Awakeri School

Room 14

Who are we?
We are a class of 20 year 8's and 9 year 7's. We are taught by the fantastic Mr. Hawkes and Miss Robb from England.

Class News

13th August 2008
For the next six weeks we have a new addition to our classroom. We would like to say a big warm welcome to Miss Geddes who is a student at University of Waikato in Hamilton. She has come to Room 14 to learn the teaching ways and what a better way to learn, than to teach us little angels. Cough, cough!!

I had a little interview with Miss Geddes and these are some of the questions I asked her and the answers she gave me:
Q:Which University do you come from?
A:I come the University of Waikato which is in Hamilton.
Q:How long have you been going to Uni for?
A:A year and a half. I am at Uni for three years which makes me half way through my degree.
Q:What is it like coming back to your old school?
A:It is quite weird. There are still some teachers here at Awakeri that were here when I was such as; Mr Fitz although he was my teacher not my Principal, Mrs Petersen, Mr Hawkes and Mrs Leus.
Q:How much has it changed?
A:The windows on B block have changed. Its only gotten a lot flasher really. But also it seems alot smaller since I came to this school, because it seemed big because I was little.
Q:Do you think you will have fun teaching us little angels? Cough Cough!
A:I do think so. My first impression was that your class seemed nice. But I'll have to see whether or not you guys are, as you call yourselves 'Little Angels'! LOL Hopefully we will have heaps of fun since have have many exciting things planned for us to do.

So lets hope that Miss Geddes enjoys teaching us more and more each day for the next six weeks.

8th August 2008
Today we have the opening ceremony of the Awakeri School and the rotation of certain events such as; Gumboot throwing, javelin throwing, standing jump, goal shooting, target shooting, egg & spoon races, obstacle course and a coconut shy. Every student in Room 14 will be participating in these events going round in a rotation with the rest of the school.
Also there are a few people in Room 14 that are in the Dance Troup. They will be performing a rock and roll type dance to the song of CandyMan. As there are many people away it is a little smaller than we expected it to be but hey we have to cope. Also Mother Nature has decided to rain down on us so hopefully it stops soon so that we can still do the Opening Ceremony on the new Astroturf.
The 2008 Olympics are also opening today. The Opening Ceremony starts on channel one at 12am.

4th July 2008
Today we found out who will be reading the Oath for the 2008 Awakeri Olympics opening ceremony on the turf. Nikoli Christensen and Vanessa Stoddart will be reading on be-half of all the athletes. Mr. Hawkes just read us chapter 23 of The Adventues of Tom Sawyer. We are also going to try and finish our camp artwork. once we have finished that we will move on to our country studies.

31th July 2008
Today we are going to have a country meeting. If you are wondering what that is we are having an Awakeri School Olympics on Friday 08/08/08. The whole school have been put into different countries that include; Argentina, Brazil, China, Kenya, Netherlands, Korea, Spain, Canada, Jamaica and France. We will be deciding at the country meetings who will be carrying the flag, who will be carrying the sign etc. Back to our classroom we are doing country studies for the next week or two. We are going to find out alot of information about our countries and compare it with Our beautiful country, New Zealand. So far many students in Rm14 have learnt that their countries are very different when you compare little New Zealand. We have started making a title page for our country it has to include the flag the name of the country a picture and also the olympic rings.

28th July 2008
Today Mr. Hawkes is reading Chapter 17 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Also we will soon be finishing up SRA Rate Builders which will be upsetting since so many people enjoyed it! And hopefully we will finish our camp art work that we have been working on since Term 1. There are a few people who have finished their art work and are making titles so I will put a few photos of them on the website. We have a special for criteria for it too;
*Subject close up
*Activity and feeling shown
*Object disappears off the page
*Objects overlap
*Distance perspective
*All colours must be mixed

25th July 2008
Today we are goin to a concert in the Events Centre. They are a Choir and Orchestra band from Hamilton Girls College. Hopefully it will be interesting and we will all enjoy it.
We are only half way through The Adventures of Tom Sawyer!! Each chapter has been very interesting to listen to. Mr. Hawkes is reading Chapter 16 today. We have to write a summary about each chapter.
And hopefully i will get Mr. Hawkes to put a new teachers message for Term 3.
Also today we are going to asembly at 12pm and we have 3 people speaking some spanish greetings. They will include; Hola Senor/Senorita, Buenos dias Senor/Senorita, Buenas tardes Senor/Senorita and Buenas noches Senor/Senorita.

24th July 2008
Well I must say our first week back at school for term three has been very interesting and exciting in many ways. We started going back to tech at Edgecumbe College on Tuesdays. On Monday, Wednesday and today we went to see Shirley and Harold in the life education truck! We learnt about W.O.F for our bodies and how to keep healthy and eat Carbohydrates, Minerals, Fat, Fibre, Protein, Vitamins and Water. We also learnt about Simple Carbohydrates and Complex Carbohydrates. And we even learnt about Saturated Fat and Unsaturated Fat. On behalf of Room 14 we would like to thank Shirley heaps for teaching us so much. I'm sure we will remember next time when feel like having two mint biscuits instead of a banana. WHOOPS shouldn't have given away our little secret!!

4th July 2008
Today is the last day before the holidays start. We had a reward day after lunch. There won't be anything else put on the website for round about 2 weeks but I will definitely update the page as soon as school starts back again!!

30 June 2008
Today we are going to be looking at the power points we have been making with Mr. Sheather over the last term. Mr. Sheather has picked a few of them that were good and came across with a good message! Ask your children when they get home what the message was about for their power point. Some were very interesting indeed!! Hopefully a little later on I will put another picture of the cheese burger!! GROSS!

25 June 2008
This morning on the frosty frozen grass we had to do our twelve minute run. It was so cold!! Most of class who didn't think to bring shoes got very numb feet. Our best score was run by Samuel Burgess who got 2.8km which is the equivalent of 14 laps around our 200m course. The person who improved most from there last score is Mark Morrison who got 2.1km last time and today he got 2.66km beating his other score by 560m which is classed as a huge improvement! And the next biggest improvement would be Samuel Burgess who beat his last score by 480m. Everybody improved their scores in the twelve minute run. Must be from all that running you're making us do for P.E Mr. Hawkes!!

24 June 2008
Last night Miss Robb brought Rm 14 a Cheese Burger from Mc Donalds. We are going to use it as our science project. We are going to see what has happened to the Mc Donalds Burger over a period of a month. Miss Robb said when she did the test over in England in October last year she was disgusted on what had happened to the burger and she has never eaten a cheese burger or any other burger from Mc Donalds since then. We will have a look at it about twice a week and you never know over the next month you might be hearing a lot of gruesome stories!

This is the first picture taken of the cheese burger but toughen up your stomach for what you're going to see over the next month!!

22 June 2008 Here's what Lucy, Melody and Mikaela thought of Zebong....
Zebong is a very talented story teller. The way he talked was different, but it matched his stories. We liked the way he used a quilt to symbolise his stories. The vest he wore was not your everyday vest, it was strange but cool. We liked the way he acted. We know that he loves story telling. His stories are about his family, like 'Naughty Grandma' and 'Staunch Grandad'. He was very enthusiastic and confident. He made a lot of eye contact with the audience, and he involved most of the children and the teachers.

19 June 2008
Today we are going to Fantastic Festival. We are going to watch Zebong who is a fantastic story teller says Mr. Hawkes. I just hope he's right!!
I will update you when we get back on whether most people enjoyed Zebong's story telling!

18 June 2008
Today we had class photos so don't forget to send in the order forms if you would like to purchase the class photo and if your child plays netball or hockey you can purchase those pictures as well.

17 June 2008
Over the last couple of weeks we have been working on writing Pooh stories.
The criteria was
*We had to make the characters real, in new settings and stories
*There had to be a problem and we had to solve it
*It had to have good punctuation
* And it had to have 7-10 bits of direct speech.
Scroll down to Students' Work to read my Pooh Story!

16 June 2008
Last Friday we started reading Tom Sawyer today we are reading chapter two and three. After Mr. Hawkes has read the chapter we had to write a summary about the main parts in the chapter. It has to be short and only have the main parts in it and nothing else!
Head down to students work to see Melodies chapter two summary.

13 June 2008
And the finalists are....
From our class there was Ari, Remè, Fiona, Shannon and the only yr. 7 from our class,David
and from the other classes Rachel, Susannah and the other yr. 7 Zac
Good Luck To All at the Finals on Tuesday!!

12th June 2008
UPDATE ON SEMI-FINALS!
This morning room 14 found out who got into the semi-finals and congratulations to the following on their brilliant speeches that carried them all the way!!
Shannon Mower, Carrie Fynn, Ari Wilson-Porter, Remè Barkema, David Klein Ovink and Fiona Coulter.
So my message to these six speakers from Rm14 good luck and try your best and have fun!! Brittany
And hopefully this afternoon I will add the students from Rm12 and Rm13 that got into the semi-finals as well.the room 12 and 13 finalists names have been put on the news page so head over there to see the order of the speakers aswell!

11 June 2008
I will update you tomorrow on the students in room 14 that get into the semifinals! Out of the 29 pupils we have in Room 14 it is going to be difficult to get into the semifinals since there were some really excellent speeches that told us a lot of interesting facts and information.

10 June 2008
Today we finished our speeches 2008 with the last four speakers David, Vinnie, Morgan and Jonas. The speeches have all been VERY interesting and the whole class cant wait to hear who got into the semi finals!! We hopefully find out this afternoon or tomorrow. Fingers crossed!! Then the finals are on Tuesday 18th June 2008

"And think of that Mr Hawkes, if we could snack at our desks we might actually understand what you are talking about after lunch! So come on everybody be snackerised!" says David, as he eats his cracker with tomato paste on it.	12 Min run Why Bother? Running gets your heart rate up which pumps the blood around your body faster making you SWEAT out toxins! Says Morgan as she wipes her forehead clean.

03 June 2008
This morning in room 14 we did a Maori exercise. What we had to do was say what we would like to do. The question was Kua tae ki te wa mo te ..............! and many people said "Kua tae ke ti wa mo te takaro" which means 'It's time to go and play'. Other people said "Kua tae ki te wa mo te kai" which means 'It's time to go and eat!' And the funny thing was Mr. Hawkes let us go and do what we said because we answered the question properly!

This week in room 14 we are going to be doing our speeches, well most of us, since there are still a few people that haven't even started, not mentioning any particular names!! We will start by having 6 pupils read theirs tomorrow, then 9 on Thursday 4th, then 9 again on Monday 9th then the last six on Tuesday 10th!

The speech topics that we could choose from were=
*What does a balanced life mean?
*Food for fuel
*Living life to the fullest with a disability
*12min run why bother?
* Healthy role model
*Keeping yourself safe

Also tomorrow as 1:30 we start the Awakeri School Cross Country. Mr Hawkes calls it Happy Country, but I don't know why!

20 May 2008
Yesterday morning in room 14 we started making marble mazes with Mrs Sheather. We even had criteria. We had to have 3 or more simple machines. They included screw, pulley, wheel and axle, inclined plane (ramp), wedge and lever. We used materials brought from home and Mrs Sheather also brought some bits and pieces with her! The end results were absolutely amazing!

13 May 2008
Today we have Phyllis Johnston coming to our school to talk to us about her life being an author. Just so that we know a bit about her writing, we are reading a story that Mr Hawkes owns called 'No One Went To Town'. We are only three chapters through it but so far it has been an awesome story! We have about two or three of Phyllis Johnston's books in our library and I cant wait to read one of them called Dead Dan's Dee once Shannon M finishes reading it!!

7 May 2008
This term has started of really welll today a few things have happened: 2 adults came to our school yesterday to teach all the kids a few key skills in rugby. Today we had our turn. It was heaps of fun and they way all of us looked afterwards definitely made us look like we enjoyed our-selves which i'm sure we did!! Some of the things we did included running, tackling tackle bags, relays and passing a rugby ball facing different directions. Also today the building men have started building the astro turf. It sounds as if it will be ready some time next term so we are looking forward to that!! Also for the students playing soccer our first soccer games for this season are this Saturday!! So good luck to all of those kids!!

15 April 2008
Today is our last day of manual (tech) until term three. Yesterday we were writing haiku poems. Scroll down to Students' Work to read a couple of really good ones. Mr Hawkes also has a new teacher's message.

10 April 2008
Here are some cool photos of our camp. Hope you enjoy!!!
Also today we are going to start reading our new class book called The house at Pooh Corner. We have read two other books as well. Barney and the Eels and then we moved on to The Fat Man. Both of these books were very New Zealand like, which fitted perfectly in with our New Zealand topic that we are doing but will sadly conclude very soon!!

7 April 2008
Last week room 14 went to camp at Blair Lodge in Katikati. We traveled by car to the camp and settled in. Then we went Orienteering around Katikati. Most of the children ..........Well definitely me... have learnt things that we never knew actually happened!! We had four days at Blair Lodge and three nights. Day 1= Orienteering, Swimming in the river and trivial pursuits in the evening
Day 2=We had a bush walk. We had a treasure hunt in the bush. Some of the things we had to look for were an orb web, young tawa tree and a whole lot more! Then we went to Sapphire Springs we also did some water safety activities. When we got back to camp we did BMX for about an hour, but the thing is - showing off always ends up terrible. Well it still did!! Rory and Ari were told to go round the track once to show us which way to go. Ari went first then Rory followed. As you know BMX has jumps and some are pretty big. Well this one was fairly small and Rory was showing off. He tried to a jump over the lump of dirt and guess what happened........... you guessed it SPLAT!!! Straight into the ground face first! "OUCH" was all we could say plus a few of us were laughing although Rory couldn't hear us! We also played spotlight after a delicious dinner cooked by the parents.
Day 3=We went to the Waihi Museum then to the train station. We took a train ride to Waikino which is were the Victoria Stamper Battery ruins lie. Once we had walked right around there we went back on the train and then we went to the Martha mine. To make matters worse it was pouring with rain!!! But luckily the tour was mostly on the bus!! The tour was absolutely amazing!!!!!!! When we got back to camp we separated into groups and then we all did three activities: air rifles, BMX and archery.Our after dinner activity was mock court it wasnt all that good but hey it was a laugh!! Judge Keno with the help of prosecutor Hancox, henchman Luca and the juries found lots of people guilty!
Last day=We got woken up at 6:45, started packing everything up then had breakfast. We had to go right through our cabins and see if everything was picked up, then vacuum and mop the cabin. By the time we actually left Blair Lodge it was already 9:25. We arrived at Waimarino shortly afterwards. For the beginning of the day till lunch we did shore based activities which involved Ultra High, Dive boards, Slip 'n' Slide,Water slide, Volley ball and also an obstacle course. After lunch we went kayaking out in the river. We had to a few tricks like kneeling in your kayak, standing up in your kayak and also doing a wheelie in your kayak. After we had done that we had relays. We were all separated in to six groups of five. By the time we got back on shore packed everything up and got changed it was well past 3o'clock. We arrived back at school around 4:40 and I am sure everybody was ready to go home and get a good nights rest!!!! Watch out for some cool photos of camp coming tomorrow!
The new website monitor is Brittany and no longer David. He's doing Room 2.

27 March 2008
Last weekend was a five day weekend because of Easter. Also we have our camp Blair Lodge coming up soon next week. We have started to make camp booklets and are just about done. We are on the lookout for BMX bikes for on camp because we want some more. Also soon after camp we have touch day and fund raiser.

14 March 2008
Today room 14 had some fun relays in the pool. They had to find a group of three people and piggyback people across the pool. On Thursday we had Miss Laurent. With her we did we did some face drawings with charcoal. We have some very interesting ones as well.
We are studying how NZ authors bring NZ culture into their writing. Yesterday we wrote a paragraph using some NZ ideas. Scroll down to Students' Work to read them.

10 March 2008
Room 14 has been working on short stories. Eight people have finished them. We have finished our book Barney And The Eels and have started a new book called The Fat Man.

28 Feb 2008
Today 4 more people said the poem most of them finished it. So far we have had five people complete the poem. We have finished our Koru family art and have started some cinquain art.

26 February
Last week we had a cool trip to study the rocky shore at Otarawairere. Check out the photos here. Today we are at tech at Edgecumbe. We also had our first three people recite the poem Te Po this morning. Two passed out of three, so that was pretty good!

15 Feb 2008
Yesterday Mrs Sheather taught us how to copy a template of a shape. We had to make it half the size of the original shape. Today two new kids came from Turkey for a holiday. They wanted to come to Awakeri School for the day, to see what a country school with grass was like!

13 Feb 2008
Back at school again! This year will be exciting we will have a new astro turf and a new class room by the end of the year. We have started some Koru family art with a few more to be done. We have chosen 2 people for the Enviro Group (one was Jesse), and 2 people for the school council (Jarrod and Brittany). We have our swimming on Wednesday Thursday and Friday with library on Monday.


Students' Work

Pooh Story
By: Brittany Harder

Small, Tigger and I at the movies!
We gingerly entered the building. We then sneaked over to the counter and…………… jumped up. We asked for "Three tickets to Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull movie" We then headed over to the right of the counter and asked for three raspberry twists, 1 large popcorn and three drinks um, a Coke, a Mirinda and...
"Small!" I yell for the third time in five minutes, "Where are you and what do you want to drink?"
"A tiny Sprite please," squeaked Small from the ground.
"And a Sprite please," I say to the woman that was serving us at the counter. As she placed everything on the counter, I said, "Thank you." I grabbed everything and shouted yet again, "Small, Tigger where are you both? We are going to miss our movie!"
"Here, Here," they both said coming out of the bathroom.
"Right thank you finally we are on our way!"
As we wandered up the stairs, Tigger passed the tickets to the ticket collector. At the same moment he bounced right up into the air as if to say, "Hello I'm Tigger!"
"Thank you," the ticket collector said, "But you have three tickets and there are only two of you."
"No," I replied indignantly, "There are three of us. Small is over there on that step." I said pointing to where Small was sitting.
"Well I am sorry Ma'am but that little fulla down there is too little to get into this movie."
What!" I say ill-temperedly. "How stupid!"
"It's true Ma'am nobody under 30cm can enter."
"I guess we will just have to leave then." So off bounced Tigger, off crawled Small and off I stamped back up the Strand.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
By: Mark Twain

Haiku Poems

A Lump Of Dirt

On my motorbike speeding around is a lot of fun, unlike the time in Toatoa. I was riding around with my aunt, two uncles, four cousins, my brother, sister and my dad. My aunt was teaching me how to stand up on my bike. As she watched me she shouted, "Lock the bike with your knees Jesse!"
I turned my head around and shouted back,"Like this?"
All of a sudden I flipped over the handle bars onto the ground all because of a small lump of dirt. It didn't hurt but it was the shock that freaked me out.

By Jesse Ingle

NZ Stories
The Game
David Beckham ran onto the field only to find it overgrown with ferns."This is the field!?" he shouted as he stood in a cowpat.
By David Klein Ovink

The Simpsons' vacation
Bart has another vacation to N.Z. because he gets in trouble with the president. He takes a walk in the forest and finds out that the rata tree takes over its victims with its vine body. As he likes this, Bart tries to do the same on Lisa.
By Jesse Ingle

Teacher's Message
Hola! Welcome back to Term Three! What another busy term we have, including Science Fair, a student teacher - Miss Geddes, Production, kapa haka, learning Spanish, the Olympics.... Whoa stop! OK

Hasta la vista!
Barrie Hawkes.

Before we became Room 14, we were Room 12 and we had some cool pages in the past too, look at 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 or 2002.