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Week 3, Term 3, 2011 =**Storylines Festival** =

The Storylines Festival of New Zealand Children's Writers and Illustrators has been a highlight of many families' calendars since 1993.

The festival – particularly the Free Family Days around the country – give children (and adults!) a chance to meet their literary heroes - authors, illustrators, storytellers or book characters. Please click on the links to find out some of the great things that are happening in Auckland as part of the festival.

Week 1, Term 3, 2011 =**Conferences** =

@http://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/

Just a reminder that conferences are coming up next week. They are slightly different to previous years. This time around there will be a maximum of 5 families in the classroom at one time. Although this may seem busy, you'll be amazed at how your attention is captivated by what your child is saying and showing you - the other families melt away into the background. Teachers will be in the room while your child is sharing and will drop by to chat with you and answer any questions. If you have any serious concerns or issues you would like to discuss in more depth please feel free to make an appointment to see your child's teacher (our email addresses are under the //Contact Us// link).

Week 11, Term 2, 2011

=**Soapbox Racer Build Off Days** =

Check out what happened on the day we built our soapbox racers! It's amazing what we got done on the first day alone. Thanks to all the amazing parents who helped us to become confident with all the tools and the building process!

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﻿Week 7, Term 2, 2011 **Probability: Picking the Right Horse** We have been learning about probability - what are the odds of an event happening. We learnt the language of chance, words like certain, impossible, likely, unlikely and even chance. We learnt that there is a 0 to 1 scale for probability. It uses numbers to represent the chances instead of words.We made Lego racers and rated the probability they had of winning. Some of us were very good at picking the winning racer.

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Week 6, Term 2, 2011

**Soapbox Racer Tumbles**

Throughout this term we are running a series of tumbles around our topic to assist kids in the design and creation of their soapbox racers. Below is a clip from one of these tumbles.

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Term 2, 2011 **Westmere Schools First Annual Soapbox Derby** ﻿This term we will be making soapbox racers in the Senior School. To get you in the spirit and to see what kind of thing we'll be looking at building please watch the clip below. Kids, get collecting now! Parents, we'd love your help for the build-off at the end of the term. Please let your child or child's teacher know if you're available. Most of it will be supervision so you don't have to have much technological/building knowledge/skill.

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This is a clip of some kids and their dad's building a Hummer-shaped soapbox racer. Bit of a laugh and shows the possibilities for modifying from the basic.

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Instructions for building a simple wooden racer can be found on this site: []

April 4th, 2011
 * Goodbye to Tracey Taylor and ﻿Welcome to Kris Pinnock **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">﻿Welcome to our new teacher, Kris Pinnock. He will be taking over from Tracey Taylor in Room 18. Sadly, she has left us to commit more time to her family. We wish her all the best. **

March 23rd, 2011
 * Auckland Libraries Writers' Read-in. **


 * This Friday 25th March all Auckland libraries will be holding a Read In where 4 or 5 writers will read for 10 mins each - gold coin donation. Proceeds go directly to the New Zealand Government Christchurch Earthquake Appeal. There are some stellar names on the list so have a look. Most sessions are at 6pm, but some are at 1pm. Click below for further details incuding all writers, locations and times.**

Writers Read-in


 * March 15th, 2011**
 * Senior Swimming Sports **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">On Tuesday the Senior School participated in swimming sports to determine who would represent the school at Inter Schools. **

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 * March 8th, 2011**
 * Brain Day **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">As part of Brain Awareness week 2011, Auckland University is holding a Brain Day at the University's Business School on Saturday 19th March. A range of interactive workshops for children are scheduled throughout the day as well as hands-on activities all day in the "science labs". It's a great opportunity to have fun and learn about the brain from the leading experts in their field. Well worth a visit! **


 * February 21st, 2011**
 * Swimming Sessions **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">This week we are off to swimming safety sessions. In order to participate in these sessions your child needs to have returned their general consent form. If you have not returned this yet please do so as soon as possible (it was in the pack of forms handed out in the first week - it included address confirmation forms and computer user agreement). If you can't locate your forms click the link below to download a new one. **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">[[file:2011 Activity and Cyber Consents.doc]]. **


 * February 2nd, 2011**
 * Welcome Back! **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">﻿We hope you had a great holiday and are ready to get back to school. **


 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">This is our new syndicate wiki. From here you'll be able to link to your class wiki or stay on this site to find helpful links and photos from whole syndicate/whole school events. Basically anything we all do together you'll find on these pages. Up coming events will be posted in the sidebar of this page. Keep this page bookmarked as it will be changing all the time. **


 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">Parents: **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; overflow: hidden;">Parents you'll find our homework policy, syndicate newsletters and anything else we need to keep you up to date with. Please let us know if there are things you'd like to see on this site as we're happy to adapt it to meet everyone's needs. **