set we would like to solve.  It was fun working out the answers to the problems with our team members.  
                                              
After some lunch, we were taken on a tour of the 'Scary' Maze' with  Cal the owner.  Our task was to collect statistical data about how many people had been scared in the maze, ranging from 'Not Scared' to 'Traumatised' while in attendance at Corn Evil.

We got to see behind the scenes of the scary maze and learnt alot about what happens during the nights that it is opened, so I don't think we'll be that scared when we are older enough to go through it at night!

It was an awesome day that was enjoyed by all!  MATHS LEARNING AT THE MAZE WHILE BEING AT A REAL BUSINESS MADE IT  FUN AND CHALLENGING!!!

THANKS TEACHERS  FOR TAKING US TO THE MAZE FOR MATHS:)

Room11 Who We Are!

 

 

These words pretty much say who we are as a class.

Napier Past and Future Trip

The Year 8s have been learning about Napier's past and future. 


We recently went on a trip to Napier and visited the old Napier Cemetery, walked down the hill, past the prison and along Marine Parade. We looked at the monuments and icons that are part of Napier's history.

At the Napier Cemetery we recorded data and calculated the average age of people who had passed away as part of our Statistics  learning. We also found the graves of some of Napier's founding fathers which we found really interesting.


At the Marine Parade we looked at  monuments and drew scale drawings of Marine Parade in the future. We looked at the Art Deco style buildings and the memorials as part of our historical learning as well.


We all had a great day and learnt heaps about Napier's history and are now working on changing the future attractions that may adorn'
                                                       our Marine Parade.

                   

 

Mathematics

In Mathematics we have been learning about the Mean, Median, Mode and Range of a set of numbers.
Mean= The average.
Median=Middle
Mode=Most common.

Can you find the Mean, Median, Mode and Range of the scores recorded below from chocolate sales in Room 11?

Example: 7,8,15,13, 15

Mean:  Step One:  Add all the numbers in the set                Answer: 58
             Step Two:  Divide the total (58) by the number of scores you added up (5) Answer: 11.6
So the Mean of the scores recorded from chocolate sales in Room 11 equals 11.6

Median:  Step One: List the scores in order ( 7,8,13,15,15)
                Step Two: Start counting one off from each end until there is only one number left in the
                                  middle (13)
So the median of the scores recorded from chocolate sales in Room 11 equals 13

Mode:  Step One:   List the scores in order ( 7,8,13,15,15)
             Step Two:   Find the number/ scores that is the most common (15) Note: Sometimes there
                                  is more than one mode or no mode at all.
So the Mode of the scores recorded from chocolate sales in Room 11 equals (15)

 

1) 6,8,13,15,18,22,25                           2) 7,11,18,13,8,32,14                              3) 6,13,2,11,9,6,3,2,15

4) 14.1,12.9, 11.9, 19.1                        5) 142, 117,137,116,124,139