Welcome to Pounamu Atawhai 2016!

Welcome to Pounamu Atawhai 2016 

Welcome back to school all! Pounamu Atawhai is a special place where the main priority is having fun and loving school life. There will be plenty of activities that will challenge your mind, thinking and approach to your own learning!

Being a senior at Riverdale School means setting a good example, a self directed approach and enthusiasm to your own achievement and always striving for excellence. We will expect you to take risks and give things a good go, support and treat your classmates with respect and motivate yourself to get things done on time and to a high standard. 

There will be some things we will be looking for in the first two weeks........

- Students with leadership qualities to help run our classroom.

(Do you help others? Do you listen to other people and form decisions? Can you work effectively in a group? Are you self motivated? Do you make good decisions? Could you be a class captain or sit on our class council?)

- Students with expertise to make our classroom unique

(Are you a sports enthusiast? Do you know your way round a computer? Are you highly organised? Can you run a reading or maths session? Are you musically talented?)

During the first two weeks we will be looking for people with special skills to run our classroom. Of course there are rewards and privledges that go with these jobs so be ready to show us what you have to offer!

We won a real flying drone!

Congratulations to the Minecraft Explorers team for this winning entry below.  They have won a flying drone, coming first out of 160 entries. 
Flying drone pictures to come...

Riverdale Students win Junior Interface award

Creative Cooking Class

Well done to the group of girls who took part in the Creative Cooking Class with Karina. The Sweet burgers were awesome. Thanks for sharing......

Well done Nadia!

Congratulations Nadia for winning an Ipad mini for your huge effort when selling chocolates as part of our school fundraiser.

We made the Evening Standard!

Palmerston North kids put on show to raise goods for SPCA - Manawatu Evening Standard 

11th September 2015

Faith Sutherland/ Faiirfax

The kids formed a line to transfer all of the donated goods to the SPCA van. Helping is left Katy Anstis and Lucy King.

A group of Palmerston North children who decided they wanted to help their furry friends have organised a performance to raise goods for the SPCA.

A class of Riverdale School children held a performance in front of a crowd of about 300 people at the school on Friday.

Instead of selling tickets, they had the audience donate animal food or supplies.

More than 300 people attended the show and more than $1000 worth of goods were collected for the SPCA.

The class decided to fundraise for the organisation after they investigated the different types of animals around the world.

Teacher Jared Bron said the show was a mix between entertainment and passing on information about the SPCA.

The class, of 9 to 11-year-olds, put on various performances during the hour-long show, including game shows, speeches and making balloon animals.

He said they had an overwhelming response from the school.

The class had animals as their major inquiry this term. 

"The team looked into both endangered animals and the animals we have around us. We then started to think about ways we could help," Jared Bron said.

"It wasn't sparked until we had a guest speaker from the SPCA come in. She showed us some images that weren't very nice and the kids went away and came back and decided they wanted to help the local organisation."They came up with the idea of every child bringing something to put towards the SPCA."

Manawatu SPCA general manager Danny Auger said it was great seeing children take an interest in animal welfare.

"It's such a cliche but children are our future."

Creativity

Recently we have introduced 6 new creative tasks in Pounamu Atawhai. These tasks have been introduced to encourage creativity, collaboration and thinking skills. The students have the opportunity to opt into any number of these tasks.  

• K'NEX - Building with K'NEX - with a focus on building animals
• Clay - Making animals out of clay 
• Painting - Painting the clay animals
• ICT- Making music using the Garageband app 
• Music - Learning to read music and play the Glockenspiel
• PE - Practising PE skills and creating new fitness circuits and games using gutter boards, tennis balls and skipping ropes.

Quiddage

It was so exciting having our first Quiddage last week!
It was a chance to reward all those hard working students out there by having fun, running a business and learning alongside friends. We were very impressed with the quality products!

Quiddage will run every second Friday starting Term 3, Week 2!