Room 9, 2018

Huge congratulations to Luca for receiving the Endeavour Award for Room 9 this term.

This term's Endeavour Award was for making progress in all areas.

Keep up the good work Luca!

Congratulations to Jonathan and Issy for receiving certificates at Friday's Middle School Assembly, well done!

Vector came to talk to the Middle School on Monday about being safe around electricity. Each child will bring home a Vector booklet and pencil by the end of this week. It would be wonderful if you could talk to your child about what they have learnt about being safe around electricity.

There is no set homework this week, but please make sure your child keeps reading every day and that you keep up the work on learning the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts.

Little and often works best, not one long session.

I've really noticed the difference it makes to the children who know at least some of their times tables and division facts, and also the children who know their doubles and halves to 20. Maths just becomes so much easier when you know these facts.

Please keep working on them!

I have the children's homework books and spelling notebooks and will hand these back out to them on the first Monday of Term 3.

There are parent teacher interviews on Thursday this week. School will close at 2pm. You can book a time to meet with me online (see details in the last newsletter). The main focus for this meeting will be on the written report that will be given out on Monday 2nd July.

Congratulations to all Room 9 children for their fantastic poetry presentations, they all did really well!

Next term we will be performing plays to the rest of the middle school and also writing and giving a speech to the class, so the poetry presentations were a great start to gaining confidence with speaking in front of a large group and remembering lines.

The children have decided when they would like to share their poem this week.

The timetable is below.

Zoe and Kobi enjoyed sharing about making their solar ovens and eating what they 'cooked'!

They have been working on this with Mrs Coutts for the last few weeks.

The Rippa and Tackle Rugby Field Day was very successful on Thursday, our teams played well and definitely showed the focus for the day which was sportsmanship. I was very proud of all of the children who participated. A special thank you to all the parent managers of the teams, to all the parents who helped with transport, and to those who came to watch and support their children.

Science in a Van came to visit today. We learnt about mixtures, things that won't mix, that separate, and things that mix and have a reaction! We also learnt that before we experiment we should make predictions, and that we need to observe carefully.

Here is the homework for Week 7!

We have been using barrier games to help us to be better at speaking and listening!

We enjoyed experimenting with circuits on Tuesday for Inquiry. We could work independently, with a buddy, or in a small group, and could use whatever equipment we wanted, e.g. bulbs, wires, batteries, battery packs, bulb holders. It took awhile for some of us to make the bulb light up, but it was worth it when it finally did!

Here is the homework for Week 4!

Thank you to all our wonderful parent helpers who came on the trip to MOTAT with us on Tuesday, it was a very interesting day!

Thank you to Kate Baskerville for these photographs that she took during our trip to MOTAT.

You should have received a copy of the fact-a-thon answers last week, but here is another copy just in case it's gone missing.

Here is the homework for Week 3!

Remember to bring your running shoes on Thursday this week, it was painful to watch some of you running in school sandals on Monday!

Fact-a-thon - The fact-a-thon sheets came home on Monday this week. Please note that we don't want it to be super easy for the children, so there should be a bit of challenge and new learning that needs to take place. I will go over the problems and answers with the children on Wednesday in class and talk about the best ways of working out some of the answers. I will also give each child a copy of the answer sheet to bring home, so check their book bags for it please.

We played one of our new games during Maths today called 'Cover up Kiwi'. The children could choose to play it individually or in teams. It's a great problem solving and basic facts game!

Here is the homework for Week 2! The Factathon will come home on Monday.

Please remember that children will need to bring running shoes and socks on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays for the first four weeks of this term as we will be preparing for the School Cross Country on Tuesday 22 May. Children will need to wear shoes as they will be running outside of the school, not just on the school field. Please bring them in a plastic bag as I'm sure they will get a bit muddy at some stage!

On Wednesday we had Virginia from the ASB give us a Financial Literacy Lesson. She taught us how to be 'Cashletes'! Some of the things she talked to us about are as follows:

NZ money - recognising coins and notes

Addition of coins and notes

The difference between credit and debit/eftpos cards

How eftpos cards work - money is in the bank, insert - swipe - paywave, secret pin number (don't tell anyone)

How an eftpos machine works - we can't see the money, so we can sometimes spend too much money, money we don't have

How we can find out how much money we have in the bank

How we can earn money

Shopping - make a list, look for good deals, try not to buy things you don't need

Here is the homework for Week One!