244 Argyle-Otahuti Road RD4 Invercargill 9874

03 235 2858

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There’s been so much happening at Waianiwa School.

As always, the students are motivated to learn and grow and are actively engaged in a wide variety of learning opportunities and experiences.

Speeches

Our students researched, wrote, practised and presented their speeches earlier this term.

The school speech competition judges were very impressed with the wide range of topics the students chose and the time and skill that went into researching their topic and writing speeches that were informative, interesting and well presented.

Well done.

A special mention to our winners:

Year 5/6:

1^st Mikaella Pelesco - My life as the big sister

2^nd Neeve Bahinting – Red Pandas

3^rd Logan Strang – Electric Tractors

Year 7/8:

1^st Vinz Carpio – 9/11

2^nd Ella Strang – Why all diabetes treatment should be funded

3^rd Hanakura Mita - Why we should use our mihi more often

Mikaella, Neeve, Vinz and Ella progressed through to the Central cluster competition in Winton with their fantastic speeches.

A big congratulations to Vinz placing 2nd and Ella placing 3rd in the Year 7&8 section of this part of the competition.

Vinz moved through to the Central Eastern final and competed against some very good speakers.

Well done, speech writing and presenting is not an easy task and the achievement of making it to this level of competition is something to be very proud of.

Polyfest

Our whole school participated in Polyfest this year.

Well done to all our students on their performance.

There were some nerves as the students lined up and went on stage, but once up and going these quickly disappeared and we saw them perform amazingly.

They did themselves and our school proud.

We have had a number of people who saw our performance comment on what a great job the students did.

Well done!

A big thank you to Mrs Heaslip, Mrs Kerr and Mr Leti as well as Miss Reid who spent time working with the students to learn and practise the songs and performance.

Life Education

We had Teresa and Harold the giraffe from Life Education come to teach us all about food sources earlier in the term.

We learnt about things such as where our food comes from, food origins, how our food is grown or made, investigating how much fat, sugar and salt is in some of our foods, the 7 nutrients and how they help the body and how to keep our bodies healthy through what we eat.

For our Year 8s, this was their very last Harold visit after many years of visits during their primary school days.

EIS Technology Challenge

Once again we hosted the annual eis Schools Technology Challenge at the Waianiwa Community Hall.

Students in Years 5, 6, 7 and 8 from all schools in Southland were encouraged to enter teams of four students to represent their schools.

31 teams were entered with more than 100 students participating.

The challenges gave the students the opportunity to innovate, problem solve, think laterally and critically, as well as develop social skills, such as working with others, taking turns, listening to and valuing others’ point of view.

It was impressive to see the teamwork, collaboration, problem solving, creativity and ingenuity displayed by the teams.

A special thank you to all the schools that entered teams, and to their team managers for supporting the teams and a big thank you to eis for sponsoring this event once again and to Andrew from eis for joining us for the day and judging, as well as our other wonderful judges from our local community.

Well done to Mrs Heaslip for organising and running such a great event.

Community Matariki Celebration and Hāngī

This was such a great way to begin Term 3 connecting, catching up and sharing dinner.

The kai was cooked so well by Mr Leti and his team of helpers - Ta, Derril and Runi.

A huge effort was put in by Lauren from the Friends of the School helping us in planning and organising the evening.

Thanks Lauren and the Friends of Waianiwa School once again for all the support you give us and the contribution you make to our school community.

It was a team effort preparing the vegetables with the help of some willing students, and we must mention in particular Cohen and Logan who must have peeled at least half of the potatoes that were cooked - over 5kg of potatoes each!

A special mention must also go to Waipuna in Year 5 for being so brave and confident blessing our food with our Karakia mō te Kai.

We were very proud of you Waipuna for stepping up for this important part of our evening.

We really appreciate the donations of meat made by so many school families and the potatoes and carrots donated by the local Pyper's Produce and pumpkin and cabbage donated by Wilson's Vegetables.

We encourage you to support these generous local businesses if you can, who sell produce grown in our local area.

It is pleasing to note that the majority of the food we ate at our hāngī came locally from our area of Southland, which was a great way for us to lead into our 'Food for Thought' health and science learning this term, as we explore how our food grows, healthy food choices for our wellbeing, economic and sustainable food choices and growing through the seasons.

It was fantastic being able to share the entire process of the hāngī with the students, from the very beginning when the fire was lit, helping prepare the food, seeing it laid and covered, being lifted in the evening and then eating the finished product.

This real life, connected learning experience contributes to meaningful and exciting learning for our students and we enjoyed exploring this further within our classroom learning after the hāngī.

We have an amazing community around us here at Waianiwa School.

We have whānau who are engaged and willingly involve themselves in all aspects of our school and their children’s learning and we have a school of students who are kind, respectful and responsible within the school as well as engaged, motivated learners.

Our students consistently display our school values and it is a pleasure to be a part of such an inspiring, warm and welcoming environment.

Waianiwa School proudly supported by Fiordland Escapes