Parents Blog

It has taken a little while to get this up and running.
We will see how we go.

Check out my Slide Show!

Week 7 - A fantastic week at Camp on Motutapu Island

This is what the students said about camp
* Everyone got to know their classmates better and build strong friendships with each other.(Paula)
* The meals were really delicious and the home baking was superb. (Paula)
* All the teachers were pretty fun at camp. (Luciano)
* It was fun being a group leader and having the responsibility to lead. (Jack)
* Motutapu Island was a beautiful sight to be seen. (Tyler)
* The high ropes gave me confidence.(Curtis)
* Survivor Challenge made me think harder.(Curtis)
* The high ropes gave me confidence to challenge myself further.(Kadison)

*

The Week It Was

A normal school week.
Well as normal as you can at BBI.
The start of all our period 5 activities. Bring on the out of class time activities.
One main highlight was Mr Barrow deconstructing Mrs Mitchell's camp bag. He had a lot of very interesting clothes. I hope that you were listening and have everything ready for camp.

Have a look if you want to see where your son or daughter is heading.
http://www.motutapucamp.org.nz/

A look into Week 4

Another busy has passed by in Team B with lots of learning happening in so many different ways.
Check out our slide show for the week. See us working on Statistics doing an M&M investigation, have a look at our swimming safety programme at Lloyd Elsmore to prepre us for camp. Habits of Mind teach us about our thinking as we think about knowing what to do and how to behave when we don't have the answer. School swimming sports was a fantastic day and we also spent time setting up our e-portfolios using KnowledgeNet. Whew! We sure did have a busy week!!!!

Week 1-3, 2008!

Week 1-3

Welcome to Team B! We have a very busy few weeks getting to know each other
in our classes and our team. Team B is made up of four classes, Room 5 with
Mrs Gail Mitchell, Room 6 with Miss Louise Kennedy, Room 7 with Miss Rachel
Taylor and Room 8 with Mr Mark Barrow.

We are sure you have already visited the Team B Wikispace:

http://teambonmymind.wikispaces.com/

Where you will have seen our term's plan, reminders and homework for each
class.

We have been focusing on The Brain: The World Inside My Head. Ask your child
about the brain as we are confident they will be able to tell you atleast
one interesting thing they have learnt about the structure and function of
parts of the brain and memory devices. Ask them what a mnemonic is, you will
be impressed!

It was great to meet so many parents at the Meet the Teacher evening in Week
2 and we thank all of the parents who have offered to help out on our
swimming safety trips and at camp. We look forward to seeing you at the camp
meeting, which is yet to be announced.

Keep logging on to see what wonderful, exciting things we are doing in our
team. We aim to update this blog weekly with any pictures we have taken so
save it to your favourites now for easy access!

Have a great week
Team B teachers

Week 10

Week 10 has been a fun week for everyone in Team B. Christmas is near with carols playing in the morning, Christmas trees decorating our classrooms and just the general happiness in the air!

Team B students along with all the other Year 7 students at BBI had a fun day out at Willow Park on Tuesday. There were activities galore from petanque to bouncy castles to water slides and sponge fights. The weather held out for us and we ended the day with a well earned ice-block before our walk back to school. A big thank you to all the parents who helped us make this day possible!

Nearing the end of the week we have been practicing for our big prize giving assembly next Wednesday. This is sure to be a great occasion and a great end to what has been a wonderful year.

Keep up the enthusiasm Team B!

Week 9 in Team B- Stalls Day

Friday was a fantastic day of fun. All the Year 7 classes got together and put on a stalls day for the whole school. Team B had some cool ideas and there was a target game " Shoot the Can " run by Room 6, a cake stand run by Room 8, Lolly Land run by Room 5 and the wacky cooldrink stall with a crazy hair theme, run by Room 7.
Thank you to all parents for your contributions and donations. Thank you to all the wonderful students in Team B for your hard work making posters, decorating your stalls, packing lolly bags, baking cakes and selling on the day.
Take a look at our photo gallery of the day.

Week 7

The arts have been a major focus this week, with groups creating and
practising their music pieces, dances and dramas to promote New Zealand. All
parents and extended family members are invited to view these performances
in the hall on Friday 30 November 1:30-3pm with an afternoon tea to follow.
It would be wonderful to see you all there!

Week 6

Week 6 was an exciting and busy week for Team B. Many of our talented students were involved in the school production of "Henry". It was shown Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and was very successful. Well done to all those students from Team B who were involved!

Here are a few photos from the show:

Around the Throne The Angry Queens












As well as being busy with the production, we all managed to move back into our sparkling, clean new classrooms. This was exciting and it is great to be back together as a team!

Week 5 in Team B

We have now completed a third week in our temporary classrooms and it is one more week to go before we move back into our old home. The painting is completed, the carpets are down and they are just finishing off the final touches. It is looking beauuuutiful!!!!!

This week, students continued with their presentations of Kete's- which have been amazing. They have also done some great collage work on New Zealand icons and Kiwiana.



We have some budding authors and the pourquois on New Zealand are a great read.
Keep a look out for these as podcasts. You will be able to download them from itunes, as a weekly series of stories, which you can listen to.
Read about how Hoi-Ho got his yellow eye. Click on this link.
The mathex students have designed the most amazing games. Click on these links and have a look at what they have been working on.
All in all, another great week in Team B.

The Week It Was

What a week, what more can I say.
Monday
We had a boomer of a day where we had our arts immersion day.
We got to participate in Dance (Get in behind you sheep!)
Maori Language/Songs
Drama (Maui and the sun)
Here are some of the photos:












Tuesday,
We got to watch some of the best dance and singing scenes from millions of videos. Wow wasnt the sound of music just wonderful!!! We also got to start our main homestudy project - researching a famous NZ artist.

Wednesday,
Another wonderful day at BBI. We had our last practice day for Athletics

Thursday
Presentation of the Kete's. What a superb job the students did as well.

Friday
Athletics Day. All of our practice was going to pay off.
We had a lot of great results and an insane game of extreme dodge ball for tabloids.

Well that was Week 5

Team B News - Week 3 Term 4

Week Three has seen Team B dispersed around the school for their leraning
environments. Room 5 and 7 can now be found working collaboratively in the
Performing Arts Centre, Room 6 are now in M1 and Room 8 are in M2. All of
the students are to be commended on their flexibility and ability to adapt
to their new environment. We are looking forward to our sparkling ‘new’
classrooms, which we will be moving into hopefully in week 6. Our main focus
in Inquiry this week has been on Kiwiana culture, particularly art and Te
Reo Maori. We have been wrapping up measurement for Mathematics and are
looking ahead to Algebra. Students have also written some fantastic creative
narratives this week. We are looking forward to next week, where we will be
immersed in the Arts, including dance, drama, music and Te Reo Maori. Make
sure you check next week’s blog to see what we got up to!

Week Two

Kiwiana was a focus once again for week two. We found out all about kiwi icons and followed Wiki around on his holiday adventures learning more about NZ history and places in NZ.

In Maths we finished off our measurement units all ready for testing in Week 3.

We learnt all about pourquois which are tales about how and why. Students wrote about different topics ranging from how the jellyfish lost its bones to why kiwis can't fly. They showed great creativity and imagination in these stories.

Amongst all our hard work we were busy stripping walls, packing boxes and moving furniture. Our big move was on Friday and it went very smoothly. Room 5 and 7 are now sharing the PAC for 4 weeks and Room 6 is in M2 whilst Room 8 is in M1.

As they say, change is as good as a holiday!

The start of Term 4

Hi to you all
Welcome back to school after the holidays. We hope that you all had a wonderful time with family and friends and that you spent some time just relaxing and catching up with each other.

This term is going to be another busy and exciting one and we are sure that ten weeks are just going to fly by.
The highlight of this week was the school cultural day and assembly that was organised by two students in Room 7, with the support and guidance of their lovely teacher and other students in the class.
Last term the Inquiry for our team looked at Human Rights with a focus on our community. These students investigated racism and decided to take some community action by promoting a cultural day to celebrate and aknowledge all the cultures represented at BBI. A great idea!
Students and staff dressed up in traditional costumes, flags which represented the many cultures at BBi were bought and displayed, and an assembly, focussing on sharing of cultures, music and dance, was organised. This was an amazing feat! Well done girls!
We also had a rotation in our team on Friday to support the idea of celebrating cultures and we focussed on New Zealand culture. Each class had a turn to make pavlova ( and eat it ), play stick games and sing, participate in gumboot throwing and enter a Kiwi quiz.

Here are some photographs






Other things to note:

Our Inquiry for this term focusses on the Arts.
Our fertile question is:
" Can our culture survive without the Arts?"
This week we have focussed on NZ culture and we have also done some map work. Very interesting!
Home study is up on a wiki and can be viewed at kiwianainroom5.wikispaces.com.
The teachers in Team B are also developing a resource for students to use on this site.

Athletics day is on Friday 2 nd November and we are training for this.

Team B classrooms are going to be refurbished. This processs will start at the beginning of Week 3 - after the long weekend. We will be moving out of our classrooms but we hope to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. We will keep you updated on this and let you know when we will be moving back into our lovely, newly decorated rooms.

Next week is Bandana week. We encourage all the students to support this worthy cause. Once they purchase a Bandana, they will be able to wear it to school for the week. There will be a mufti day for all those who supported this on Friday.

That's all for this week. Looking forward to another exciting and busy week next week.

TEAM B teachers.

Video of tagging clean up at Eastern Beach

Collecting clothes for those less fortunate than us

Our help was needed at the food bank packing food parcels

Tagging clean up - taking responsibility for our community environment