Kaikoura Suburban School

What a beautiful day for Monday 12 October, day 1 of Term 4, 2009.  We welcome Jennifer to the senior class and we remind the Y6 students it’s their last opportunity to fill their back packs of those life long skills they need ready for the next part of their journeys.
We had another good day with exploring science!  What is best to wrap a raw egg in, to get it to the hottest temperature?  Choose a rock and soak in water for an hour, will it be heavier, lighter or the same after being submerged for an hour?  Do you know which toilet paper is the strongest?  Ask any Room 3 student and they will enlighten you.  These activities have led us nicely as we have we’re off to the Fonterra Road Show tomorrow and very excited.
Another fantastic surprise today was the return of our 2 sofa’s.  Kind Phil has covered our sofas and they are a real hit.  We thank you very much for this kind gesture. Check out the photos of the happy recipients.

Happy lads sussing out the newly covered sofa.

A few more joining in on the show.

Lemon, copper and zinc makes electricity.

Siphoning

Where will the egg go?

Watch the candle!

As another term flies by we once again end on a high note with some amazing ‘Science.’ Yesterday it was cheese making and today it was dad’s carrying out some of their favourite experiments.
John helped us yesterday to make cheese which will rest and mature over the holiday break to be sampled next term. Steve had eggs being sucked into ‘old fashioned’ milk bottles, card sucked onto an upside down glass of water, candles sitting in water with a glass put over top. The candle burnt out but then the water level in the glass began to rise!! Nokome showed how lemons, copper wire and a nail coated with zinc created electricity enough to make a bulb light up. Hussein showed us how gravity worked by siphoning water from one container to another.
We also looked at the fungus and bacteria that had grown in the agar dishes we created at Kaikoura High School with Mrs Fissenden. What a way to end the term!
Happy holidays to you all, be safe and see you on 12 October.

What a wonderful day that was had by all on Saturday 12 September.  The competitors and support crew were a great bunch, all displaying good sportsmanship and support for the event.  The staff of the school once again supporting and organising another successful day.  The Home and School committee who I believe are the best bakers in the town selling some gorgeous treats and running the coffee cart.
The other group of importance is Downer EDi for the tremendous amount of time they give to submitting traffic management plans, sourcing  cones, vests and then putting all the cones out for the event.  We are truly very appreciative of this huge undertaking.
The feedback from the event has been truly amazing, people enjoying the course, the course well labelled, support on the river bank with having the 4-wheel motor bike  meandering around, competitors enjoyed the bun, chocolate bar and fruit kindly sponsored by Kaikoura New World, the prizes and spot prizes kindly donated from the Kaikoura businesses (see the Half Marathon page on this site for the list of names) and the great organisation.
We will be running another event next year and the date for that will be
11 September 2010.
We welcome all feedback so please add comments to our blog page (simply click on the No Comment icon to the left of the blog entry) and or contact us via email or phone.
Thanks Michelle Spencer

The Fantastic Think Big Show

What a truly magnificent show hosted and performed by our stunning bunch of Fyffe Force Learners. The journey of how the production came together.

We had a sell out audience at the Mayfair Theatre which is truly a sign of the commitment and relationship of where our community and school is currently at.  The times we come together are diverse and display the many different ways we engage our students in life long learning.  This learning is crafted and created by our hard working team of caring staff  Chris, Olivia, our Mary, Jackie and  Viv.

Our inquiry journey is certainly proving to be an effective way of teaching at Kaikoura Suburban School.

Each child is enriched with many experiences catering for the many interests and needs of each student.

The Arts inquiry gave each student the option of auditioning for an area then becoming involved with the enjoyment of creating a script – The Fantastic Think Big Show.

The environment within this learning is supportive, reflective, relevant, connects to each individual, provides many opportunities to aspire and build of that teaching-learning relationship between student to student, student to teacher and student to community.

The students journey started with exploring the elements of dance – exploring body awareness, space, time and energy.  This included individual, pair and group activities to create a number of dance sequences.

Our cultures were explored by learning about different genres of dance – Hip Hop, Irish, Jazz, Pacific and Maori where the stories that each dance celebrates were recognised.

Also as part of The Arts the children each made a mask to show their identity.  They used clay to create a base through to a paper mached finished piece.

The students also had time to explore with a range of cultural music – each class looked at beat, rhythm, pitch and tempo through using the marimba and percussion instruments.

These are the activities the students are enlightened to during the beginning, the immersion, of the unit and then the production was born from this inspirational journey.

The night show was written, choreographed, set designs, acting, programmes, ticket and posters from the students ideas and wishes.

The production came together in 5 weeks and I believe this is a sign of the power of the teaching and the effectiveness of learning at Kaikoura Suburban School.

We travelled into our community to find out their points of view as to whether McDonald’s should come to Kaikoura or not?
We surveyed 72 different people from business owners, residents, tourist and school children.
The results told us that 48 people oppose the idea. The main reasons were extra rubbish, enough businesses already, our recycling centre has already enough rubbish, and obesity issues. 22 agreed to the idea. Their reasons were that it was a cheap meal option, a safe place for teenagers to go and it will attract people to stop in Kaikoura and take time to admire our town in the hope they would return at another time. 4 people were undecided.
This completes our research and we wait to see what happens in the future.

Room 3, Year 4, 5 & 6 students, have collectively agreed that McDonald’s should not come to Kaikoura!
We are off into town on Monday to see what other people and businesses say about it.
We will summarise our findings and publish a blog once the results are released.