Bringing birds back into the school

In room 7 students have been researching and learning about how they can bring birds back to Nayland Primary school. The students visited The Brook Waimarama Sanctuary in Term 3 to find out more about birds, their predators and what they can do to help the birds at our school.

Students wrote letters to our principal, Mrs Gulbransen, to persuade her to help them in their efforts to provide an environment for the birds.

Dear Mrs Gulbransen

In my opinion, I think it would be great if we could create a safe environment at Nayland Primary so native birds could have a place to live without feeling threatened by predators.

Firstly, we would need to plant more trees that had the right sort of food for the native birds.  If their food is close, they won’t have to fly far to get it.

If we hear lots of birdsong, we know that there are lots of birds near. If we don’t hear any we know that either there are no birds or they are not singing.  But if there are lots of safe places the birds might not feel worried and sing more often.

Also, if we learn about what the native birds eat we know what type of plants or trees to plant.  If we have the right sort of food and environment, the birds will feel like Nayland Primary is their home.

To sum up, I think we could plant more trees so the native birds can live here and we can protect them.

Yours sincerely

From Joanna

Dear Mrs Gulbransen

I want to bring bird life to Nayland Primary, there isn’t much.

The birds need more food because all the introduced birds are eating it.  Also, people are feeding our birds junk food which is bread.  Bread is not good for them, it makes them sick.

We need to set traps for the bird’s predators, which are: ferrets, weasels, stoats, possums, rats and mice.  If we do not do this we will have very few native birds, and we do not want this to happen.

Helping our native birds will be good for the birds and us too.  This is because we will be able to observe them and if we can observe our native birds we can learn about them.

To sum up, I think we need much more bird life at Nayland Primary.  I hope I have convinced you.

Yours sincerely

Fiona McLellan

Harakeke Posts

At Nayland Primary School every year creates a harakeke post for the harakeke garden.The harakeke garden, if you don't know, is a special Maori thing that they usually do every year. We do it about everything in our classroom and what we do like our attitude and how we run! The harakeke posts are a maori tradition and it’s special to them. Kaid and Liam were in room 4 last year and we had a harakeke post that was a blue and green colour.

In the harakeke garden we have flax bushes as well.Liam, age 10 from room 3, said “I think our harakeke posts are a cool thing in our school and they show a lot of artistic genes in us.”

Nayland Primary Enviro Projects

Over term 2 Nayland Primary students conducted research, learning, reflections and actions to help and support our communities environment. Each class had a different focus which ranged from bringing birds back into our school to reducing the pollution in poor man stream to looking at how the dumping of plastics effects our land and oceans.

Room 3 created a news report to show the exceptional and inspiring learning that Nayland Primary students have achieved over term 2.