Cooking Extension

30 students from Pukekohe Intermediate got the privilege to be chosen, out of 300 year 7s to be part of the 2010 Pukekohe Intermediate cooking club.  They got chosen by our schools cooking teacher, Mrs Woods. The 30 students have been challenge to make a dish. The criteria  is to make it healthy,  to feed a big  family , to have a side dish, a main and after dish. We had to be free on every day five and period five and six to be apart of it.

Descriptive Writing

This past few weeks we have been working on descriptive writing, Mrs Pearson has been trying to get us to be able to create a vivid image for the reader. We have been given different situations to write about, the first was "The Library" where we had to write about either being a book on a shelf, a student in the library, a teacher with their students, the author of a book or the lights in the library. The next we did with the head of english Mrs Slee, we had to write about a bedroom, weither it be your dream bedroom, your real bedroom or just a room in your house. you had to describe it using your five senses, touch, taste, smell, see and hear. We more recently had to write about the surroundings in the library again. A few days ago we got given the challenge of finding a book that had a good descriptive sentence or paragraph and from that we had to continue writing like the author we had selected. Our one we completed two days ago is The Beach, we got shown a picture of a beach for round 4 minutes and then had about 10 minutes to write about what we had remembered.

Here are a few examples from the class.

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the fitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make off her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.


That was the last day we saw her. She has moved onto where the white mist hangs and the outside world was cut off. The trees curve and the mountains rise above the mist. Suddenly the thunderness sounds of water gushing, muffles her voice and panic rises like a lume in her throat. The ice rapidly moved down the hilly terane and soon her crys faintly drifted away and again she was gone like a owl in the night, off to adventure, the globe once again.
By Madeleine Park

She has large, wide set green eyes, and long brown hair that curled and turned gold at the tips.


She wore a dark blue dress that flowed neatly onto the floor, the delicate lace that coated the outside of it was still in tact piece by piece.


Her walk was peaceful, slow and unique, her gestures were small, her voice soft and calm. She was angelic.


She was there just there, no one realised. They were to tied up in their on un-imaginable lives.
By Shannon Cockerton

All in all room 23 has really enjoyed writing all of these stories and amazing pieces of descriptive writing.

Maths Extension/Mathex/Entreprenuers/Otago Maths

Over the past 2 terms 2 year 7 students from our class, have been participating in maths extension, mathex, otago maths and entrepreneurs. These are all about maths and learning new skills at a higher level of ability. Recently we had the mathex competition held at the Indian Hall, our teams did quite well with one coming 3rd equal and another 5th equal. Otago maths is a test every second Thursday, their are 5 questions in each test and we are given thirty minutes to complete the test. Entrepreneurs is learning financial skills to do with maths. We do this on a website called The Duffy Club and complete a tutorial every week that the Duffy twins make for different schools around the country. Maths Extension is problem solving and again learning new skills with maths. This is a great way to learn all about maths.

Zone Cross Country

On Tuesday the 24 of August, 32 students from Pukekohe Intermediate School attended the zone cross country at Paparimu School. The race was ran at a close by farm.  It was a very good day placing first in the year 7 girls and second for the year 8 boys and year 8 girls.  The course was a real New Zealand cross country course, we had some impressive placings by all kids and some top 10 placings by a few. The course was very challenging and most of us took it well and we ALL tried are completed hardest. We would like to give a big thanks to Janine Fryer and all the parents that supported us on the day!

English Extension

Every Thursday, a group of students meet with a writing specialist, Mrs. Higham to explore the different areas of written language. Many children who attend the group are already great writers though don't know how to use descriptive language or poetic devices to make their text more interesting.
Here are two pieces of writing written by two members of the English extension group.

NIE Newspaper

Recently, our class has been working on a front page design of a newspaper for a competition. We have all been working very hard and have been designated with different jobs within our groups. Unfortunately we have missed the cut off date for the competition and have been unable to enter, we are still going to finish them though. Some groups have already completed them and are looking up to scratch. We have all had fun making the front page and have learned lots of new skills during this project.

Current Affairs Quiz

Recently our class have been completing current events quiz's, on a website, NIE Online. The URL being, http://www.nieonline.co.nz/. The quiz has a variety of unique questions, of different subjects from around the world. We are now going to complete these tests every Friday to keep up to date with what is happening around the world. It is teaching us to watch the news or read the newspaper to know what is going on outside our life.

Financial Literacy

This week we are starting a money system in our class. Each student will receive a set amount of money each week after paying tax, mortgage or rent. There are also bonuses you can receive by finishing work, creating posts on the class blog and if you answer all your words correctly in your weekly spelling test.
Each pupil also has a small extra job each week.
Some of the main jobs include payroll officer, model, bank manager, police officer, architect and lawyer.

Our teacher controls all money movement in the class, she is the boss. The boss can give fines for unsatisfactory behaviour, being late for class or not proofreading  your work.  Already students wages are decreasing rapidly as they are fined for their small but important mistakes. This week is part of our financial literacy topic for this term, this week will hopefully teach us to manage and look after our money carefully and sensibly.

Term 3 Goals

Term three goals are available on the Goals page for you to view. Click on the link in the sidebar.

CREME Auckland Netball

Well done girls. You have gained fourth place overall in the Auckland Year 7 & 8 Tuesday Competition.
We would like to thank all the families who came out to Glen Innes to support us.
A big thank you to Mrs Hamilton for upskilling the girls. We have gained a lot from this tournament and look forward to competing in Tauranga in week 8.
Results
Grading: Chruchill Park-win, St Marys-loss, Diocesan-win.
Competition: Revelation-loss, Chruchill Park-win, Te Kura-loss, Holy Cross-loss, Sancta Maria-win, St Marys-win.

In August, people across New Zealand will be buying $3 colourful, hand-woven friendship bracelets and wearing them to support the work of VSA volunteers in developing countries. This year Project Friendship is focusing on youth. Money from each sale will support VSA volunteers who are working with young people on issues such as children’s rights, HIV/AIDS and the environment.

Financial Literacy

This term we will be learning how to save money and use money wisely. We will establish a class currency and will learn how to budget our finances. We have spent a number of lessons so far learning about our New Zealand currency, the special features on our dollar notes and the Reserve Bank.
We have tagged a variety of websites on our Delicious Bookmarking accounts under the tag financial. We will work through the tutorials on Banking For Our Future and learn a variety of ways to make the right financial choices.

Te Reo Tuesday Term 3 Week 4

This week we will learn how to say the days of the week in Maori, Nga Ra. Our Te Reo hosts are Leotisia and Charnce.

Term Two House Sports Day

Term 2 finished with a bang when we all competed in the school house sports day organised by our sports co-ordinator Mrs Hancock. We competed in Turbo Touch or Netball. The day was thoroughly enjoyed by all involved. Thanks for your hard work staff....

Maths Week

This week the school will celebrate Maths Week. There are a variety of activities planned to extend our mathematical ability. We will compete in Mathex against other classes in the school. We can solve classroom problems and individual challenges. Later in the week we will take part in the code cracker challenge.

Because our class is a digital classroom we will also register on www.mathsweek.org.nz to further extend our maths skills and to have the opportunity to gain points to bid in the online auctions during the week.

Maori Language Week

This week Pukekohe Intermediate have participated in a Nation wide celebration

MAORI LANGUAGE WEEK

The chosen theme this year was “Te Mahi Kai” which is translated to The Language of Food, the Maori hospitality has always been a big part of the culture and this year having this as the theme has made it a bit more special, to celebrate Maori Language Week our school put on a number of activities for the students of the school and they had competitions where you could battle it out with other classes using Te Reo words and phrases. For instance every class would receive the classroom challenge in the morning and you had to either translate English words to Maori or vice versa. There was also a fishing competition where 3 people from each class competed against each other to catch ika (which is also known as fish) they had to make there fishing rod then find a way to catch the most amount of fish possible in the time frame, the winning class was room 43 catch 11 ika.
As PINTV has been starting up there was a special feature called “Te Reo Tuesday” which will carry on through out this year. This week it included greetings and farewells so we could use them in the playground. There was a competition set out through out the whole school which was released a week before the start of Maori Language Week and that was the poster competition where you had to make an eye catching poster that showed it was Maori Language Week and Te Mahi Kai, and also the dates. Ana and Jade from room 12 took out the competition. Congratulations. Thank you very much to Mrs Pearson and Mrs Poutai for their VERY hard work over these past few weeks.

NIE Front Page Competition

For the first four weeks of this term we will work in groups to create a front page of a newspaper. We will use the criteria stipulated on the NIE Newspaper Front Page Design Competition.
We have seven newspaper groups operating in our classroom. Each member in the group has a responsibility to complete by Friday on week four.

We will need to write 2-3 news stories, create an editorial on the topic; Reading a dying art or an essential skill. We will also have to create an infographic to support our editorial. Our artists in the group will need to organise the masthead, top boxes and create an advertisement for a new magazine.

The criteria for each section of the front page the design needs to be adhered to, so we need to check with the NIE website, as we work through our responsibilities.
Check back later in the term to view the front page designs we have created.

Three- Way Student Lead Conferences

Well done to everyone who invited their families to the school during the last two weeks, to share their learning and goals for term three. I was impressed with the confident manner in which you were able to share the work you have completed in your books, on the walls and on your blog pages. You were clear about the goals that you wanted to achieve this term and how your would go about making improvements with your learning.

All learning plans and goals can be accessed via your child's blog page. Don't forget to leave a comment.

Events Calendar August

Te Reo Tuesday- Week Two

The first broadcast of Te Reo Tuesday screened last week. We took part in a language lab designed to help students and staff with Te Reo. The first broadcast focused on greetings and farewells. The broadcast will air each Tuesday morning and will be repeated after the PINTV news daily until the end of the week.

NZ AIMS

This year Pukekohe Intermediate are attending the NZ AIMS sport tournament. We are going for many sports like Hockey, Netball, Soccer and many other fun and interesting sports. We are sending down 95 students from our school and in that group are the three time defending champions for hockey. Aims is held in Tauranga from Sunday the fifth of September till the tenth of September. We are taking down 10 teams which are, Hockey, Netball, Soccer, Gym sports, Cheer leading, Cross country, Rugby 7s, Golf, Tennis, and swimming. Aims started in 2004 with only 22 participating schools and are now hosting 88 schools. Aims is a sporting tournament that lets the best of the best compete to see what school or sport team is the best.
During AIMS all the schools go and have a little break from playing.

Auckland Netball

At the start of this year there was a message on the notices about all the girls who would like to represent our school for netball and go up to Auckland every Tuesday and compete against loads of different school from all Auckland.

There were round 120 girls who signed up at first and that had to be cut down to 10. The first cut that was made, was if you were at a lower grade from Saturday netball then you probably wouldn't get a chance to trial. 120 girls got cut down to 30, period 1 and 2 in week 6 the 30 girls got together and had a hard trial with the coach Donelle and from that 10 girls were picked.

I was lucky enough to be one of the girls that got chosen for the squad and after we got in the team and the names were finalized and then we got told that this was also going to be the aims team that would go down to Tauraunga to compete in a big netball tournament!

I would like to say thanks to Mrs Pearson and Donelle for giving up their time to help us kids with the skills and co-ordination we need to be top netballers!