Teaching Spanish

On Thursday the 19th of November some Year 8 students went to Paparoa St School to teach Spanish! This event was organised by the Spanish Leaders as their community event for Leadership.

The Spanish Leaders organised 3 different Spanish activities for the Year 3-4 students. There were 16 groups with about 12 children in each group. The first one was a circle activity where students were taught to say their names; Me llamo _____ (“My name is…”)  and how they were feeling; ¿Cómo estás? (“How are you?”) feliz (happy), emocionada

(excited) or cansada (tired). Then they did a quiz about learning Spanish and where it is spoken. Put your hands on your cabeza (head) if you want to try it below!

Spanish Facts (Cabeza or Cadera?) by ProProfs » Online test maker

The next two activities were about numeros (numbers) and colores (colours). Playing Pelota Loca (“Crazy Ball”), the students learnt the numbers 1-15. The next activity, Roba los Colores (“Rob the Colours”) the students learnt basic Spanish colores such as verde (“green”), orange (“naranja”) and red (“rojo”).

All the Year 8’s did an amazing job of teaching at the school and we are sure the Year 3 and 4s enjoyed playing the fun games and learning the words!

FPS Nationals!

Lucy's Passion Project

Unit of Inquiry - Stories by Candlelight

Review Writing

After our production ‘Peter Pan’ we got set a task to write a review from the perspective of an audience member. In order to do this we shared our ideas and thinking about what a review is, what needs to be in a review and how to write one. After we did our Peter Pan review we went even further and started writing up reviews for movies, tv shows and concerts.

Click here to see Lucy’s review of Peter Pan.

Want to know what we think it takes to write a review and how YOU can learn how to write one?Check out our slides below to see how to write a review. Thanks!

Cantamaths

On Wednesday some Selwyn House girls went to the Horncastle Arena to participate in the CantaMaths competition. In Cantamaths, you must collaborate in groups of four to complete math questions. Once you have an answer, your “runner” follows a set route to the markers and then runs back with either the same question (wrong answer) or a different question (right answer). Once thing about CantaMaths that can work towards you or against you, is that you must specify what it is- for example, if the answer is 14 apples, you must write exactly that: 14 apples, not just 14.

All of the girls who tried out were amazing mathematicians but we could only pick one team of Year 8s and one team of Year 7s. Both teams did really well, with our Year 7 team getting 50 out of 100, and our Year 8 team scored 60 out of 100.

Could you do better? Try our quiz below and comment with your score!

Cantamaths Quiz - ProProfs

Science experiments for our Unit of Inquiry

Last term our UOI (Unit Of Inquiry) was called “Light It Up” and our central idea was:
“Scientists use their knowledge of how to transform and manipulate basic elements in creating new products or substances.”

We focused on using our ‘scientific brains’ for our experiments, linking the experiments to a story book, whether it be Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh or Rapunzel in our own science videos, like the one shown above.

We looked at videos of Heston Blumenthal and Nanogirl to give us some inspiration and also to give us an idea of how to do a science experiment in front of a camera, explaining everything clearly and using iMovie to edit, creating transitions and adding sound effects

Here is an example of a video that we watched:

What story would you do a science experiment about? Have you ever done a science experiment that you could link to a story? We would love to hear from you in the comments!

~ Ella, Isabel and Lucy

Spelling Quiz 2015

A few weeks ago, children from all over Canterbury assembled at Chisnallwood Intermediate. All throughout the room, there were girls and boys madly scribbling down words like “delicatessen” and “doppelganger”, all ready for the Otago Daily Times Extra! Spelling Quiz.

In the annual quiz, you are in a team of three. There are 10 rounds, each on different things to do with spelling. Some of the categories are: Etymology, Dictionary Skills, Abbreviations and Guessing rounds. It’s always lots of fun to compete in, with spot prizes of pineapple lumps and quizzes for spectator, and it’s a bit of a laugh to see what words we got wrong!

Selwyn House entered several Years 7-8 teams, and they all did really well. It was really cool to see that we were probably one of the top girls only teams in the room!

Can you do better than our teams? Try the quiz below to see if you have what it takes to win the spelling quiz and comment below with your score!

Spelling Quiz - ProProfs » ProProfs Quiz Maker

By Hattie and Lucy

Houses

Success at Spelling Quiz!

Outstanding Success 

@ Canterbury Extra! Spelling Quiz!

This week, Selwyn House was ably represented by 12 of our top Year 7 and 8 spellers at this annual spelling quiz. The girls were involved in 10 rounds of questions that tested everything from their knowledge of words and their country of origin, through dictionary skills, root words and endings, proofreading and mystery word rounds, to more traditional spelling testing of words taken from commonly misspelled lists.

It is our very great pleasure to announce that the Selwyn House team of Kathleen King, Harriet Compton-Moen and Lucy Jessep have been crowned champions in the Year 7 and 8 competition with a grand total of 97 out of 100 - beating out 81 other teams. Congratulations girls - this was a hard fought win and we are very proud of you.

Thank you to all the girls who were selected to represent Selwyn House - you performed remarkably, with all teams placed well inside the top half of the teams. 

Winter Sports @ Selwyn House

Kids Lit Results!

Special Place Poetry

Here are some of fabulous poems - please click on them to view them in a bigger format. Thanks to Lucy, Georgina, Kathleen, Matilda and Lily for sharing. All our poems will be up on on our Portfolio pages on Ultranet at the beginning of next term - we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Kids Lit

Introducing Lucy!