Building Together

Did you know working together to create something is fun? Did you know that working together to create something takes a lot of skill? For those of us that complete our must do's and can do's we can have some time to build. We have to talk to one another, share the materials, listen, compromise as well as clean up when it is time.

Dog Safety

Do you know what to do when you see an angry dog? Do you know how to pat a dog? You might think you do but YMS students definitely do.

Last Thursday Yaldhurst students had 45 minutes with the Christchurch City Council Dog Safety team learning all about how to be safe around dogs. Te Pihinga went along unsure of what they were going to learn but boy were they excited when they saw Baxter the dog.

Baxter helped us learn how to do the right thing around dogs. Even those with dogs learnt a new thing or two. Mika showed us her skills in picking up doggy doo and Pania and Xavier showed us how to pat a dog correctly.

It really was a wonderful time. Thanks Christchurch City Council for putting on a great learning time for us.

Enthusiastic Learners & our Passion Projects

Te Pihinga has been busy working out what we want to learn about. Being enthusiastic learners means we want to learn about things and discover things and share our learning.

And if the excitement levels are anything to go by after our first day we certainly are enthusiastic about our projects.

Here are some photos from the groups. We can't wait to share our learning in a few weeks.


Passion Projects: Week 1 on PhotoPeach

Writing test with computers

Today we are doing our e-asttle writing test. We have been given the choice to write on paper or on our chromebooks. Most of us choice to write on our chromebooks.

The classroom is very quite with only the tapping of keys or the shuffle of paper. 

PJ Day!!

What a great time we had being in our PJ's alllllll day! We felt very cozy and a number of us could have quite happily curled up and had a nap half way through the day. Check out some photos of us all looking snazzy in our pjs and onsies.

Friday Art Work

On Friday we worked on creating Kandinsky Art.

We stuck to our Autumn Theme and created trees based on the inspiration of this picture.

Here are some students sharing their process as they created their pictures.



We hope to finish them this week.

Self Management Time Reflections

What a wonderful improvement Totara have made as they work on becoming independent self managers. As YMS Heroes we need to be able to get on with our work and take ownership for it.

Today we completed our 3rd self management time. Check out the number of us who have really stepped up in our self management. (Please note 6 students leave the class for a maths group for half an hour so they aren't expected to complete everything).

So many ticks!! Go Totara.

At the end of each self management time we sit down as a class and reflect on our learning. The questions we have to answer are: What did we do and what can we do better tomorrow.

Listen to some of us sharing our reflections.