Awakeri School Room 12

We are a beautiful bunch of 29 year seven and eight children. There are 16 boys and 13 girls. We work hard and do our best. Our wonderful teacher is Mrs. Merry. She does fun work and is a great teacher.

05.05.08 Great news for all of you! We are all back at school ready for the exciting weeks ahead of us. In week 3 rooms 12 and 13 are going on camp to Tui Ridge!!!!!! In week 6 we have speeches (just for the senior classes!).
We are starting our preparations for camp this afternoon. We have a total of 27 parents coming with us so that means we can enjoy the time away from school (except it's not a holiday we still have to do work!!). The class is very excited about going so we hope it will be great fun!
Now for other news! We are still carrying on with Disasters as our topics. WE have now finished Number as our Mathematics study and will be moving on to Statistics tomorrow! Today we have finished up with a post test!!!
After Interval a lady will be coming in to talk about energy a such. It will be great help for our science fair that is coming up later on in the year. The name of this lady is Mrs. Louise Maple. She will only be coming in on Mondays after interval and the class is excited that she is coming in.
On Wednesday some people from a Rugby team are coming in to teach us some skills!
Well have to go and do some more work tell you what's happening later on Bye!!

18.04.08 Today is the last of school this term. Everyone is excited!! In assembly today a group from the fun(d)raiser gave out their prize. The prize was to cream pie Mr. Fitz, some teachers won the prize to and they got to pull a name out of hat (the name of a teacher who said they will be happy to be cream pied) and that was the person they cream pied. The wonderful teachers who won this was : Mrs. Merry who cream pied Mr. Hawkes and Mrs. Cronin who cream pied Miss Taggart. Assembly was very fun!!!!
Well I'll keep you all in touch next term so for now good luck for the holiday's and stay safe!!!!!

17.04.08 We have just come back from a session with a guy called Nick. He taught us a few tricks on how to play badminton. Everyone enjoyed it especially the game we played at the end. The game was called Around the World. The is about running up to hit the Shuttle then run around the opposition (Nick) and join the line. It was so fun and it definitely got us out of work!!
Also yesterday we had our fun(d)raiser even though it was raining a lot. Instead of the activities outside we shifted them inside so the children buying stuff and participating in games would not get sick. All of the stalls did very well considering the weather.
With only today and tomorrow the holiday's are nearly here. Everyone is excited and is talking about what they are going to do during the holiday's.
They have joined bus routes together so no one will get left behind at school and have to stay late in the afternoon and be dropped off quite late. Except this will start next term and the routes are in the newsletter.
Well better go and do some work. Bye.

11.04.08 We are nearly ready for the fun(d)raiser next week. Today in assembly we acted out our skits that we made up.
We have nearly finished our art work (family portrait photos). We are all up to putting the bits of material on our painting. They are looking very good and hopefully I'll be able to put some photos on here for you all to see.
We also can't wait for the holidays which I might add are starting next week on Saturday. The only problem is that I won't be able to keep you all up to date on what is happening in school.
Well I have to go and finish up my picture! Bye!!

04.04.08 On Wednesday and Thursday (yesterday) a lady called Janie came in to talk to us about the environment. She talked to us about water and how we cope with it in our life and talked about what might happen to us if we were not careful with how we use our water. We found out some interesting facts and we prepared for what might happen in an earthquake. Especially if we have a Septic tank containing our dirty water. (Some of us didn't know this.)
I'll tell you more next week because I have to go!

02.04.08 For fitness we are doing a playground circuit and have chosen which group we would like to be in. We got to choose out of the advanced group or the ordinary group. It has been quite fun lately epecially yesterday as we had no fitness!!
For our language we are writing our very own nursery rhyme story using nursery rhymes that we knew well. We then added in characters from other nursery rhymes. Some people, like me, put in characters from fairy tales as well. Susannah has finished hers already. To read it, look down in students' work.

26.03.08 We are back after a nice long weekend. Everyone was excited to go home and enjoy Easter with their family. This morning we had fun doing fitness (NOT!!!!!). We had to run right around the edge of the field and then through the playground. Lucky for those people who made it in the Top School team they knew exactly what to do.
Mrs. Merry has put us into our groups for the Fun(d) Raiser. This afternoon we will be getting together in our groups and sorting out who will do what and then split up into the categories (finance, Advertisement and Manufacturing) and will be working with the teacher that is in the room we are to go to on Friday. We will then get to work with every thing that we need to sort out.
We are well underway with our reading and were put into groups according to our P.A.T test results. We are starting off with nonfiction and are well into the work. Well I better get to my work now I'll tell you all more later. Bye.

14.03.08 We have finished our swimming and it is not because of the lovely weather we are having. It is because of the amount of people that are going swimming, you would of thought that it would be the whole class but no, it is because there isn't many people. Well on to other news.
Last Friday, we had Mrs. Laurent and we of course we did art. This time we had to draw three faces. We had to draw in detail including hair, eyes, nose and a mouth. We had to have the right proportions and so we could try to get it right we copied some things form a old magazine that we choose.
We have now finished our reading and have started writing a critique about our story Once and it will include our opinions about it. We can use parts of the story as so we can describe some of the characters life. We also were left wondering what would happen to Felix because the story left of with Felix helping Zelda and saying exactly what Barney had said earlier on in the story, ' "Everyone deserves something good in their life, at least once!" '!! We have to include our emotions through the story and have give a reason why we felt like that!
If you would like to see some of room twelve's wonderful art please Click Here!

11.03.08 Swimming is now non-compulsory. Meaning more time for updating my page!
For our new social studies we have learning the difference between Natural, Man Made and Personal disasters. This afternoon we are going to the computer suite and look up information on the disaster we want to study. Mrs. Merry said we had to look up information on two or three different disasters and pick the one that is most appealing to ourselves as it is best to do a study on the one we would like to study. We have a criteria list we have to follow for the information part we can also add anything we want to make it more appealing and to get extra credits!!! Well enough about our studies for social studies.
We are nearly at the end of our reading topic. For reading we have been listening to a story by Morris Gleitzman. The story is called Once. It is about a young boy that is round about twelve who was put into an orphanage. The reason being is because of Hitler It is all about Felix's (the young boy) trip to east Berlin and his struggles getting about. But it is very interesting because Felix writes stories about his parents and all about these amazing adventures they would go on. Then while trying to find his parents he finds this burning house. He goes to investigate and finds the two adults that live there have been shot and so have their chickens. Out of the corner of his eye he sees this girl. He goes over to check and see if she is dead and luckily she wasn't. Her name is Zelda. At this stage in the story he hasn't worked out what really is happening in the world that surrounds him. But he soon realizes what is happening when he gets to Germany...!
For language we are finishing off our second imaginary story. This time we have based it around the old tree being pulled out of the ground out in the teachers carpark. Mrs. Merry started us off with her sentence and the we transformed it into a complete imaginary story.
Well got to go tell you more later on Bye!!

10.03.08 We are well underway with our new social studies (Topic). We are now studying New Zealand Disasters and are looking back at our countries past. We are studying different types of Disasters such as the Edgecumbe Earthquake, the Ballantynes fire, the MT Tarawera Eruption, the Tangiwai Train Crash and many more. We have done a little description on what we think the whole Disaster thing is all about.
We also have been learning about something called a soundscape. It is where a group of people get together and make a chart using symbols to specify the sounds they heard in a specific spot. We are doing ours on the Rocky Shore. Mrs. Merry has put as into groups and we are making a soundscape. We can use our own vices but also instruments that are in the schools music room. We have made our soundscape chart draft copy and soon will be doing ours on a good piece of paper. We looked back as a group to see what sounds we heard while at Otarawairere bay (Rocky Shore). Because we heard lots of different sounds we picked the best. For example: Screaming when someone saw an Octopus shall I say Octopi, The waves crashing on the beach, The birds chirping, The sand crunching beneath our feet, Our voices calling to one another.
Unfortunately that's all for now but I'll catch up with you all later on.

06.03.08 We are ready to learn. Yesterday, middle school (B Block) and senior school (C Block) went to Edgecumbe College for one of their yearly events- Swimming Sports. The weather was absolutely wonderful for our lovely time away from school (yeah). We started off with the two lengths of freestyle which was open to anyone who thought they could make it and to any age group. There were only two boys who entered the competition and they were Ari and Caleb. Ari won so of course Caleb came second and never to mind that they were both in Rimu. Next up were the girls and Shannon Mower took 1st place and got house points for her house Rata. We got some great photos as the day grew on. Later on in the day we had our very own fun competitions such as the biggest bomb and the nicest dive. Our judges had a lot of trouble deciding who was going to be our winners that they just started handing out 1st equals. Sometimes they had no trouble deciding but with others they had some difficulty. We ended the day with the relays. For our house relays Mrs. Gordon's favourite house won! We then had our favourite the Parent-Teacher Student relay. Representing the wonderful students sitting in the nice sun watching every race was Shannon Mower, Jasmine Hope, Ari Wilson- Porter and Caleb Sheather. Representing the Teachers was Mr. Hawkes and his partner representing all of the parents Mr. Turpie. The students did one lap each where as Mr. Hawkes chickened out and did one lap and left Mr. Turpie having to do the other three laps. It was a great day and Mrs. Merry and Mr. Hawkes had great life savers (Jasmine Hope, Shannon Mower, Renko Barkema and Jacob Wallace). They also had a great help from Emma Bennett, Matthew Archer and Matthew Eveleens who helped with the false starting rope. Over all there were only two false starts. Interval now so got to go. Bye.

04.03.08 Finally we are back to working in our books (well not really). After the stress of P.A.T tests we are filling up our books. We have just finished our 'Rocky Shore' study and on Thursday we start our next study which is on New Zealand Disasters.
Top School is nearly here and we are well under way preparing our team. We have been working on accuracy and fitness. This includes our strength. We all can't wait for the big day and hope it turns out to be fine.
We are now starting our second imaginary story. Our first few lines our about the digger smashing down the old tree out in the teachers' car park out the back. First we are going to brain storm about it and put them in our story. We can turn it into a very creative one about an evil monster or one about a nice, kind monster. We can create imaginary creatures in our mind and put them in our story. We also can use people from the class and ask them for their permission to say mean stuff about them in our story. We also have to describe the characters when we introduce them in the story. Well interval now so tell you more later if I can.

29.02.08 After a long and stressing week, finally P.A.T tests are over. Poor Mr. Hawkes won't have this year's talented good looking year eight girls again for P.A.T testing and must be sad it's over! Except... we year eight girls are celebrating that the tests are over and don't have to waste our time with them. Instead we can relax and do cool work with our own teachers like art this afternoon!!
In class with Mrs. Merry we are nearly at the end of our 'Rocky Shore' study. We have drawn a life cycle of the Shore Crab. We had to write in our own words what each step of the life cycle is and glued pictures in of what the crab/crabs look like in that particular stage. We are also in the middle of doing 'Imaginative Stories'. Mrs. Merry starts our story off with one or two sentences and we have to create a story that has imaginary creatures in. We are allowed to use students from our class as long as we get their permission, especially if we want to insult them (in the story).

25.02.08 This week we are loooking forward to doing tests. Not ordinary tests but P.A.T tests. Every day this week except Tuesday, because of Manual, we are doing P.A.T tests. Today the year 8's did Comprehension and Maths. The year seven children did Listening Skills and Maths. We have got new working books that have been printed this year. After our first test the year eight girls played headbands with Mr. Hawkes. The results are better than last year's Renee Falwassser. Rachael Griffen was given Johnny Depp and was first to leave in the first round. Next was Brittany Harder and she was given Paris Hilton. Last down was Jaime Clarke who was given Britney Spears. Our second round include these results: 1st Emma Bennett whose name was David Beckham, 2nd was Shannon Mower whose name was Bob The Builder and last was Elaine whose name was the one and only Mr. Fitz. We also are nearly finshed with our 'Rocky Shore' study and will be moving on to New Zealand Disasters. I'll catch up with you later with more news.

19.02.08 Later Sorry I took so long. Yesterday was a fantastic day out. Our walk from West End to the Rocky Shore was tiring but fun. When we got there we settled in and relaxed for 10 minutes. After we were settled in to our amazing new area we had to go and do our activities. Our first activity was to find a rock pool in the low tide zone and with our group stay quiet for 5 minutes and find at least 6 interesting creatures. When our groups were done we started our second activity which was the same as the first activity but in the high tide zone. When we were done we went back to the beach and ate lunch and played on the nice soft sand. After 1 hour we got changed and believe this or not we had to get changed in THE BUSH!!!! We got in our togs and went for a swim in the cool water. The water was nice and refreshingly chilly (We had to say that last year at Blair Lodge Camp for the old room 12 classroom!!!). We all had a splendid day.

19.02.08 Last Friday we were drawing people. Not ordinary people. Mrs. Merry chose people to be room 12's models and we drew them by drawing ovals. We had to draw them as they posed. We started off having one model and then moved on to two models. After having a bit of practice we got three people up and had a go at drawing them. We then learnt how to draw clothes on them to make them look more like people. We didn't take too much attention the background or the equipment our models used for their pose. Unfortunately I have to go but I'll write more later today.

14.02.08 Next week on Monday 18th the senior syndicate is going on a field trip to Otarawairere. We are studying the 'Rocky Shore'. As part of our study we are going to be looking at the parts of creatures we might be able to see in the rock pools. We will be parking in the West End parking lot and will be walking from there. The walk from West End will take around 15 minutes. We then will be doing assigned activities and possibly ending with a swim. We have been assigned transport and groups within our own classes. We all can't wait to see how the day goes and all hope it will be fun and exciting. In class we are preparing ourselves by studying about the tides, rock pools and creatures. We are also studying the creatures habitat that live in the area we are studying.

13.02.08 We have written something called a 'Me Poem'. It tells others who don't know us that much some about ourselves. We got our photo taken in a way that we wanted it. We had to think original but creative. We all have our different views of creative and that is what makes our poem and photo special. We are in the middle of creating our frames. We use p.v.a glue to make designs and patterns. We are later on going to use metallic paint and it will make out our patterns.

12.02.08 Room 12 has finally got a new website monitor and its me Emma!
Last week on Monday the 4th our class was dreading to leave the holidays and come back to school, but our luck change when Mrs. Merry had a fun day planned for us. We had so much fun that afternoon with finger painting. We painted a clear blue vase that was full with flowers. The next day (Tuesday) when they were dry we got pastels and used them to mark out detail and to add a little bit of texture. We were told not to use to much pastel so we wouldn't wreck our picture.

He reached into
his pocket
and his head fell
right out of its socket.

It falls down
rolls down the hill
rolls right into
Mary's school

The head hit lamby
on the leg
who was sitting
at the foot of a keg

The lamb was frightened
and started to bawl
and caught the attention
of Jill, thin and tall

They called in the duke
with his ten thousand men
The duke was smart
his name was Ken

They tried some glue
they tried some tape
they didn't work
because of the awkward shape

But then said Ken
I've had a thought
and called for Miss Muffet
and her curds and whey
came right over
that very day

Me Poems:
Susannah
Unique, Musical, Gifted and Enthusiastic.
Daughter of John and Teena.
Sibling of Andrew, Kyle, Wade, Lusia, Micaiah, Elisha, Asher, Amahlia, Ish-shah, Ezra and Cody.
Lover of Music, Reading and Longball.
Who feels bliss when with best friend Amanda, Delighted when playing with Amahlia and proud at piano competitions.
Who needs acceptance, happiness and family.
Who gives Love, Support and a shoulder to cry on.
Who fears death, losing family and moving.
Who would like to see peace, Spain and Antarctica.
Resident of Poroporo, New Zealand
Williams
Written by Susannah Williams!

Elaine
Cheeky, Talented, Unique and Energetic.
Daughter of Karen and Mangu.
Sibling of Trevor, Stanley, Dianne, Awhea, Robert and Shantii.
Lover of swimming, shopping and That's so Raven.
Who feels lonely when having no-one to talk to, happy when spending time with mum and dad and angry when seeing cruelty.
Who needs love, acceptance and encouragement.
Who gives love, support and help to everyone in need.
Who fears losing family and friends and suffering pain.
Who would like to see dad, happy friends, family and going to the beach.
Resident of Awakeri, New Zealand.
Taylor
Written by Elaine Taylor!

14.03.08
We hope you enjoy the lovely art work from room 12. The children have worked hard at their presentation, and mixing colours.
We are currently working on a family portrait, where we have had to look at porportions. Room twelve are studing New Zealand disasters as our social studies. We found some very intersting pieces of information when we went to the computer suite with Mr. Sheather.
We have just finished the story 'Once' by Morris Gleitzman, it certanly made the class think about what it would be like to be a Jew in World War 2.
Good luck for Top School cheerleaders and Top School team.

13.02.08
Welcome to 2008. It's great to see the children all bright and eager to learn. We have written a lot of tests over the last week but have also completed some great work. The finger paintings are awesome and have brightened up the room beautifully. We have started top school trials today. Well done to everyone who are trying out.
We are looking forward to our 'Rocky Shore' field trip. Hopefully the weather will be good to us.
Well done to all the members of room 12. We have made a good start to the year and I am looking forward to getting to know you better.

Now we are Room 12. We used to be called Room 10. Room 10 had cool pages in 2007, 2006 and 2005 as well. Have a look!