passion man

I've been reflecting a lot lately about motivation, drive and how to get the best out of myself and the people around me. Steve Gurney's visit this week couldn't have been timed any better. What a pleasure to hear his story. This is a guy that will stop at nothing to be the very best at whatever he does - and it's no accident that he's been as successful as he's been. He subscribes to the notion of 'hard work works' and that failure should not be dwelled upon but used as 'feedback' to be BTB. It was refreshing to have such an energy force in our classroom. 

Schools receive a lot of invitations from various organisations and other initiatives across the year. A teacher's inbox can be a temple of doom at times! This year, one of my goals was to filter through some of the invites more strategically to find some winning opportunities. One of which came for a visit yesterday. Andrew, from Bright Sparks, a government-led technology initiative, came for a visit. He led some pretty cool electronic activities and challenges and sparked (excuse the pun) some real enthusiasm for an area of learning that should be given a lot more attention in my opinion. Students got to build their own robot car and had races, having to fine tune their wheel alignment to ensure they were driving straight and not doing epic donuts! Some of the more engaged students even got an opportunity to programme a small bread board that included light and heat sensors. 

Jade Carving

Paroa Kapa Haka students got an opportunity today to carve their own piece of pounamu!

League champions!

So proud of the Paroa School league team! They definitely punched above their weight, played fair and got the result they desired!

Mr S-W's Mihi

everyone up @ 5am, there's going to be a meteor shower!

We learnt about meteors this week. For all those that admitted to never seeing one, now's your chance. If the skies are clear tomorrow morning, look up and be amazed. 

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/05/meteors-to-shower-nz-skies-this-weekend.html

the 5th month!

As always, the year is rocketing by. Difficult to believe we're already into the 5th month! I'm really excited about this term. We've got a lot going on. In a week or so we'll be beginning our Boomwriter journey with Room 7. Boomwriter is a brilliant programme for engaging kids in writing. We're going to run it as an interclass competition. Students will pick a published chapter, provided by Boomwriter and then attempt to write subsequent chapters. When all chapters are published, the students will get to vote on their favourite. Winning chapters will be eventually published into an actual hard copy book!

Students are 'smashing out' areas of their maths which have proven repeatedly challenging. Some are coming up with innovative ways to commit new knowledge and understandings to memory. We're going to have some fun with our maths this term with an increased focus on the practical 'strand' side of maths. 

Basketball starts tonight. I'm really proud of how my students have both trialled and prepared with their teams leading up to this. The basketball tournament has become a really big part of our programme. It's a long season and really testing for some but at the same time, super rewardable. A big thanks to the managers and coaches who are giving up ungivable (yes, I just made up a word but it should be a word in this context) time to help us out. 

We've got some BIG WPCA challenges coming up this term. Rock climbing & abseiling at Charleston, an overnight raft trip on the Arnold AND kayaking. It all happens over a very short space of time too. Can't wait. 

canoe polo

Still searching for the perfect WPCA Passion Project?

Manderin started today

Emma, from the Confucius Institute (kindly supported by TPP), came to our class to teach our first Mandarin lesson today. We had heaps of fun learning how to say hello and introduce ourselves. We also got to have a race with chopsticks! The girls smashed it.