Term 2, Week 1

Welcome back everyone after what I hope was a wonderful – if wet! – holiday! I hope that you are all feeling refreshed and ready for another amazing term ahead.

Today we formally welcome a new friend to our class (we had a special school visit last term), transferring from Ranzau school, and we also welcome Mr Harvey, a postgraduate teaching student who will be with us in Room 3 for five weeks. We all look forward to learning a great deal from each other over the weeks ahead.

In writing this week we’ll be thinking about the fabulous holidays we’ve just been enjoying, we’ll be challenging ourselves with new stories in reading, and we’ll be thinking about odd and even number patterns and characteristics in maths (not to mention keeping up with buddy maths and problem solving!). We’ll begin our printmaking unit by creating some bubble (moon) and block (rocket) prints, together with some leaf rubbings as we enjoy the final month of Autumn. 

Please note that Monday is still both our news and library day (so remember your sharing and your books!), and of course you are always most welcome to attend our assemblies on Fridays.

Here’s to another sensational burst of learning in Room 3! 

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays Room 3, I hope you all enjoy a thoroughly well deserved break, thanks for an awesome term :) :) :)

Term 1, Week 11

Here we are racing into our final week of Term 1 with the holidays just ahead of us. We had a wonderful time with Harold last week and will continue to work on the books he left for us this week during reading time. We were also excited to take home our learning journals and reports, and to share our successes with you our whanau! Please remember to return your learning journal this week as we will soon begin updating them for term 2!

This week in Room 3 we’ll continue to read, write and practise our counting, and we will finish off our drawing unit with a little more practice outdoors (weather permitting!) capturing our lovely green environment at Birchwood school. We’ll be dancing each day in the hall with Room 1 and Mrs Eades, and we are also welcoming a new student to Room 3 who will be visiting this week before beginning term 2 with us after the holidays. We are also looking forward to our DVD afternoon on Thursday after our term of hard work!

A huge well done to all families on the awesome effort with the spelling words last week – I was incredibly impressed with the children’s commitment to their homework and their progress in learning :) There will be no set homework over the holidays, but I encourage you to continue to read story books daily, and to work on the next few words from the essential spelling lists as and when time and energy is available :) Counting up to and back from 100 is another great “on the go” activity to continue with :) But most importantly, I wish you all a wonderful and well deserved break! 

The new and improved Room 3

Look! We have expanded! And we are just sooooooooooo excited!

Puzzle time!

Three clever cookies put our new word puzzle together in record time ...

Term 1, Week 10

Thanks to all for a short but action packed week in Room 3 last week. We had five awesome children join us from Room 1 (and we are loving having our new friends with us!), three different teachers, a wild, wet Wednesday, and an outing to Natureland! Huge thanks to those parents who helped us out with transport and supervision, we really appreciate your time and support :) Have you seen our photos on the blog?

This week in Room 3 promises to be just as exciting as we welcome Harold the Giraffe from the Life Education Trust who is visiting us on Monday and again on Wednesday. We also look forward to a visit from Janice Oliver on Wednesday who will be working with us on our Fundamental Movement Skills – it’s amazing just how closely linked our physical and our intellectual development are! Room 10 will return for buddy maths on Tuesday, and as ever we’ll be soldiering on with our reading and writing.  

In other news, learning journals will go home this Friday containing reading, writing, maths and topic (peer mediation/communication) work samples, together with term goals and, for children who have been at school for two full terms, interim National Standards reports. There are 11 children in Room 3 who will receive reports this term – the others will all receive interim (6 month) and/or final (12 month) reports in term 2. Please share your learning journals over the weekend and return to school in the final week of term (next week!) :)

Natureland

Rooms 1 and 3 had a wonderful day out at Natureland today learning about a few special animals. Thank you so much to all of our super parent helpers! What did we do? These pictures speak for themselves ...

Term 1, Week 9

I hope that you all had an absolutely fabulous Easter break and I’m really looking forward to reading all of your stories about your long weekend. A special welcome to those five new children joining us from Room 1, and to their families – we are so excited to be sharing our learning together!  Please see me if you have any unanswered questions about your new career as a Room 3 student or parent :)

Last week in Room 3 we learned about road safety with Constrable McKitrick through the Stepping Out safe walking programme, and we had a wonderful time on Thursday with all of the awesome tabloid sports activities organised for us by our senior students. Thanks to those parents who came to watch, we love having your support :)

This week is a very short week and – unusally! – there are no new spelling words or maths facts to learn as we are revising and reviewing those we’ve learned to date. We’ll have another go at our self portraits (in colourful crayon) to be sure that we have a profile for all new members in our class gallery. Mrs Karki will be in on Thursday, and we look forward to continuing our focus on the Peer Mediation (Cool Schools) peaceful conflict resolution  programme.

As well as our awesome additions from Room 1, our other big news this week is our class trip to Natureland (combined with Room 1) on Friday. If you have – wonderfully! – offered to provide transport, please be at school at 9am on Friday as we will head straight over.  We’ll be using up a lot of energy on our outing, so please pack plenty of delicious, nutritious goodies into our lunchboxes to keep us going throughout the day :) Shoes, hats and fleeces must be at school on Friday, it is just so important that we have safe toes, shaded faces and cosy bodies. Thanks for taking such care of us :)