GPK Survivor Tio!

We were challenged! In our PrEP business groups, we were sent on a corporate team building experience to improve out team work, communication and problem solving skills. This was going to help us in our businesses to work better together!

During this, we needed to solve puzzles, answer quiz challenges and also work together to dress up a business employee as someone wearing an outfit that may be worn to work! The catch was, we had to use newspaper, cellotape.... our imaginative and creative skills! We had builders, sushi chefs, business men, doctors, police oficers, train drivers and more!

All points were added together and the winning group won 60Tio (our PrEP Currency) to invest into their business.

Panting Day Opportunity

Want to continue to make a difference with helping to preserve biodiversity and our environment, and at the same enjoy free icecream from Mr Wippee as well as a free sausage or two from a sausage sizzle?

Well, there are some more community planting experiences coming up soon.

The next close one is in Hooton Reserve on the 29th of August, Oteha Valley Road, Albany.

Check out the posters! Hope you go along and take your family with you, so they can feel the same as you did when you made a difference at Lady Phoenix Reserve!

Practice our speeches and listen to ourselves!

Room 20, to practice your speech at home and to listen to how you are delivering it, use this tool;

www.vocaroo.com

This will record your speech and you can play it back to yourself. Listen carefully to your speed, expression, clarity and tone of voice. Do you pause where you want to?

Remember to look on our writing page to check the success criteria for our speeches!

Percussion playing to a theme

It was pouring with rain, and so using the weather as an inspiration, we created small performances using a range of percussion instruments. The main criteria was that we had to begin at different times, there had to be a beat master that we followed and that we tried to play different rhythms, keeping to the beat. One group focussed on "sunshine" as the theme, so their composition was very relaxed and melodic, another on "rain and hail", another on "after the rain" and one on "hail". All in all, we had 30 minutes to explore the different instruments, decide on our theme, work out our jobs as a group and when we were coming in, practice and present them back to the rest of the group. This is what we came up with!

Clay Art Group

We are very lucky to have Anna and Meghan, two art students from Albany Senior High School, come through and work with 30 year 5 and 6 students on creating clay models and sharing their knowledge and skills.

Thank you Anna and Meghan, we are having sooo much fun and learning heaps!! We look forward to seeing you next week!

Korean Speech Competition Results - With Update

Thank you to all those who came to watch our awesome and talented students compete in our annual UHPS Korean Speech Competition. You all did very well and should be very proud!

A big congratulations to our winners - Michelle (1st) Clare (2nd) and Susannah (3rd). Michelle will be representing UHPS at the Interschool speech comp in Pakuranga on August 11th. Best of luck!

A huge thank you to Mrs Heeja Noh and Mrs Youngsook Choi from the Koean School for judging our competition.

Best of luck Michelle!

Updated Results:

Michelle represented UHPS at the inter school Korean speech competition, and........ WON!!

Congratulations Michelle - we are so proud!

PrEP

We were all soooooo excited when we arrived back to receive letters from the PrEP Government offering us jobs! Our CV's and letters of applications must have been pretty good!

We met with our business types (Gardening, Arts and Crafts, Travel and Tourism, Bank, The Warehouse, Food, Health and Fitness etc) and met the other students who had been employed also.

We shared our ideas and started to create small businesses. We came up with lots of ideas, then chose our 5 favourites and then put them against criteria to finally decide on our top 3. Then we began surveying our potential customers to see if they would be happy to buy our products and what they would be happy to pay. The winners of the currency competition had their currency design turned into our PrEP currency for this year. Last year it was Paua, this year it is Tio's.

The bank has been printing the money and making our bank books and we have been researching and creating our products. We also had to attend an accounting course to manage our cash books and now we will receive certificates in Business Account and Transactions Management. Next step, making our prototypes!

Results of Buddy Class Colouring Competition

Well it was a tough competition, but the winners were found!

Congratulations Paris, Isabella and Casey, Clare, Hafsa and Amy, Casey A, Steven S and David P, Sherise and Aurelia!

Wearing our PJ's to school!??

GPK day was great! What a great way to end our term, celebrating making good choices as we Grow to be Positive Kiwis. We were able to wear our PJ's to school, bring a pillow, and chill out and watch a movie in the hall during the middle block. Great fun!

Applying for a Job... I hope we get one!

We have started to apply for jobs for PrEP next term. PrEP stands for Primary Enterprise Programme, and we learn to manage ourselves, work with others, manage money and run a small business, where we make and sell products using our own currency at a real market day!

We have written our CV's and our letters of application and posted them to the PrEP Government. We can't wait until after the holidays to see if we get a letter back accepting us for a job. We hope we don't get rejected!!

Here we are thinking hard about what jobs we could apply for and writing our CV's and covering letters;

Eagle Helicopter Visits UHPS

Check out our video of the Eagle Helicopter landing on our school field!

Eagle Helicopter Visits Us To Talk About Leadership

This morning, a pattering of rotors, that we hear so often as we are under the path of the local air base flight zone for the Airforce, suddenly become a bit louder and closer than we were use to. To our wonder and amazement, out from the clouds and over the Upper Harbour houses thundered a deep blue helicopter! We were all on the courts and it came and hovered above us, before circling and landing on our school field!!

We were so lucky to have the Sergeant and the crew come to talk about Leadership with all of the Year 5/6 students as part of leadership week and red socks week.

Check out our page on the Eagle helicopter visit to see more photos!!

We have been learning how to weave...with straws!!

We have found this very challenging, but then addictive!! It was very hard to start as the straws kept slipping, but once we had done a few runs, it held well and we were off!

See what we are getting up to in this video clip;

Buddy Class Colouring Competition

We are working hard with our buddies from Room 6 to see who will win our colouring competition!

They are going to be judged next week! I wonder who will win....

DOC and Forest and Bird Photo Competition

Hey Room 20 students!

Have you thought about entering the New Zealand Biodiversity Photo Competition?? There are cash prizes and more!!

There are 3 entry themes;

• Biodiversity of land and sky
• Marine and freshwater biodiversity
• People and biodiversity

Entries must be received by 30 July 2010

visit www.doc.govt.nz/biodiversitycaptured to learn more!

Timez Attack Game

Stuck for a motivating way for your child to learn their times tables??

Check out this exciting new game made by the people who make the playstation games. Your child will be hooked, and for a good reason too!!

www.bigbrainz.com/Download.html

The game is called Timez Attack, and it is played every day here at school by the students on the class computers in their spare time.

It has a free trial and if you like, you can purchase it. Have fun, I did!

Room 20 "Taking Action" to help preserve NZ Biodiversity

Did you know that 2010 is the international year of biodiversity??

We watched the following video clip and it stunned us; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1VYmpTikgw&feature=related

In Room 20, we decided that it was time to take action and help New Zealand's Biodiversity. We were astounded as to how many New Zealand native species had either become extinct or were on their way to extinction. Through our studies and investigations through our CLUES Inquiry process, we came to realise that a particular group of species were under the most threat in New Zealand, and that was bird life.

We wrote to the local council, contacted Forest and Bird and organised a tree planting day in our local reserve to provide more nesting and feeding areas for our local native species such as Tui.

We have written about our experiences, so please read about what we did and comment!

Helping New Zealand by Planting

The sun was shining brightly as Room 19 and my class, Room 20 made our way to the Nature Trail. We were going to help New Zealand native birds by planting native trees. Crunch, crunch went the colourful rocks under my feet as we were walking to Lady Phoenix Reserve. There were mushrooms dotted everywhere and I even saw a red mushroom with white spots! The walk took us about 10 minutes.

We were introduced to Nicki, a member of the council. She had chocolate brown that had shiny red bits in the sunlight. Nicki told us who the other people were. There was Stu, Richard, Sam and Justin. “Thank you for coming here guys” said Nicki. “We are going to be planting around that steep hill over there. It’s a bit slippery so watch out.”

Richard showed us how to plant the Kauri, Flax ,Tea and the other trees. First we had to dig a hole the size of the plant. Clang! The spade hit a rock. Then we put a fertilizer tablet in the hole. The tablet was grey like rhino’s skin. The fertilizer tablet helped the plant grow because it was food for the plant. But if he tablet touched the roots of the plant the plant could die. So we covered it with a little bit of soil. The soil was in chunks so it was hard to dig. Next we pulled the plant out of it’s plastic, black bag and carefully dropped it into the hole. Lastly we put the soil around the plant. Thump, thump went Richard’s hands as he patted the soil. I found a pink, long worm. The worm was a piece of spaghetti that I wouldn’t want to eat. It wobbled around like jelly on a plate.

‘Planting trees are really hard’ I thought. There were lots of bark in the way. The bark was as sharp as a needle. The first plant I planted had brilliant green leaves like sparkling emeralds. Hafsa and I were now walking across the steep side when suddenly SPLAT! I had slipped across the slippery mud and landed on my back! Drip, drip mud fell from my back. ‘Even though these are my old clothes, Mum will get mad’

After more planting, Mr Shore called out, “Everybody stop!” We finished planting our tree. Our tree was a palace of life for the bids. Reluctantly, Hafsa and I made our way to Mr Shore. While we were walking back, I felt really pleased about taking action to help New Zealand’s biodiversity.

By Clare