The Connected Film Festival

On Thursday many of us were lucky enough to go to the first ever Connected Film Festival at Southwell School. We watched movies made by students from schools all around the Waikato. Hamilton East School had four movies in the festival. 

We hope you enjoy this movie of our Film Festival journey! 

Clay

This week we have been working with clay. 

On Wednesday we had a practise session trying to make pinch pots. 

On Friday we tried to make taonga pots. First we rolled the clay into six long even worms and then made the extra long worm that we then turned into a spiral for the base (bottom) of our pot. 

The other clay worms were then put one on top of each other and any cracks or holes were filled in. 

It was hard work and sometimes the clay didn't do what we wanted it to! But we all had fun and enjoyed the experience. 

Meet our Buddy CJ

We are taking part in Buddy Day this year. This week we have been talking through ways to decide on who our buddy is. We decided on a secret vote to determine if Buddy would be a boy or girl but the results were equal. So Ella suggested we put all the votes back in and pick one and that would be the decider. Everyone agreed it was fair and that is how our buddy became a boy. 

On the back of the piece of paper students had put the name they wanted our buddy to be. Out of the boy votes there were four options; Nick, CJ, Roxy and (tbc - Whaea Eve has forgotten and needs to ask the class!). We named each corner of the room one of those names and showed our preferred name by standing in that corner. CJ won hands down!

To decide on CJ's story, who he is and what he likes doing, we all wrote the answers to the following questions:
Who does CJ live with?
What does CJ like to do at school?
What does CJ not like to do at school?
What does CJ like to do at home?
What does CJ not like to do at home?

Whaea Eve then pulled our names from our lolly pop name jar and that person's writing became CJ's story.

CJ lives with his mum and dad.

At school CJ likes to play soccer with his friends.

At school CJ does not like doing handwriting.

At home CJ likes to play in the garden.

At home CJ does not like making his bed.

We all designed CJ's look; t-shirt, pants (trousers), shoes and hair / face. To decide on what our real CJ's look would be, we put our named lolly pop stick on the design we liked best for each part of CJ.

Zahaad designed the most popular t-shirt.

Anika H designed the most popular pants / trousers.

Elias designed the most popular shoes.

Nirmal designed the most popular hair / face. 

Next week we will be making our buddy following these designs and showing CJ around our school. 

Brave - Room 16's music video

In Room 16 we love dancing to the song Brave by Sara Bareilles. We also think it has a really great message - to be who you are and be brave. 

We when heard about the Connected Film Festival we decided to make our own Hamilton East School music video - although the original music video is pretty good too! 

After brainstorming all the things that can be scary at school, we looked at what someone could do in that situation to be brave. We picked three of the ideas and made it into three seperate storylines, mixed in with words that hurt us slowing turning into words that make us strong. 

We hope you enjoy it and that it inspires you to be brave!