Author visit

Ann Kayes came to visit good shepherd, showing here new series Tui street tales. She also read a couple sentences from the book to us and I hope we all enjoyed it. The next day Ann Kayes was selling her series.

Room 6 Calendar Art

Good Shepherd School Fair 2019

The monsters are coming.

Marae Vist

On the 28th of August good shepherd school went to Unitec Marae. When we got there the owners of the Marae came and told us stories about them and the carvings. After that it was morning tea and the scones were delicious. Then the year five and six boys performed a Haka. Soon we had to leave and I bet everybody was sad.

Mixed media- Visual Arts

You hold the future in your hands. 



In Term 2 our Visual Arts focused was on Mixed Media. We finally finished our pieces of art at the end of the term. We started off by creating two hands, most of us copied our own hands as templates. One hand represents our past and the other hand our future. We used lots of different materials and symbols to make our artwork as well as exploring a range of different techniques with watercolor paint. This is my art work.

Assembly

Last week Room 6 performed their assembly. Our main entertainment was a drama circle on occupations. We also displayed our mixed media we made in term 2. Some people also shared about what they put on their art and why. We all had so much fun preparing and presenting our assembly.





Here are some pictures of our assembly: 

Whole school prayers

On Monday the 5th of August room 6 hosted whole school prayers. Our theme was The Gift of Faith. We did a song called ‘Open the Eyes of My Heart’ and Jiwoo, Zara and Maggie made hand actions for us. There were also people who did the prayers of the faithful. Overall prayers was a big success and everyone enjoyed it.





Here are some pictures of our prayers:

Hockey

On Friday we had so much fun with Sport NZ as they came in to teach us hockey. We got to do warm up and drills with the hockey sticks and played against each other in teams. We are already looking forward to next Friday’s session. Here are a couple of pictures:

Mary Mackillop feast day

Another celebration for Good Shepherd School in Week 3 was the Feast Day of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop.  St Mary MacKillop a vital part of Good Shepherd School, this is because she was the founder of the Josephites aka the Brown Joes.  The Brown Joes travelled all over Australia and New Zealand helping the poor and those in need. They built schools and that is how we are all students at Good Shepherd School. We celebrated the Feast day by going to a Mass for St Mary of the Cross and also having fun with our buddy class Room 4 as we worked on a St Mary MacKillop Art project. 

Cook Island language week

Week 3 has been a very busy week with so many celebrations. Good Shepherd School celebrates our multicultural school with our Cook Island Language focus.  We looked at the culture through our reading and made fun fact files. We were also lucky to have Alessandra and the cultural leaders teach us a Pure (prayer) to sing. 

We learnt Aro’a mai te Atua iaku.  See if you can say/sing this pure too.

Aro’a mai te Atua iaku. 

Aro’a mai te Atua iaku 

I te au mea taku kite nei 

Te anuanua kua iti mai ki roto iaku 

Aro’a mai te Atua iaku 

My God loves me 

My God loves me 

And all the wonders I see 

The rainbow shines through my window 

My God loves me

Peter's Journey

In R.E this week we were doing posters about inspiring people in the early church. If you were joined the early church you had to give up all your money so everybody had a fair share of money.
Me and my group chose peter the first apostle of Jesus ,here's a photo:

Eden/Albert Cross Country

On Thursday the 20 the of June years 4-6 participated in the Eden/Albert cross country zones. The boys started first in every year. Each year did 2 laps of  the park which was 2.5-3 km each lap. There was a sausage sizzle for every runner afterwards (not free). I am sure every person in good shepherd was puffed and every body did a great job.

G.S.S Book Week

  

Authors, Illustrators, Books, Book Week, Parade, Event, 2019

Room 6 was hungry for books during our book week. We had a whole week celebrating all things books. We had author visits from Stu Duval and James Russell. Stu presented workshops on storytelling, cartooning and writing.  James shared his books and told us stories. We did lots of cool book week activities in class like making dust jacket covers, wanted posters, bookmarks and story cubes. Finally our favourite day arrived, Friday. We got to dress up as our favourite characters and partake in the literacy treasure hunt.  Overall book week is a fantastic week every year. Room 6 LOVES BOOK WEEK!

Here are some photos from our time:

My book week character was: Poseidon

How the water cycle works?

How does the Water Cycle Work?
I am learning to inform my audience through explanation writing
By Henry




What's been around since the Earth was created? You guessed it, water! Did you know that water covers 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Out of all of earth’s water 97 percent of it is saltwater and the remaining three percent is freshwater, but only 1 percent is potable, potable means drinkable. Some of the water you use for drinking, washing and watering plants could have been water in a water cycle millions of years ago. A cycle is a series of steps that repeats itself again and again. The water cycle has three main stages evaporation, condensation and precipitation. Without a single one of these stages the water cycle would not work. This leads us into the first stage evaporation.


The first part of the cycle is called evaporation. Evaporation is the process when the sun heats up bodies of water, then the water gets so hot and turns into an invisible gas that we cannot see, called water vapour. Then the water vapour evaporates into the sky. Once the water vapour is in the sky the second stage forms condensation.


Condensation is the process when water vapour condenses and forms clouds . Then after the clouds are formed the water vapour forms back into water droplets again and cools down. Now in the cloud the rain droplets form the third stage precipitation.

Precipitation is the process when the water in the clouds gets really heavy and falls to the surface of earth. Did you know that the water from the clouds could fall in the form of snow, sleet or hail? After precipitation collection comes in to finish up the water cycle.

Collection is after the water precipitates it flows down from the mountains and collects in rivers, estuaries, streams and lakes. This ends up back in the oceans then the water cycle repeats itself.

To conclude, think about the three main stages evaporation the process when the sun heats up bodies of water, condensation the process when the water vapour makes clouds and finally precipitation the process when liquid falls from the sky in the form of rain, snow, sleet and hail. Remember only one percent of water is potable so do not waste water, water is a precious resource that we need to look after as long as humans live.

Water Care

Water, water everywhere! On Friday of week 6, we were lucky to have Sally from Water care come to teach us more about the water. We did a drama activity and experiments. Firstly we examined the process that water goes through to become drinkable water in our households. Our drama was based on the process that the water goes through to be cleaned. We were the water going through each stage. We had so much fun as we ventured around the school. Once we learnt how water is cleaned we then had to try and clean the dirty water ourselves. We had to create a filter system in partners. We had to do four different tests for our experiments. We experimented with a range of filters to try and test which filter system was the best.

Cross Country

Good Shepherd School had been busy training for cross country this term and finally the day arrived. In week 6 we all arrived at school in our running gear and had our house colors painted onto us. We were eager and ready to go and win house points. Overall the race was long and required a lot of stamina, but we were prepared. Here are some pictures from our races.

Science Experiments

For science has been learning about the water cycle.  We did five experiments. One was about the air pressure inside of a balloon and another one was blowing up the balloon then dunking it in water. It made a big bubble. This shows that there were air particles inside a balloon.  Another was finding out how the air pressure varies each size.

Growth Mindset

Last term we learnt  about growth mindset. We all worked on information folders about a certain famous person. My information folder was about the one and only 16th president of the united states Abraham Lincoln. Fun Fact: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Abraham Lincoln was well know for stopping slavery at that time in America.  I am very proud of my Abraham Lincoln information folder.

St Joseph's Day Tabloid Sports

Tuesday 19th March was St Joseph’s Day Feast Day.  The whole school attended mass to celebrate the leadership Saint Joseph showed.  Saint Joseph is also special to our school because Saint MacKillop and the Sisters of St Joseph were inspired by Saint Joseph.  Saint Joseph is also the foster father of Jesus. The following day, the whole school came together to celebrate with fun tabloid sports in our houses.  We all got to play so many fun and exciting games. Thank you to our leaders who prepared this.

Growth Mindset - Goal Bunting

Each student in  room 6 has made a bunting triangle to show our Growth mindset goal and motto that we want to work on. Come and check them out !

Jesus Strand - Religious Education

During term 1 we have been learning about Jesus the Son of God. This is my cube on how Jesus showed that God loved us all as his children. We are all blessed with the gifts faith, hope  and love.

My Accident Story

Fractured

February 2019 

By Henry 

I am learning to entertain my audience through a recount.

Have you ever fractured something? I have, this is the story of when first fractured something. My bum bone, no I’m serious your bum bone is called your Coccyx. This pain is excruciating it hurt for over 2 weeks. This happened at Potters Park when I was nine years old. I was mostly looking for trouble back then, especially when my little sister was around. She was painful and easily annoying, her reactions were priceless.

Piling in the car, me and my sister squabbled as we made the journey to Potter’s Park at 50 kilometres an hour. Harriet was being both dancer and prancer in the car because she was having a mini play date with her friend Elizabeth Harkison Merith at Potter’s Park. My mum was focusing on only one thing at this moment, getting a parking space. Apparently that is one of the most annoying things at 3:30pm on a summer's afternoon. Mum turned a corner and found a parking space, “Yay congratulations mum you found a parking space.”

My sister ran to enjoy her moment with best friend. Just then I knew what I was going to do at the waterpark - chase my sister and her friend. I truly do love annoying my sister. I slipped into my swimming togs thinking of how mischievous I was going to be. Vroom, vroom, I ran and chased my sister as fast as a Wacky Road Racer through the park. She screamed, I laughed, my sister’s friend warned her many times that I was inches behind them. Grab! My sister screamed, “Let go of me Henry!” After I let her go, my sister went to tell me off while the sudden feeling of guilt started to pile up on me. I slid off down the grass turf. I was about to head back after them when suddenly the pain seared through my body. I whimpered because it felt like somebody had just set my bum on fire, so I ran to my mum. She didn’t realise I was in pain so she told me off instead. I was desperate to explain, I told her that I slid down the grass turf hill and slid on my coccyx (yes, bum) over a climbing grip.

Ouch, every time I sat down my bum hurts, still can hurt till this day today. The only thing I could do was rest. My bum hurt every time I tried to move same as it is now . “This was a very bad week” I said to my mum. “I know,” she said.

Ash Wednesday

Today was Ash Wednesday. We went to church and sang some hymns, got the ashes on our foreheads, sung happy birthday to a little girl starting school on her birthday! We then went up and got a blessing.
We did make an attempt to keep our ashes on our foreheads, but that was a fail due to swimming and itching it off. We had a good day and hope everyone else did to. During the lent season we have to remember to pray, alms giving and helping others. else did to. During the lent season we have to remember to pray, alms giving and helping others.

Swimming sports

Room 6 had a wonderful day at swimming sports. When we all went to the turf we split up into our houses. Thank you Sharyn and parents for helping us with the non competitive swimming and competitive. Also thank you parents for coming along and supporting your children. Good shepherd students thank the teachers very warmly, as every year as they set up and prepare this event for us. I’m sure that every student enjoyed the event. I saw everyone compete with my own eyes and they all did well. The people who lost don’t have to be sad because they should be grateful they got a swim in the warm weather also because there’s always time and effort to improve.

Shrove Tuesday

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday. We all had a great day in room 6. The festivities started with the burning of the ashes on the turf. This was a new and exciting experience that not many of us had seen before.

Later on during Religious Education we learnt more about Shrove Tuesday and Lent. People used to get rid of all their luxury items such as flour, sugar, butter, eggs and milk by making pancakes. We were even able to enjoy some pancakes of our own. We all thought it was a great start to lent and we are looking forward to the lenten season as we prepare for the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are the season of Lent and it is a time of preparation.

Shine Week

Shine Week

A sea of orange flood Good Shepherd School on Friday the 8th of March. This week was shine week. We raise money to help people whose lives are affected domestic violence. In support we all wore orange clothes and brought a gold coin donation to help the charity. Here are some pictures:

GSS Charism

Year 5 and 6: Charism

Did you know the reason Good Shepherd School named their syndicates Connolly and Sheridan? Connolly and Sheridan were the names of the first two sisters that worked at Good Shepherd School when it opened. That is just one of the fun facts we learnt this week when we explored the charism of our school. The charism of our school is the flavour of our school, it is what makes us Good Shepherd School. Over the week we looked at the history of the school and unpacked the visual Image of the Good Shepherd Cross with the values, scripture, feast days and the St Mary MacKillop sayings. We unpacked the values and why we have those values. In groups we identified what each value looked, sounded and felt like before making up definitions.

Piece of the Puzzle

Year 5 and 6: Piece of the Puzzle

In Room 6 we are all a piece of the puzzle. There are 29 students and we each complete our puzzle. Without one of us we would not be Room 6. During the second week of school (once the year 6 were back from camp) we spent time learning about each other and completing our piece of the puzzle. We learnt that we are all different and unique made in the image of God. But we also learnt that sometimes people need a little helping hand to make learning fair. Check out our pieces of the puzzle in Room 6 Foyer to learn more about each of us.

“It’s always the small pieces that make the big picture.”

Leardership role

This year I am proud to take on the role of Journalist . I look forward to this role because: I like writing, reading and photography. I picked this role because I wanted to write interesting things for people, I love entertaining lots of people, I like making them laugh, put up and interesting piece of writing and making them happy. Those are the reasons I wanted to be Journalist.

Year 6 Camp

While the rest of the school was sleeping, enjoying their last day of the school holidays the year six were awake grabbing the last of their essential camp items. Stuffing the cars full of luggage we hit the road making our way up to MERC, Long Bay Beach for the annual Year 6 Leadership Camp. It was a fun, busy and hot week with lots of activities and things to do. There was so much to do with out amazing instructors and helpers, activities like paddle boarding, archery, abseiling, kayaking, rock climbing, giants ladder, stack’em and the list goes on. After the camp day we had plenty to do at night with the camp mass, school council voting, the talent quest and even a spooky game of spot light.


My two favourite activities were: Dingy activities and rock climbing

Mihimihi

Mihimihi 

Henry

I am learning to: introduce myself and others, and respond to introductions using my personal information

Tēnā koutou katoa, (greetings to you all)

No Aotearoa ahau (where you from/Aotearoa*)

Ko Puketapapa tōku maunga (mountain)

Ko  Manukau Harbour tōku moana (ocean)

Kei Tamaki Makaurau tōku kāinga ināianei. (I now live)

Ko Te Hapara pai tōku kura (school / Good Shepherd School*) Mihimihi

Ko  Russell tōku whānau (family)

Ko  Matthew Russell tōku pāpā (father)

No England ia

Ko Laura Squires tōku māmā (mother)

No England ia

Ko  Henry Russell tōku ingoa (your name)

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

                                                                             (Therefore, greetings to you, greetings to you, greetings to us, and greetings to us all)