Pohutukawa Panui

It’s been a busy and wonderful year for the Pohutukawa class of 2008.  This will be the final post on this blog, so I hope everyone has enjoyed it.  Have a safe, relaxing and fun summer!

Regards,

Whaea Kristina

We will have a great time next week!  On Tuesday, Koromiko and Pohutukawa will have a quiz challenge.  On Wednesday, we will do water sports, which will include an obstacle course.  Students should wear their togs, because they will definitely get wet!!!  Parents/caregivers, please make sure your child brings a change of clothes and a towel.  They will also need togs and a towel on Thursday, when we go to Petone Beach.  We will spend the afternoon (including lunchtime) playing sports, building sandcastles and having a swim.  On Friday, we will go hiking at Rimutaka Forest Park.  Please be sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes that day, and to bring a lunch.  If you’d like to accompany us on our trips on Thursday and Friday, please let me know!  The more helpers we have, the easier it will be for everyone.  Also, we cannot swim at the beach unless we have a 1 adult for every 3 children.

I hope that next week is enjoyable for everyone!

Whaea Kristina

We are busy learning how to tell the time in Maths. Most of the students have been able to learn how to tell time on a clock, but some of us are still getting the minute and hour hand mixed up! We are also learning how many days each month has.

In Reading, we are learning how to list 5 main events in the story. We are also learning how to identify the problem and solution in a story. This is also helping us to write our own stories. We are trying to make sure our stories make sense and that they have lots of interesting details.

We’ve learned that an animal is a mammal if it has hair or fur, is warm-blooded, if the mothers give birth and provides milk for her babies, and if it uses its lungs to breathe. Next, we’ll learn about Reptiles, Birds, Fish and Amphibians.

This Friday, we will be doing Athletics at the Petone Rec. We will be competing in several events: the 50 metre sprint, high jump, vortex throw and shot put.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope to see you on Friday!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!  Welcome to the final term of 2008!  We learned how to write instructions last term, and next week the students will take a writing test to determine how well they are able to write instructions.  We will be learning about animal classification this term as well:  mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds.  The results from the latest STAR tests are in and Pohutukawa has learned a lot about reading this year!  Everyone’s reading skills have improved since the beginning of the year, and most students have improved significantly!  If you’d like to know about your test score, please see me.  There will be a community meeting in two weeks where we will discuss the results of the reading (STAR) tests and the maths (PAT) tests.  Please see the newsletter for dates and times.

The students have enjoyed making their wearable arts costumes.  They are looking forward to the Wearable Arts show on Wednesday 10 September at 7:00 where they will get to model their costume creations on the catwalk.

Please remember that school photos are this Thursday!!!

It was great to see so many of you at parent interviews.  Thanks for taking the time to come and find out about your child’s progress.

Regards,

Whaea Kristina

Last week, some of our students went onto a cool, kid-friendly website http://tutpup.com

I have put the link to this website under Educational Games. Students can choose between these topics: Maths 101, Mixed Maths, Spelling, Times Tables and Algebra. They can choose what level they wish and then they can compete with other children around the world. The students that tried tutpup last week really enjoyed themselves. If you want to try this website at home, click on the link and then the login button. I have given each child their login name. After logging in, the class password is pohu.  Hope you enjoy this website!

Regards,

Whaea Kristina

We hope you like our fireworks pictures. We used pastels, dye and paint. After we had finished, we wrote instructions so that others could do the art project. We are learning how to write clear instructions in Writing this term.  If you want to see the rest of our artwork, click on our Art page.

I hope everyone had fun during the school holidays. We now have 4 new students in our class: George, Esther, Tristan and Pearl from Rimu. We also got a new student late last term named Mya. We now have 24 students in our class!
We will be learning about recycling this term. As part of this topic, we will also have a school Wearable Arts show. The students will get the chance to make a costume out of the things we collect. You can help us by bringing in:

• bottle caps
• fizzy drink bottles
• large paper bags
• egg cartons
• plastic bags
• polystyrene
• tabs from aluminium cans
• chippie packets
• empty food boxes (cereal, muesli bars, etc.)
• milk carton caps
• food wrappers
• empty tissue boxes
• cardboard boxes
• newspaper
• old wrapping paper
• anything else that you think that can be used to make a costume out of

I will be sending home a letter to remind you to start bringing things in. Remember, the more stuff you bring in, the more creative you can get when you design your own costume!

Whaea Krisitina

This Friday we had a Maths competition with Rimu. It was a close competition, but in the end Pohutukawa won! The students from Rimu and Pohutukawa had to answer mainly multiplication problems and some plus problems as well. We had been working hard on learning our 2, 3, 5, 10 and 11 times tables this term. Everyone did a great job! Next term, we will be learning our 4 times tables and how to do division! We will keep learning our plus and minus basic facts as well. We might even have another competition with Rimu next term! Have a wonderful term holiday everyone!
Whaea Kristina

Everyone did a great job during the speech finals. It takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of an audience, so I am proud of ALL of our finalists for working so hard and being so brave. Here are the finalists:

1st place: Grant
2nd place: Jadina
3rd place: Marisa
The winners were announced on Tuesday, and each student got a certificate.

Once again, congratulations to everyone!

Whaea Kristina