Term 3 Newsletter

 

Welcome back to Term 3. I would like to say how pleased I am with the way the class is going and the quality of the work being produced. The writing in the room is particularly impressive. Last term was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was almost sad to have to go on holiday! Out theme ‘The sun powers our planet’ was very successful. We still haven’t exhausted the potential in the topic and I may return to it in Term 4 to complete the solar power section. We also have to complete our yacht making from Term 1.

Coming Events

Week 2	Tuesday 28 July	BOT meeting 7.00 pm
	Friday 31 July	RNZAF Band Concert Regent
Week 3	Monday 3 August	Career Ed. interviews with  adults
	Thursday 6 August	Home & School AGM 7.30 pm
Week 4	Monday 10 August	Career Ed. interviews with adults
Week 5	Monday 17 August	Parent/teacher interviews
	Tuesday 18 August	Parent/teacher interviews
	Wednesday 19 August	BOT meeting 7.00 pm
	Friday 21 August	Kainui Winter Tournament
Week 6	Monday 24 August	Career Ed. interviews with adults
	Wednesday 26 August	Kainui Kiwi Sports
Week 7	Thursday 3 Sept	Career Ed. Air Force visit
Week 8	Monday 7 Sept	Career Ed. Massey – Institute Food, Nutrition & Human Health
Week 9	Monday 14 Sept	Education Review Office ERO
	Wednesday 16 Sept	Kainui Spelling Bee
	Thursday 17 Sept	BOT meeting 10.00 am
Week 10	Wednesday 23 Sept	Kainui Soccer Tournament ?
	Friday 25 September	Term 3 Ends
Term 4 begins	Monday 12 October

Theme – This term our overall theme is called ‘Who do you think you are?’ (After the documentary series on Prime TV)  This is a look at who our ancestors were and where in the world they came from. The aim of the study is to examine   why people migrate (Social Studies focus).  In particular it will look at why and how Maori and European people came to this country, but it will also focus on why individual people and families move from place to place. As part of this I would like children to investigate why their families migrated to and or around Aotearoa / New Zealand. To do this they will need to have some background information about where their grandparents, great grandparents and even further back came from and, for those children with Maori ancestry, what their iwi affiliations are.

The interest in this is developing with a number of children bringing items of family history to school already. We have started with a case study. The children are using a rich information source about the Fraser family (Ella McK) to work through a list of research questions that we brain-stormed last week (See the blog page for a list of the questions). We have located the village in Scotland where Ella’s ancestors are from and have even found it on Google Earth. Because we are an enviro-school we will look briefly at what impact Polynesian and European migration has had on this country’s landscape. Finally, we will look at more recent migrants and find out why they came here and perhaps how they feel about their new home.

Literacy – As usual much of what we do in Literacy will be integrated with the theme. Much reading, research and writing will be carried out. However alongside this the children will be working on a separate reading unit which is designed to improve the comprehension of both narrative and transactional texts. A process called the ‘Three Steps to Comprehension’ by Hilton Ayrey will be used. This strategy uses the analysis of text structure to aid comprehension for older readers. It also provides a reading response framework based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The children will also continue with the RIBIT programme which encourages novel reading across a wide range of genre, and they will continue to have regular instructional reading session with the teacher – the less able have one lesson per day. These lessons are also comprehension focussed using a technique advocated by Gerald Duffy an American academic. Here a piece of text, photocopied onto an OHP transparency, is slowly revealed to the readers with intense questioning which focuses on building up a picture of what is happening in the text. The children are encouraged to analyse the characters, settings, plot, problems or complications in the story and their resolution and the overall theme of the text. The idea behind this is that the teacher models the thinking and questioning processes that the mature reader employs, including bring prior knowledge to the text and predicting what may happen next. When we have practiced this as a group each child will then be asked to analyse their own text selected from material at their reading level.

Soon we will begin preparation for the Kainui Speech Contest. The topic is “Who do you think you are?’ which just so happens to coincide with our theme. This means that we can integrate our speech preparation into our normal programme without having to do any extra research.

Career Studies – For Terms 1 and 2 the children have been having French language lessons. (National Curriculum International languages. See our blog for information about our final activity). This term Mrs Marshall is planning to take a careers studies unit. She is planning a variety of very interesting visits and interviews. Here is the outline for her unit. 

‘Schools are required to provide appropriate career education and guidance to all students in the senior years of primary school.  With this requirement in mind we are about to undertake a career education unit with Room 2 pupils. While we acknowledge that it is far too early for pupils to be making firm decisions about careers it is not too early to help them see the range of possibilities ahead of them. During this unit pupils will be:

• Exploring the range of jobs available today
• Visiting some work places
• Examining and discussing job advertisements
• Writing a CV
• Interviewing adults about their career paths
• Interviewing business owners about the challenges they face
• Thinking about themselves, their passions, skills and attributes they will build on as they make career decisions.’

Mathematics – The first part of the term we have been studying Geometry. As part of this we have been using traditional Maori motifs (integration with Art) to demonstrate Translation, Rotation and Reflection. Our main focus for the term will be with Numeracy – Fractions, Decimals, Proportions and Ratios. Then Measurement – Time and back to Geometry for Direction. Each day the children have a starter session that might include a game and some basic facts practice but will always include a maintenance activity which reviews prior learning.

Music – Every child in the room except one is learning a musical instrument at school. My goal for this term is to get the various groups together to form one large band including acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, brass (trumpet and trombone) and keyboard. This is not an easy task especially for the B flat brass players who usually have to contend with a lot of sharps when playing with C instruments. We’ll see how it goes.

P.E and Health – We will continue with winter ball skills in P.E. Last term we looked at hockey and touch rugby. This term we will practice netball/indoor basketball and soccer skills ready for the Kainui Kiwi sports Tournament and the Kainui Winter Sports Tournament. In Health we are scheduled to do the DARE programme with the NZ Police. More about that later.

Art – Room 2 will join forces with Room 3 to create peg doll families as part of our Social Studies theme.

 

ICT – Last term some children were working on short video clips using Microsoft Photostory as part of a competition with other Kainui Schools. Two were completed and one has been shown in assembly. Both are excellent. Unfortunately our ICT facilitator has met with an accident and it seems we will be without him, so we are not too sure about what’s going to happen to the competition or who our new facilitator will be. This term my goal for ICT was to set up wikis for children so that they can post their stories. Wikis are a sort of web page that can be easily accessed online. The idea is that a password protected wiki linked to our class blog can be accessed by mum and dad from home. Children can post material from home as well. (Maybe we could do homework electronically in the near future – no more forgotten homework books!)

 

Government Standards – You may have heard something about this on the news. This is a big issue for teachers and will affect your child. If you want to find out more  I have written a letter to parents and placed on the class blog. Go to the page ‘Issues in Education – National Standards’ and follow the links.

 

Regards

 

David Wardle