Room 6 has been busy for the month of May, read on to find out what has been happening

Margaret from Summerset 

This month Room 6 have had a special visitor called Margaret . She lives behind the school in Summerset. She comes every Tuesday to our class and helps students with their work and listens to them read. She has a kind heart, is always willing to lend a hand and she is so thoughtful to think of us and to be willing to help our students with their work.

By Fletcher 

Mega maths month

Mega Math Month was introduced to us, the students, at the start of the term. M.M.M has been a long standing Balmacewen tradition. The reason why we do M.M.M. is to alert awareness on the fact of the decreasing number of students that cannot answer their times tables in a snappy way . At the start of the Mega Math Month all of Room 6 got given booklets full of times table activities to keep us occupied. But more importantly, to revive our times tables. In each class you will have a baseline that shows the average that your class scored. Then in Room 6 we wrote down an aim for which percentage we would like to get up to .

After four weeks of the M.M.M challenge, if we have exceeded our aim or reached our aim, our teacher will reward our class. This idea was great (speaking from a student's perspective) because it encourages us to work harder and not let down our classmates.

Ms Downie set us a goal to reach 85% and if we met it, she was going to buy us pizza and guess what - we reached that goal!

By Eva

Museum visit 

On Wednesday the 25th of May we were lucky enough to go to the Planetarium and a Maori treasure hunt. First of all a woman told us the story of the creation of the beginning about Papatuanuku and Ranginui and how their sons split them apart. Then we had to find a manaia, tiki and lizards. We were all so fascinated. We all had a piece of paper and a pencil and could tally down how many of these three items we could find and draw down the maori designs that we liked. This was all based on maori art.

Next was Maori music. We all sat in a circle and got put into groups of five. We all put on some white gloves. She opened a mysterious box and inside them were ancient maori instruments. Some of them were replicas and some were the real thing! We had to guess how the instrument would be played. Some of them were very bizarre and some were very creative. We all had to talk about our instruments in our groups of five. I thought this was a really amazing experience and next time we go to the Tangata Whenua exhibition I think we will have more knowledge about the maori culture.

On 25th of May Room 6 and Room 2 went to the Planetarium we learned about Matariki and how to tell how old a star is. We also learned about different planets and different stars. Did you know that the sun is over 1 billion years old? That was just one of the amazing things we learned. In the planetarium we sat on slightly tipped back seats and the dome like room we gazed up to the night sky- the projected one. It was so realistic and fun! I hope we can go there again.

Thank you -Nikita and Sam

New students in R6

A big welcome to the three new students in Room 6-Wafaa, Iman (who have come from Syria) and Ganda (from Reefton) have joined our wonderful class. They are all very friendly and lots of fun to hang around with. Together as our now complete class we went to the Planetarium. They also joined in on our treasure chest hunt about the maori carvings and culture and learned more about our home. We are also very lucky to be given our English translator Eman who helps Wafaa and Iman with their English. They all are enjoying the school and they have settled in nicely into our class.

By Holly Denston-Swift 

Learning Street

Rooms 5,6,7, and 8 have been given a brand new Learning Street. It took a while after the builders singing and banging tools in the middle of class but it was worth it!

It is a fun and good space to learn in and it is nice to be able to interact with our class and other classes in the block.

We were also lucky enough to be given brand new comfy beanbags, couches and tables to finish this amazing learning space. Its is a very friendly learning space and is a great way to learn in fun!!

By Holly Denston-Swift