The Last Day of Term

What a great day! We had a lot of fun team building, watching The Lorax and eating a lot of delicious food. Here is a run down:

We started with our Yaldhurst's Got Talent special Assembly. Below are some photos from the performances.

This is the new Te Pihinga all together in assembly.

The junior finalists.

The winners - well done Taylor, Catie & Julia. 

Then it was outside for team building time.

Lunchtime - wow, there was so much food. Thanks families for providing us with such a range of delicious food. We enjoyed having healthy and treats. Yum, yum!!

Sadly we had to farewell two very special people. Porter and Rivah we will miss you. All the best for your new school and town. 

Finally it was time to go outside for our whole school Jump Rope for Heart. What a fantastic way to end the term. Everyone looked great in their house colours and everyone should be much healthier after all that jumping. Go Yaldhurst!

Jump Rope for Heart on PhotoPeach

Yaldhurst Model School Speech Finals

On Friday 11th September our school Whare Hui was filled with excited and expectant students. Who was going to surprise us? Who was going to persuade us? Who was going to win?

Each class put forward their best three students (well expect Mr M and Miss B, who couldn't quite count) to share their persuasive speech. Te Kakano students were sharing poems as this was the beginning of their speech journey.

In Totara we had worked hard and listened to everyone's speeches. They were all so good it was a difficult decision but the three chosen had the highest marks.

Well done Jedi, Julia and Eze for all your hard work and effort in writing and practising. You did Totara proud on the day.

You will be able to see each speech on our personal blogs by the end of the week. However we do have the winning performances here to share so check them out.

 Here they are with their winning certificates. From left to right 1st, 2nd & 3rd. Kai pai to you all!

Friendship Skills

We have been looking at Friendship Skills in Totara to help us be better classmates and playground peers. We have looked a range of things a good friend has. These include:

Friendship Skills> Talk - be interesting, keep up with what's going on around you, eg TV, sports, music, shared interests - so that you have something to talk about.> Share the conversation, so that you each get a chance to be listeners and talkers.> Listen to what your friends are saying and ask questions about it.> Praise your friends when they do something well.> Use your manners - say please and thank you. Friends like to be pleasant to each other.> Think of yourself as being a friendly person, look friendly and be friendly - and others will find you friendly.> Be helpful - do things for your friends without keeping a score on who's done the most favours.> Give back things you have used or borrowed from each other.> Be aware of others' feelings - think before you speak. (Sometimes it is a good idea to keep your thoughts to yourself rather than upset people's feelings.)> Handle conflict - by being clear about what you want and how you will compromise. Share your time with other friends.> Be honest about your feelings, eg. "I don't think this is a good idea because..." But don't always try to be the leader - try out other people's ideas.> Try to understand people by thinking about things from their point of view.> Don't argue and get upset if your friend doesn't agree with you about something. That's O.K. They have the right to an opinion too.

We then broke into groups and came up with some skits to demonstrate some of these skills. Check them out.

YMS in Town

What an incredible day we had going into town today. We all jumped on the bus at 11:30 and headed into town. Everyone was in good spirits and excited about what was going to happen. 

We arrived safely and all hopped off the bus. The wind was very cold but we were quickly moved into the Christchurch City Council building. It was very large and we could hear Aranui School's Kapa Haka group singing their hearts out. They sound fantastic.

After a small amount of waiting quietly (and our students were so good waiting quietly) we headed upstairs to an area we could drop our bags and sit till it was our turn.

Finally 12:30 arrived and we were moved forward for our performance. Here are a few videos of the Seniors. Sadly my phone had too much on it and I couldn't capture the juniors. However other people have taken some footage and I will post them when I receive them. 

What a great performance from everyone. We looked and sounded fantastic. The parents that attended had big smiles and everyone clapped hard at the end.

Well done YMS!

We then headed for a brisk walk to the Botanic Gardens for some kai and a run around. The kids loved the walk and were commenting on all the things happening around the city they saw. 

Blake even found a new friend.

We had a great lunch and run around and then it was pack to pounding the pavement to get to the bus on time. Whew, we made it. Everyone was very tired by the time we got back to school and so we finished with some play and quiet time in class.