Highlights

We have had a busy week with a lot of learning happening. We have been building our knowledge about Matariki, preparing ourselves for our Project Based Learning (PBL) project including a guest speaker, Mr Blackman who gave us an informative talk about the Matariki star cluster. We hope to have him visit again to share more of his knowledge with us and answer some questions we have.

We have been working in our groups and have made a Space Analogy Map with a key. These maps will be referred to as we work through our project. Each item on the map is a symbol we can use to show where we are in our learning.

Mr Blackman

Our Space Analogies

Library

Every Monday, Room 3 visits the library to choose our books we read during the week. Sustained Reading happens in our class daily. This is where the children read quietly, usually after morning tea or lunch. While at the library the children all take the opportunity to share a book with their friends.

Structured Literacy

Structured Literacy is part of our spelling program we complete each day. On Wednesday, the children enjoyed playing Connect 4 and Bingo with their words. The programme involves spelling, games, word finds and dictation using the spelling pattern we are working on. This week we were learning the concept of the longer spelling of the "ch" sound - "tch". This is used when the sound directly follows a short vowel.

Minecraft

There are many clubs organised by teachers and students at lunch time. Some children have had the opportunity to join Mr James on a Wednesday for the Minecraft Club. They are enjoying this and I could see and hear the excitement when I visited the club this week.

Golden Time

Golden time this week, we planned to make waffles but unfortunately this was unable to happen. Quick thinking and a little help for another teacher for something we could do, we came up with a chopsticks challenge with mini M&M's.

This was a lot of fun, a challenge, frustrating and enjoyable all together. Some children hadn't used chopsticks before but they soon learned how they worked. The part that amazed me was that no-one ate any until the end and I said now you can eat them. There was some cheering at that time too.

We ended the week with the School Assembly. Room 12 did a fantastic job with sharing their assembly with us but the highlight was the long awaited Reading Challenge draw. We haven't been able to have the draw from the Christmas challenge until now.

Wow what a great collection of prizes. Some very happy children and one teacher as well with their prizes.