CCES Competition Winners!

Congratulations to the students who represented Springston School at the Canterbury Computers in Education Society Competition on Sunday 29 August. The 'Springston 2' Team of Emily, Courtney and Megan came first in the Multimedia (Slideshow) Middle age group section and won the trophy for the best overall multimedia for Junior and Middle age groups.

The 'Springston 3' Team of Oliver, Myami and Cory also did well in gaining a Highly Commended in the Junior Moviemaking section.

'The Precious'

Another movie about a key, this time by members of the Senior CCES moviemaking team, Morgan, Kachina and Libby. This movie is a little disturbing, and I think the girls might have been watching some of the movies produced by a certain famous New Zealander... They certainly let their imaginations run wild on this one, and put some iMovie09 special effects to good use! (Again, created in only 2 hours).

School Newsletter 27 August 2010

Click on the image to read the newsletter. Double-click to zoom in, click the corner of the page to turn to the next page. Download as a pdf.

School Newsletter Archive including pdf and Word versions.

'Lost Keys'

This week was the final challenge for the Junior Moviemaking Team before Sunday's CCES competition. They had 2 hours to create a video telling a story related to an object, and the object they chose from the list they were given was... a key. Some great acting here from Cory!

Video by Cory, Myami, Oliver

Netball Tournament at Lincoln

Reporters: Emma and Lucy

CANTAMATH at Springston School

Absent: Jahna

On 11 August Springston School entered two teams in the Cantamath competition - one team in the Year 7 competition, and one in the Year 8 competition. They had 30 minutes to answer 20 questions. the Year 8 team got 10 correct answers (50 out of 100 points) and the Year 7 team scored 50 out of 100 points (10 correct questions). This was a great effort from every one involved.

Year 7

Oliver G

Emily W

Courtney J

Jahna W

Year 8

Josh G

Emily B

Tessa B

Lucy C

Some of the questions proved to be very difficult and the Year 8 team had to pass two questions.

It was a very exhilarating experience and hard work. Another element we had to contend with was the noise, as all the teams were swept away in the excitement of the occasion.

Reporter: Josh G

Anton the Author and Prizewinner

1st Place and receiving $300 of Paper Plus Merivale vouchers in the More FM Short Story Competition is.... Anton P. from Springston School with his story ‘The Boys and the Bear!’

Anton says, “I felt really excited and very shocked that out of all the 7-10 year old entrants I won. Neither me nor my dad knew that I had won, but just this morning Liz came into the class and said that I had won something. I didn’t have a clue but then, as soon as she started to say, ‘Short Story’, my heart started to race. I’m not too sure what I’m going to spend it on, but I’m thinking about drawing, craft books and drawing tools. I just need to go into the More FM office and pick up the vouchers.”

We all wish Anton the very best for winning that prize he might be an author one day.

Reporter: Alice T

Photo: James

CCES Competition

CCES

On Sunday 29 August we are sending 3 teams to Canterbury University to the CCES (Canterbury Computers in Education Society) Competition.

We are entering 2 teams in the Moviemaking section and one in the Multimedia section.

The teams are:

Springston Team 1 - Moviemaking

Kachina

Morgan

Georgia

Libby

Springston Team 2 - Multimedia

Megan

Courtney

Emily

Springston Team 3 - Moviemaking

Oliver

Cory

Myami

We wish them all the best of luck for Sunday.

Reporters: Myami (Year 6) & Tessa E (Year 6)

Jelly Bean Netball Tournament

On Sunday 15 August, the Springston Primary A team won the Jelly Bean Tournament that was held in Rangiora.

We each took home a little container of jelly beans. The Jelly Bean Tournament is a netball tournament that is held every year in Rangiora.

Students involved in the team from school are Libby H, Nick T, Hannah D, Hannah L, Megan H, Courtney J and Jahna W.

It was a great day that was enjoyed by many people and I hope that the ladies that run it carry on for many more years.

Reporter: Libby H

Choice & Challenge Photography Club - check it out!

The photo club group for Choice and Challenge went out with Craig to learn how to take great photos. Take a look and give them a comment. Not bad for the first try!

Library Week Video Competition - PLEASE VOTE FOR US NOW!

PLEASE vote for our video in the Library Week 'Love Your Library' Video Competition, and ask your friends to, too!

'Full of Surprises' by Springston School Morgan, Kachina, and Georgia (Year 8) created this video in just over two hours.

There are fabulous prizes to be won, and the winner is chosen by popular vote. Voting closes on Friday 27 August, so please visit the website and vote NOW. Don't forget to get your friends and families to support our video, too... Thanks!

School Newsletter 20 August 2010

Click on the image to read the newsletter. Double-click to zoom in, click the corner of the page to turn to the next page. Download as a pdf.

School Newsletter Archive including pdf and Word versions.

Meet our new teacher!

Reporters: Isabel and Tessa E

One News - Breaking News - Prison escape!

Cory, Myami and Oliver are entering the CCES (Canterbury Computers in Education Society) competition and once every week we make a new video for practice. This is our third movie that we have made on iMovie09 and we had just 2 hours to make it. This time we made a mock documentary about a prison escape on the news.

Reporters: Cory, Myami, Oliver

School Safety Video

You probably know the car safety advertisements on TV... the ones where you have to make a choice at an intersection about whether to go or not? Cory, Oliver and Myami have created a similar video, relating to safety at school. The video had to be exactly 30 seconds long, and they only had 2 hours in which to plan, film and edit it. They were also asked to use one of the effects in iMovie 09 where you can reverse the video. The safety rule is: Do not run in class!

Reporters: Cory, Oliver and Myami

Room 8 enters cyberspace!

New teacher, Rachelle Watson, has wasted no time in starting a class blog for the wonderful students in Room 8! The class started on Monday, and we can already see the exciting things happening for our newest class - the Springston Explorers.

Room 8 joins our other recently started blog - Room 4's Springston Rockets, so check them out too!

As with all the blogs, they would LOVE to hear your Comments - just follow the 'Comments' link below any blog post. Be sure to Follow or become a subscriber of their blog, as well as our other class blogs, and the Library Blog. Links are on the school's main website and also down the side of each of our blogs. We're very keen to keep building our online community!

We're up and running again!

Image by Bull3t

After a very stressful two and a half days, we now have our Server and intranet back up and running again. Most data appears to have been recovered, and we have access to email and the world wide web.

If you have emailed us, we will get back to you as soon as possible, as we work our way through the backlog.

The network is DOWN!

Image by CLUC

Our apologies to anyone trying to contact us via email or web since Wednesday morning (11 August). Our Server has died and we do not currently have access to intranet, email, or internet.

Updates to class blogs have not been possible from school, only from home by teachers. It has been a VERY difficult situation for staff and students and we realise how heavily we now rely on electronic communication and information storage.

We are hoping to have the situation rectified some time on Friday 13 August (hmmm - that's Black Friday)! Thank you for your patience - hopefully we'll be receiving emails again soon and can reply to any you may have sent. In the meantime, you can still contact the school by phone, or in person.

Exciting Competition Win!

Reporter: Alice T

Maths week- Where am I?

Maths Week - Where am I?

This one is a hard one, you might have to guess.

Maths week - Where am I?

Entry forms will be available this morning in classes. Check out the photo each day and complete your answers then return to the box in Room 7 on Friday. Winners will we drawn out of the box.

Voting needed NOW for Springston on the Maggi Kitchen Showdown

Please vote NOW for our team, 'Springa', who are heading off to the Regional Cook Off against twenty other South Island teams. Two teams will be chosen from this for the Grand Finals. However, there is a chance for a wild card team to attend the final so we need everyone to go online and vote for OUR TEAM. Voting ends on 15 August, so don't delay!
Image from http://www.erinsimpsonshow.tv/

Make sure you check out their fabulous recipe for Traffic Light Chicken with Noodles. Watch the video there of the team cooking up this recipe.

School Newsletter 6 August 2010

Click on the image to read the newsletter. Double-click to zoom in, click the corner of the page to turn to the next page.

School Newsletter Archive including pdf and Word versions.

We Want Your Opinion!

Who or what caused the Gulf oil spill?

Just type in your comment, but if you see an answer already there that you think is right, all you have to do is click on it. The words that are bigger, are the most popular answers. Please be careful with your spelling :-)

Who or what caused the Gulf oil spill?... at AnswerGarden.ch.

Reporters: Josh G and James T (Room 7)

How to write a Blog comment!

This is an article to help you know how to write a blog comment. It shows you how to get in and type, and it also tells you about all the punctuation and spelling things that you need to remember!

We like to encourage parents to write blog comments just like the kids do because it helps their confidence to put more posts onto the blog. Springston School loves to put posts and comments onto the blogs of other blogs too. We hope you read this article and use it to make comments on the Springston School blogs and other blogs around the world. So have fun blogging!

1. First you need to find a Springston blog. You can get to one by typing in the blog’s url if you know it, or you can go to our website and the names of the blogs are down the side.
2. Then you can look around our blogs and see our awesome posts.
3. Now, when you see a post that you want to comment on click in the corner where it says comments and a number of how many comments the post has had.
4. Then what will happen is you will get into a different page with a box that you can type your comment in.
5. After typing in your comment, remember to sign it with your first name. Click on comment and select profile and choose anonymous. Now click post comment.
6. Your comment will now go through to the teacher to approve it and then it will be posted on the blog for people to see.

Now we are going to give you a few tips for blog commenting so your comment has more chance of being posted on the blog because the teacher doesn't have to approve it.

1. Do not use your surname in any comments - first name only.
2. Make sure that your comments are positive and then (if you need), say something that could help them improve.
3. Check your spelling and punctuation is correct.
4. Talk about what they have done and recognize their effort.
5. Give ideas to support your opinion and suggestion.
6. Leave a question to encourage them to respond.

Now have fun commenting!

Reporters: Claudia C. Year 6, Room 5) and Tessa E. (Year 6, Room 5).