Paikea and the Whale

A Starry Night

Check out the unveiling of this great piece of artwork by the Edgewater Jnr team. Awesome work guys!

Salads and other vegetables will be in abundance for Room 26. Thanks to St Kentigern College

St Kentigern College supporting Sommerville classes,House and Room 26 during a gardening programme. Mark Robinson delivered a number of seedlings ready to be planted for the class gardens.

Kay Scott, Room 26 class teacher, expressed that she would like to produce enough for her class cooking sessions. Salads and other vegetables will be in abundance this time she reckons!

Students and teachers prepared the garden bed and planted their choice of plants.

Sir Murray Halberg visits Sommerville

Sir Murray Halberg ,Steve Hall ,newly appointed CEO for the Halberg Trust, together with Stacey Roach, Sports Opportunity Adviser Counties Manukau visited us on the 9^th of November.

We are working in partnership with the Halberg Trust to promote Sports Ability games in our school. Sports Ability games include polybat, table cricket, goal ball, boccia and sitting volleyball.

A group of students are also training hard to compete in the 2009 Sports ability Games on the 27th November 2009 which is our final competition of our sports calendar.

Pink Day at Sommerville

What a great day we all had recently when we dressed in pink to raise money for breast cancer. The staff and students all got into it with pink costumes, pink food, singing and dancing and general frivolity. We raised over $700 too! A big thank you to everyone who got involved and organised this great day!

Mooncake Festival

The Edgewater Jnr class has created this great video about the Chinese Mooncake Festival. Awesome job guys!

St Kents Partnership is Champs!

All year a group of students from St Kentigerns have been coming to Sommerville once a week to help out in the classrooms and work with some of our students.It has been a great experience for all of us. They have also been helping out with different projects around our school and most recently have donated 10 computers for use in the classroom.What a tremendous thing to do! Thanks to everyone involved from St Kents for what has become a great parnership.

Eastern & Bays Courier feature Sommerville students!

Photo: AMELIA JACOBSEN

FUN TIMES: Sommerville Special School students really got into the hip hop day. From left: Nathan Keu, 12, Keenan Rasmussen, 11, partly obscured: Kaimoana Vaitohi, 14, Chance Te Whare, 14, Celene Thompson, 14, Monica Manawatu, 9. Front: Zinmar Hla, 12.

The students weren't the only ones who got into the spirit of Sommerville Special School's second hip hop day – the teachers also dressed up, and danced the day away.

More than 50 students travelled to Tamaki Recreation Centre last month to enjoy a day full of dancing, music, competitions and most of all fun.

Physical education and sports co-ordinator Ashwin Prasad says he had never seen some of the students move in the way they did.

"To see them expressing themselves though dance is just amazing," he says.

"They're really into it – music just makes them move."

There were freestyling, rapping and krumping competitions, and everyone was treated to a performance by the Bring it On – All Stars high school dance group.

Mr Prasad says these opportunities have to be created for the students so they have a way of expressing themselves, "because they don't often get the chance".

A group of five sports management students from Unitec had invited the school to participate.

The planning, preparation and delivery of the three and a half hour event was part of their event management paper.

Unitec student Gemma Delia was in awe of the students' stamina.

"I didn't expect them to be so in to it but they've been going hard since the word go," she says

Riverhills got Mail!

Thank you all so very much. We had 544 postcards by the end. What an amazing achievement for just 11 people. Please pass on our thanks to your friends and families from around the world who sent mail to us.

We received cards from all over Europe, the Middle East, China, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Great Britain, Australia, Taiwan, Japan. Not to mention incredible coverage of New Zealand.

The students have written wonderful stories about their mail and learnt a lot about how emails, mail and phones can be used.

The next door class conceded defeat having failed to reach 200!!

Thank you very much

Shelley and her very happy class

Click Special Ed Website

The launch of the much anticipated "Click Special Ed" website has arrived. Visit the site at http://clickspecialednz.com/ or through the weblinks tab. This will be a great resource for us all. Awesome work from all those involved.

Romeo and Juliet

The Edgewater Satellite class has been studying Romeo and Juliet and have created their own radio play based on it. Click on the play button below to hear it. Great job guys!

Work Experience

Here are some of our Senior students working hard during their work experience programmes. We are very thankful to many places in the community who help us with their support. Here you can see students working at King's Plant Barn, Bunnings and Woolworths.

New Classroom Construction

We are very excited that building has started on our new Senior Cluster classrooms. Check out the school photos to see the progress over the next few months.

Tree Planting

What a great day the House group and Edgewater Snrs had in Mangere helping out planting trees. Everyone got stuck in and by the end of the day had planted a small forests worth!
Good job guys!

Our New Bike Track

A BIG thankyou to Ted from A1 School Linemarking 2005 Ltd and Clay for coming out on Friday to paint a bike track in our senior playground. Ted and Clay generously donated their time to give us the new bike track, complete with pedestrian crossings and a give way intersection. This bike track can be used for bike training and steering skills, understanding road rules and safety, role playing and many other activities. The students have already started using it and love it. Thanks guys!

Soap Box Derby

On Sunday 22nd March, we had a team of young drivers competing in the All American Soap Box Derby regional competition, held near the Mt Wellington quarry. Jordan Middlemiss came third and will be competing in the National competition on Saturday 4th April in Glenfield.

Shining Stars

Sommerville is proud to host "Shining Stars", a support group for parents with pre-school children with special needs. Come and meet other parents and take advantage of specialist child care for an hour.
This group meets every Tuesday during term times, 9.30 -11am
Call Sommerville for more information on 09 570 9787