Thursday 21 March 2013

Term 1, Week 8


We have been incredibly busy in Room 3 lately, and last week we really enjoyed our visits from Mrs Nikkie Karki and Mrs Nicole Anderson – we’re so lucky to have such dedicated teacher support! We had a real surprise on Friday when all of the teachers came dressed up for our introduction to our new social studies topic (Same, Same, But Different), and we loved hearing about a number of different cultures.

This week in Room 3 we wrap up for the Easter break with lots of Easter maths and Easter writing – not to mention a little Easter cooking on Thursday! – and we will have three sessions with Constrable McKitrick for the Stepping Out safe walking programme. We are also looking forward to our Tabloid Sports, organised by the awesome senior students, on Thursday at 11am. Parents are welcome to come and watch us :)

We are also really excited about welcoming our five new children from Room 1 who will join us for their first day in Room 3 on Wednesday 3 April. It will be a great opportunity for us to step up and model the awesome expectations for learning and behaviour that we share in Room 3, and of course to make our lovely new friends feel absolutely welcome as we include them in all our games :) 

Thursday 14 March 2013

Term 1, Week 7


Undeniably the highlight of last week was the excitement of Kids Can Cook on Wednesday – we loved making delicious crepes (and I’m sure many of us had a go on our own at the weekend :)). We also really enjoyed finishing off our buddy portraits (have you checked out our Room 3 gallery?), and working on some truly tricky maths – patterns to five.

This week in Room 3 we continue to practise our finger and spot patterns (dice patterns) to 5, as well as those tricky addition and subtraction “pairs” to five (0 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 3) – please keep up the practice at home, repetition is really helpful for us when it comes to memorising J This week in writing we are thinking about our playground problems – what is a conflict? How can we solve it? How can we share our own feelings, and listen to others? We are going to be beginning a music unit on listening and responding (moving!) to a beat, and we’re really excited to welcome Mrs Karki to Room 3 as our classroom teacher on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday. Miss Driver will be on a Peer Mediation course with a couple of other Birchwood teachers, and on CRT.

Please remember that school finishes at 12.30pm on Wednesday due to an NZEI meeting which the Birchwood teachers are attending at Broadgreen Intermediate. Thank you for your understanding and support. Please collect children from the classroom/courtyard as you would usually do at this earlier time :)

Thursday 7 March 2013

Term 1, Week 6


What a fun week we had last week in Room 3! We especially enjoyed the puppet show by Aotearoa Kinesthetic Education and drawing our self-portraits.

This week in Room 3 we’ll work on recognising finger and spot patterns (dice patterns) to 5, as well as memorising our addition and subtraction “pairs” to five (0 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 3) and, once again, we’d love it if you could help us by practising this at home with us. We also look forward to our third “buddy maths” session with the awesome kids from Room 10 who come to play maths games with us on Tuesdays. Did you see our blog post about this? There were some great photos, and if you click on the “comments” you can read our own writing about buddy maths. 

In writing we are thinking about our whanau or families and the special times that we share together – what are the times that your family likes to share? Do you have any special family tradtions?  

We are also looking forward to our Kids Can Cook lesson on Wednesday - how exciting!!!!!

Aotearoa Kinesthetic Education

Room 3 enjoyed the visit from Aotearoa Kinesthetic Education on Tuesday! The performers had some wonderful puppets to share and showed us some stories from maori mythology. We also loved the number haka and playing with some vowels...





Sunday 3 March 2013

Buddy Maths - thanks Room 10!

We are really enjoying our buddy maths with Room 10! Once a week the big kids come to visit us and teach us new maths games - it's a lot of fun and we learn so much :)







Drawing our kura

Room 3 are looking at different aspects of our kura (school) environment with an artistic eye! We really enjoy drawing our rakau (trees) out in the sunshine! We're looking at the details which make our trees appear realistic - bark, roots, branches, leaves...







Term 1, Week 5


Wow, lucky Room 3 – three swimming sessions and three afternoons of perfect sunshine! A final thank you to our wonderful parents, it made all the difference having you along :) Well done also on another awesome homework effort last week – great spelling results guys!

This week in Room 3 we continue to work on sequencing numbers (forwards and backwards) and we’d love it if you could help us by practising this at home with us – up to 20 and back, up to 100 and back if you can! We also look forward to our second “buddy maths” session with the awesome kids from Room 10 who come to play maths games with us on Tuesdays. An extra treat this week will be a performance, on Tuesday, by Aotearoa Kinesthetic Learning, with a focus on literacy, numeracy and te reo. We’ll complete our sketch portraits, and we’ll be reading and writing about all sorts of things!

Keep up the hard work, we are seeing some fabulous progress in our learning already this term – what a team :)!