PRESENTATIONS

All of the year 7 classes, including room one, are currently preparing a small presentation to share in assembly. We have brainstormed a cool story idea as a class and Brieana and Bebe put together a great script for us. All of the students have selected their area of interest. Our actors are busy learning their lines, props people are creating madly and our dancers are practicing their steps. Check out some of the pics from last week's learning rotations.
This week is a busy one, we have Bebe's step mum coming in to teach some dances, and David and Josh will be filming some of our segments on Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to bring any appropriate gear in actors!

AMAZING RACE: CHINA

So this week we were off to China. We were super impressed with Hamish's knowledge on the human rights in China. He told us that parents in China are only allowed one child each, unless they are super rich, they can have two, but have to pay lots in tax. The presentation standard was fantastic this week too. check out the 'great wall' in the pics above. Zack made his very own fortune cookies which was super impressive (they were yummy too.) I got a fortune cookie from the 'food' group and LOVED my fortune "You will live to a ripe old age, happy in the love and respect of many children." very appropriate given my awesome job! Have a wonderful weekend everyone
Mrs Q

MALAYSIA

This week's Amazing Race took us to Malaysia. Which was perfect timing because we had two Malaysian student teachers visiting in our class for the week; Nick and Liz. For our Amazing Race Road Block, Nick and Liz taught the class a basic Malaysian dance, all the groups had about 20 minutes to learn it and perform it in front of the class. Well done to Henri and Bebe who got top male and female dancers. Also the blue team who came first (20points) the Red team who came 2nd (10points) and the Green group came third (5 points.) Check out a video of the groups practicing and some pics. Well done room one you all did a great job.. Next week we are off to China, good luck!
Mrs Q

CONGRATULATIONS

Well done to Fiona and Brieana for their fine efforts in the speech finals at assembly today. You both did room 1 proud. Also well done to Charlotte for her assembly award today.

ROSS CREEK DAY OUT

What a gorgeous day to head out of the classroom and into our neighbouring wilderness of Ross Creek! We left school at 9am and split into 3 groups. The room 1 students were fabulous! All groups rotated around an orientation task, rap jumping activity and a challenge where they had to carry two kayaks all over the show. Phew! Have a look at some of these shots of room one in action! Oh by the way, one of our teams recorded the best time for the kayak challenge out of all of the year 7 classes so far! Their time was 57 mins 44 secs, nice one!
Great day with a super bunch of students and awesome parents too, thanks Bridget, Toni, Brent and Mrs Lowden
Mrs Q

SHAVING HEADS FOR CANTEEN

A group of girls from Room 13 organised a school bandana day to raise funds for canteen. A large percentage of room 1 bought bandanas to support this great cause and so did a lot of other Balmac students. So much so that we raised over $1600 as a school! Because we raised over $1000 a number of our teachers shaved their heads down to a number one! Nice one Mr Sloan, Mr Napier, Mr Clarke, Mr Waititi, Mr Friend, Mr Henderson and Mr Tarapi! Check out the pics!

AMAZING RACE WEEK TWO: USA

Last week the students of Room One explored the United States of America. They looked at the current events happening in the USA at the moment, the culture, tourist spots, animals, people and food best known in America.
This week we also had a road block on Monday afternoon. All of the groups had to make an American Brownie. I awarded 20 points for the best brownie and 20 points for the best group work. The Green team won best Brownie and the Red team won best team work. Well done folks. Check out our teams in action in the pictures above.
Mrs Q

BUSY WEEK AHEAD...

This week is a short week, and we have a few important things to achieve which will be our main focuses this week:
1. Speeches, which will be read on Thursday and Friday this week
2. Amazing Race; Due Friday
3. Remember to return your permission slip and $15 for our outdoor ed component of term 4 at Ross Creek on Monday Nov 1st.
Be organised and on to it Room one students!
Good luck
Mrs Q

AMAZING RACE WEEK ONE

The class have completed their first week of the Amazing Race. We have all learned a little more about this great country of ours. It was pretty close but this week's winning group is the Red group with 29.5 points. They were closely followed by the yellow group with 29 points. Great start Room One, Remember to bring your ingredients for our road block on Monday afternoon
Mrs Q

THE AMAZING RACE...

This term Room One are participating in the Amazing Race. They will be making their way around the world via technology and other resources, learning about different foods, cultures, current events, animals and people from a range of countries. Check back here every week to see where they have been and what they have learned. We have started this week with our very own New Zealand.
All of the students are in teams. The captains have been chosen based on their proven ability with ASPIRE projects and Science fair. Check out our planes to see who is in which team. The team captains are in the cockpit.

CONGRATULATIONS BOYS CADILACS RUGBY TEAM

Zack, Jimmy, Hayden, Te Ariki and Josh L were all in the Cadilacs team that played Kavanagh in the year 7 boys rugby final last week. They won by a close margin 38-35. Great work boys.

OTAGO CROSS COUNTRY, AND RED CROSS SAUSAGE SIZZLE

The sun finally decided to shine last Friday. Which was lucky because our school was hosting the Otago Cross Country. We had Jaren and Henri representing room one and they both did really well, placing 16th and 17th respectively. These two boys had also been busy during the week organising a BBQ for the Red Cross Christchurch Earthquake appeal. They managed to get some free bread and cheap sausages and ended up raising almost $400 dollars. Great job boys!

more rock climbing pics

LONG BEACH

What a fabulous day and a fabulous bunch of students! You all did yourselves and your parents proud. I had a great day with you guys and gals out there today. Here are a few pics. I'm having trouble uploading to photobucket at the moment, so hopefully will have more up soon. Nice one Room 1!

ROCK CLIMBING

Morning everyone. What a gorgeous morning. We are all good to go, but don't be fooled, it will still be pretty cold out there so wrap up warm and bring lots of layers. Don't for get your lunch, drink, torch and spade and shovel if you have one. See you at school, be there about 8.30am
Mrs Q

DISSECTING RATS

Today we dissected rats. Why? To learn more about the internal organs and general make up of our bodies, because they are very similar to a rats. We saw large intestines, small intestines, heart, lungs, bladder, kidneys, lungs, spleen, and more. All of the students showed lots of interest. We had Jonno (a teacher aide from room 14) helping us, he has studied anatomy at University and his father is a vet, so he had some good knowledge to share with us. I dissected one too! It was very interesting, I hope all students learned a little more about the body today. Check out the pics,

Make a comment: tell me what was most interesting about dissecting rats today. What did you learn?

Mrs Q

CONGRATULATIONS AND GOOD LUCK

Balmac has been in the news a bit lately, and some of the students who featured are from the fabulous room one! Well done to Jaren and Henri who were both part of the winning yr 7 matheletics team in the Dunedin competition. Also well done to Henri, Brieana, Hannah and Fiona for their awards at the Otago Technology and Science fair. On top of this Te Ariki found out over the weekend that he has made it into the NZ u14 basketball team. He will be going to Australia to compete with his team the koru's on 11th January next year! Hopefully there is more good news to come... Jaren and Jimmy are off to Christchurch to compete in an intermediate schools competition. They will be playing football for a mixed yr 7 & 8 school team and are being coached by Mr Martin. Good luck boys!

CROSS COUNTRY

Well done to all of the fantastic room one students who completed the school cross country on Friday. Everyone tried really hard. We also had a few students who made it into the Otago Cross Country Squad. Well done to Henri who came 3rd and Jaren who came 4th in the yr 7 boys. Also Zack Matthews who came 13th and Josh Malcolm who came 14th will be reserves for the Otago Cross Country. Looks like there is a bit more training for those boys! Good luck guys!

Football skills

Keep checking back here. Soon we hope to have some pics and simple instructions on how to correctly kick a football. The video clip below is our 2nd session. Lets see how much we can improve
Mrs Q

Room One Football Skills

CHALLENGE:

I have a writing challenge for any keen takers. There are PRIZES up for grabs too! You may have seen this in the ODT in the weekend. But here are the details...


If you're a Dunedin resident we want to hear your stories about what makes this city special beyond the touristy stuff.

Have a look at the videos, photos with captions and stories on this site to see the sort of thing we're after. And don't forget to get everyone to rate your video or photo entry because the highest rated entries are our finalists

If you are just writing your mini- story (no longer than 250 words) get your friends and family to read it on the ODT website, as only the most read stories can make the finals.

Your work might even get to feature in an ad promoting Dunedin. And as a final incentive, check out the great prizes on this website:

http://www.insidersdunedin.co.nz/

WEEK THREE ALREADY!

Hello folks
Well it is week three already, we have completed parent interviews and have our open evening this Wednesday night. Lots of room one students are involved, it should be fun!

I hope everyone enjoyed the Anatomy Museum on Thursday. I was very disappointed I couldn't be there but I picked up lots of fab ideas at my conference in Auckland,and I am keen to try them out on Room One!

WELCOME BACK!

I hope you have all had a fantastic holiday. This term we make our way out of winter and into spring. Yay! Our big topic is CHALLENGE and we will be focusing largely on health topics; including taking care of ourselves, learning about the human body, pubertal change and learning a little more about local health organisations.
Check out the side bar for a few important dates that we have coming up this term
I'm looking forward to another fun term of learning with the fab room one students.
Mrs Q

TIM TAM SLAM

Stay tuned for examples of the procedural writing that explains how to complete a tim tam slam

MEGA MATHS ACHIEVEMENT

For the month of May all of the Balmacewen Intermediate classes have been focusing on improving their multiplication knowledge. At the beginning of May Room 1 had a class average of 66%. Our final test was on Friday and our average is up to a whopping 90%. Well done Room 1 this is an awesome effort! Lets see if we can maintain this superb knowledge of our multiplication facts and now extend it to all or our basic facts.

TERM TWO

WOW... If you have been waiting for an update, here it is. We have had a busy term so far.
Next week I will put some of our pics from Orokonui up for you to have look at.

Room one students are developing some great reading strategies and they are putting their summarising skills into practice through their science fair research.

Science fair: How are you all going?
By now you should have completed stage A; Accumulated information around your topic. S; sorted this, highlighted and taken notes, and made an hypothesis. P; planned out how the rest of your project will progress over the coming weeks.

Now we are up to the I of 'ASPIRE.' You need to implement your plan, carry out your investigation/project, and complete testing etc over the next 3 weeks. Don't forget to take notes and collect photographs as evidence as you go.

Keep training hard and playing fair and competitively in your winter sports room one!

Mrs Q

http://www.scribd.com/full/30561337?access_key=key-yffn6vtlecnww1ow5vq

TEXTAREA_ID

DISCOVERY - TERM 2

Welcome back team one! As you know our big focus for this term is science fair. We will be doing a number of science fair experiments over this term and investigating states of matter. What do you know about states of matter?

End of term One

It is hard to beleive all of our lovely room one students have already completed their first term at Balmacewen Intermediate school. It has been a very busy term, especially since it was less than 9 weeks long and included Otago Anniversary day and Good Friday. We also managed to squeeze school camp in there as well as swimming lessons, swimming sports, a cemetery visit and an Otago Early Settlers museum visit. Good job team.

Next term will be longer, especially as we are moving into winter, but we will still be pretty busy. Our big topic is DISCOVERY and each student will be working on their own individual science fair project. You will see some examples of science fair projects just below this post and there will be further notices coming home on the first week of school next term, but have a think about some ideas over the holidays.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday break and Easter and I look forward to seeing you all again for term two

From Mrs Q

science fair ideas

CAMP 2010

Hey Check out room one's camp pictures. Looks like everyone had a great time. However it was a bit cold at the yachting.... as you will see

WHAT A GREAT BUNCH

Hey room one, just a quick not incase you are looking here before I see you on Monday. I had a fab time at camp and enjoyed seeing you all out and about challenging yourselves. I love the way everybody got stuck in and had a great time. A big thank you to our parent helpers for their time and efforts at camp, and thank you for all the fantastic baking we enjoyed over our 3 days at Waihola. Check back here soon for some photo action
Mrs Q

BUSY AS EVER

If your thinking you haven't heard anything from room one for a while, it is because we have been really busy. We spent a day at the early settlers museum, milford galleries and chinese gardens last Wednesday, had our last swimming session on Monday, and we are off to camp tomorrow! On top of this we have the school swimming sports to look forward to on Friday 19th March. Check back here soon for photos from our early settlers day and photos and stories from our camp.
Mrs Q

HALF WAY THROUGH TERM ONE

WOW It is hard to believe we are half way through term one already.
I enjoyed a great trip with you all to the Southern Cemetery today. I hope you enjoyed it too and learned a little along the way.
A special thank you to all of our parents who helped with transport and guiding our groups.
I'm looking forward to checking out your photo stories and seeing your grave stones on Friday.
Check out our important dates so you know what is happening for the rest of this term
Mrs Q

HOMEWORK - week 4

I took this photo when I went to visit the Southern Cemetery the other day. I spoke to these men and asked them what they were doing and why. What do you think they are doing? Why?