What's Up Week 6

Welcome to Week 6.  Only a few more weeks left until the school year is finished. The big focus for us this week is of course camp. I'm in the process of crossing t's and dotting i's and making sure everything is ready to go. I'm putting a copy of the gear list on here, as many students seem to have misplaced theirs. If you still have raffle tickets at home, please get them back to school by Thursday as I have to draw it on Friday afternoon.  Remember that students need to be at school by 8am on Monday. 

In class we are busy with Jubilee writing and art as requested by the Jubilee Committee. Students have to hand write a piece of writing all about themselves and draw a picture of themselves doing something they enjoy.

We are also finishing term reflections, which are then being shared with parents at interviews.

Year 8's will be shared a template for their end of year speeches this week, so they can start thinking about these. After camp we will put more focus on this. Parents need to have let the school know by Friday if they are attending the Year 8 leavers dinner.

Rotorua 2017 Gear List

PLEASE DO NOT BRING MOBILE PHONES OR LOLLIES

Day bag (such as their school bag)

Swimming togs

Towel x2 (swimming and showering)

Raincoat

Warm sweatshirts

Covered shoes for camp activities (such as sneakers - may like to bring a spare pair as well)

Underwear and socks for 5 days

Shorts and t-shirts

Long pants (make sure some warm clothes are packed even though it is summer)

PJ's

Sun hat

Warm hat

Pillow

Sleeping bag

Fitted single sheet for over the mattress (optional)

Toiletries (soap, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, insect repellant, sunscreen, etc)

Waterbottle

Lunch box

Food

Packed lunch and morning tea for bus on Monday

Room 3 - home baking

Room 4 - fruit ( bag of apples or bunch or bananas etc)

Optional extra food - muesli bars, snack packs (no lollies or chocolate, etc)

Optional

Camera

Books

Spending money up to $20

Sunglasses

Torch

What's Up - Week 2

Well week 1 has flown by and with week 2 only 4 days long I’m sure it will fly by as well.

Tuesday those kids interested in the road relay will have trials. Once the teams have been named they will continue to train for the event next Monday.

The Lions Speech Competition is on Thursday night so we will be checking in with those who have written speeches to make sure they are prepared for the night.

We wrap up our persuasive writing this week by presenting our letters to the Board and Enviro Teachers. Our letters hope to persuade them that our enviro ideas are appropriate and get permission to go ahead and actually create them.

Notices came home last Friday regarding Positive Puberty so please read through these. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. We hope to have our first lesson this Friday.

In Maths we continue to develop our algebraic thinking skills by developing rules for patterns and looking at how patterns can be explained.

Reading will consist of trying out our new CSI kit. CSI reading is a programme of work which works on developing comprehension strategies and exposing children to a range of different texts. We will also be busy with reading assessments in preparation for reports.

Reminder that all children should have a hat at school by now. No hat - no play. Bucket hats only.

Yet another busy week and it is only week 2!

Have a good one!

Capital Letters

So it appears that someone actually reads my blog posts (even if it is only my mother)! 😁She has complained about the lack of capital letters in my last post.😱😲 If you read the post directly from the blog it looks fine BUT apparently when viewed through email all the capital letters are missing.😕 This is because the email didn't recognise the font that I used. In future I will not use that font as I don't want parents (including my own) thinking that I can't use capital letters.😎 😉😉😉 Have a great day!

What's Up? - T4 - Wk 1

Welcome back to what will be another busy term - is there any other sort?? 😊  This term we have calf and lamb day on wednesday, we have lions speeches, Tech week and of course camp in week 7.

Students should be all prepared for calf and lamb day as far as pets go. we will be completing our string art design on tuesday. the only thing students need, if possible, are small picture hook type hammers. we are trying to source as many of these as possible, so if you have any at home that could be used on the day we would love to borrow them.

lions speeches take place in week 2. students who are interested will complete these at home. more information will come home with interested students.

tech will be in week 5 this term. students have filled in their request forms, these will be finalised this week and then students will be informed. the tech options this time are - cooking, art and design, shade house construction, and movie making.

camp is in week 7 and more information will come home as the date for this gets closer. if you have any questions about camp, please feel free to get in touch.

homework this week will just consist of getting animals ready for wednesday. those students interested in lions speeches will have to begin preparing their speech as well.

reminder that touch starts this week on tuesday evenings. toko school sports uniform is required in order to play.  also this coming weekend - labour weekend - is our annual school pig hunt. we would love to see you there supporting the school. Lastly remember Term 4 means no hat, no play.

have a great week.

Calendar Art

Our fabulous Calendar Art is nearly finished and should be popping up on your child's blog any day now. Our art is inspired by Warren Pohuta and the kids have done an amazing job.  They are bright and colourful and will look impressive on anyone's wall.
Calendar Art is a great fundraiser for the school and an easy way to provide gifts for your family. Price list and a couple of examples are below.

Japanese Day

Our very first Japanese Day has been fantastic! The kids have really enjoyed spending a day learning about different aspects of Japan. 
The children were split into three groups and worked through the following activities throughout the day:

- Japanese Cooking with Mrs Hancock where they were busy making okonomiyaki which is a savoury pancake is made up of flour, dashi, cabbage, water and bacon. 

- Japanese art with Miss Jury where we have been busy creating Sakura Lanterns to celebrate the Hanami Festival (ask your children to explain).

- And we have been so fortunate to have Saho take our third group and learn origami, Japanese games and how to write their name in kanji. Saho is visiting from Japan so we are so lucky to have to skills and knowledge here helping us out. 

Its been a brilliant day where the children have worked hard to use their new language skills and learn a bit more about the Japanese culture. 

Painting our Sakura Lanterns. 

Our beautiful Sakura Lanterns.

Some of the kids with their names written in kanji.

Whipping up okonomiyaki  with Mrs Hancock.

Calendar Art

We are well under way with our plans for some stunning calendar art.  We have used a New Zealand artist - Warren Pohuta - and have looked closely at some of his amazing animal art.

We discussed how he uses bold colours and blending as well as some very detailed patterning.  The students are now practicing their pattern drawing skills on a template of one of his animal designs. 

Once we have mastered how to draw some of these intricate patterns, students will draw their own design and use Warren Pohuta patterning to complete it. Look out toward the end of Week 8 for our finished pieces. 

What's Up - Week 6

This week sees another busy week as we kick off in speech board preparations along with Taranaki Trophy and our very first Japanese Day.

This afternoon we were hoping to run our school cross country but weather isn’t on our side unfortunately. We had pencilled in Friday as a postponement day but the weather is looking rough for then as well. We will just have to play this one by ear and see if we can get a clear spell for it. If not we will continue to train when it is clear enough to get out there. Rural Schools cross country is scheduled to go ahead at Rawhit on Monday next week.

Taranaki Trophy this week is on Wednesday at Auroa. The rugby and A netball teams will be travelling to Auroa to play their games. We will be leaving Toko School 10.15am which will allow time for the teams to warm up before kick off at 11.30am. I recommend bringing a towel and change of clothes as the weather isn’t looking too flash for this week. Transportation has been sorted and reminder notes will be sent home to those parents involved today.

In writing and reading we are getting stuck into our speech board prep. We will be looking at depth into each category the children are required to present and discussing what they need to do to be successful. Each child needs to have a topic for their informative talk and a book to discuss. Make sure to check in with your child and check they have their topics and book sorted.

In maths we continue looking into algebra and using open ended tasks to challenge and extend our knowledge.

On Friday we are going to hold a Japanese Day where the kids will spend the each block doing activities based around Japanese festivals, food and the written language. There is a Japanese exchange student based at St Mary’s who is going to come out and work with the kids so we will have an expert to help out for the day. Her name is Saho and she worked with the children during their Japanese lesson last week. The kids homework this week is based around preparing for this day and getting some background knowledge around the areas we will be looking at. Check in to make sure they are on track as this is due on Thursday.

We are still collecting bottle caps to finish off our project from tech week but are only after brown and silver/grey lids now. If you have any please send them in.

Looking ahead to next week there is of course Rural School Cross Country and then next Friday 8th September will be our final Taranaki Trophy fixture which is away against St Josephs. This involves the rugby and both netball teams.

Have a great week, stay dry!

Japanese with Mrs Karasawa and Saaho

Not only were we lucky enough to have Mrs Karasawa come and take another Japanese lesson but we also got to meet Saaho - a Japanese exchange student.

Mrs Karasawa and Saaho

Mrs Karasawa and Saaho taught us how to say our age correctly and the vocabulary that goes with this.  One of the ways they helped us learn this was through Speed Dating! Well not really, but it was like speed dating. We lined up in two lines. One line asked the question '"How old are you?" and the other line answered, then the line moved on. Watch this video to see how it went. 

After that we went outside and had a game of Chinese Whispers - well in this case it was actually Japanese Whispers! Teams had to come to Mrs Karasawa and listen to a sentence. Then they had to take it to their team and whisper it to the next person in the line. When the last person had the whisper they ran to Saaho and repeated it to her. It was interesting to note how often we got the whispers wrong!

All lined up in teams.

Checking with Saaho.

Passing that whisper along.

It was a really fun lesson. Now we are looking forward to next week and seeing what cool things Mrs Karasawa and Saaho will come up with. 

What's Up - Week 5

Week 5! Back to a normalish week at school after another hugely successful tech week. The children all had a great time on their selected tech option and some of the finished projects that were produced during the week are very impressive.

In maths this week we will be looking at Maths Week activities. This is a nationwide week of maths activities and challenges which was held last week but due to tech week we will be working on it this week.

Children will be working on some of these maths activities for homework this week. The Rotokare Scenic Trust is also running a photo competition which is an option for homework this week. Details are in the children’s weekly homework note on their Google Drive so check in with them for some more info on that.

Writing and reading focuses on our classes enviro topics with Room 4 getting into the nitty gritty of beekeeping and working out what we need to get a beehive here at school and Room 3 carrying out design process charts for their projects.

This week we have Taranaki Trophy on Wednesday. We are hosting Coastal here at Toko School. They are only bringing a rugby team so that will be the only competition match. Kick off is at 12 and we ask the players to bring a plate.

The Methanex Maths Quiz is Wednesday afternoon. The Year 7 & 8 teams have been selected and we wish them all the very best for this.

On Thursday both Sasha and I are out until lunchtime with Japanese PD which will help us develop our language skills further.

We will be attempting to get out training for cross country daily this week. This will of course be dependent on the weather and the state of the fields. Due to the huge amount of rain we have had lately it is very wet underfoot so we will do our best with the conditions.

Have a great week everyone.

What's Up T3 Wk3

What a busy week we had last week! The kids have worked super hard to produce some fabulous science investigations. They are now proudly displayed in New Plymouth at the racecourse. 😁😁 We are travelling up on Wednesday to view them and see how we got on.

Also last week we competed in our first Taranaki Trophy match against Oakura School. We had good wins in both netball games and a big loss in rugby. This week we have back to back games with St Joseph’s on Wednesday and Opunake on Thursday. We are taking a bus 🚌 on Wednesday but we will be travelling by car 🚙 on Thursday. A big thank you to those parents who are able to help with transport. A note will come home early in the week confirming with those taking transport.  

Technology groups have been selected. Students will be either cooking, constructing, creating art design or making products such as lip balm and hand cream. Some groups will be meeting today to plan exactly what they will be constructing. 🏗👷

Please remember to keep checking your child’s blog to see what they have been learning. We would love comments to be made and are willing to bribe you with offers of chocolate for comments. 🍫🍫

In maths we are learning about algebra and how to find answers with unknown variables. For example a=3 so a x a = 9.  Each day we are also working on increasing our mental recall and our knowledge base. We do this through games and activities before we start the main part of the lesson.

As our science investigations have now finished we move on in writing as well. This week both classes will be basing their writing around their enviro topics. Room 4 will be looking into writing brochures and Room 3 are researching and recording ideas for ways to spice up our school grounds.

Reading of course runs through every subject and is completed many times throughout each day. 🕮📚📙📘

After Tech in week 4 our focus will move to Speech Board. Before then students will need to start thinking about their what topic might be. Information about speech board came home last week and more will come home Thursday this week.

Enviro in Room 3

This year we have made several starts on enviro projects and then found they weren't the best options for us. Firstly we decided to look at planting. This led us down the path of looking into riparian planting. We got enthused about this and then realised that riparian planting is probably something that needs to be done on a big scale. ⚘🎕🎕🎕🎕🎕
Next we got extremely excited about the idea of taking the school paddock and turning it into a community enviro friendly space. The kids came up with the most amazing ideas and we were off and racing..... Then I had a moment of clarity and realised that was a HUGE project and maybe we should start with something just a tad smaller. We chatted and realised that the school grounds could actually do with some more enviro up-grades and we should look at this before moving to a new space. This was met with a wee bit of disappointment but we got over that and realised that tackling the school grounds was much more manageable and achievable. 
So - third time lucky - we are now off and racing again, this time with a focus on improving different areas in and around the school. 
We have split into 5 groups and are investigating: 

Art in the Environment  🖼🖌🖌

Junior Play Areas in the Environment 🙌

Trees and Plants in the Environment 🌳🌺🌷

Animals in the Environment 🐜🐌

Chill Out Zones in the Environment 👌😌😎

We are using the following to assist us with our inquiry into these areas. 

We are busy recording what we KNOW, what we WANT to know and HOW we can find out. This relate to the first 3 letters on the chart above. 

Stay tuned to see where we go from here......

Science Fair Craziness!

The craziness of the upcoming science fair is dominating life in Room 3 & 4 

at the moment. 

The kids have been working so hard on this since before the end of
 Term 2. 
This week has been all about finishing the written aspect of the
 projects and presenting them on their boards. 
They are looking amazing! 
Check out the photos below to see how chaotic our classrooms
 have become! Excuse the mess!

  

What's Up - Term 3 Week 1

Welcome back to Term three! As usual it’s a busy term for year 7 and 8 students. This term we have science fair, taranaki trophy, speech board, positive puberty and technology - so it is going to be full on.

This week we will be spending time working on science fair entries and learning how to correctly write up an investigation. Students should have their experiments well under way by now.

All students are going to undertake an adaptive maths test so we can see where we’re at. An adaptive test changes the questions to suit the student so that we can gain the most insight into what they can and can’t do. This is really helpful for teaching students to their individual needs.

Japanese continues this term. Students will continue to learn greetings, numbers, short sentences, etc. Myself and miss jury will be involved in professional development in this area on wednesday this week.

Tech will be in week 4 again this term. Students will pick their options this week and will meet for a planning session in the next week.

We will be involved in the Taranaki Trophy sports exchange  this term. Practices for rugby and netball will be on friday afternoons. There will be two netball teams this year - an A and B team. The B team will play nearly as many games as the a team. Teams will be finalised before friday this week.

Our first exchange is here at school next thursday against oakura.

Transport will be required for away games.

Have a great week.

Mystery Skype Challenge

Today we put our communication, team work, logical thinking and map using skills to the test in a mystery skype challenge.  This involved being paired up with a school somewhere in New Zealand and asking each other yes and no questions and racing to identify the other school. We had to use Google Maps to search for the school and it was really important that we worked as a team and listened to each other so that we didn't ask the same questions or silly questions.
We didn't win, but we did have a huge amount of fun. We were teamed up with a city school in Auckland. We really liked them and are going to stay in contact with them. They were quite different from us - a much bigger school, they wore a uniform, they were in the city. We spent time after the challenge finding out about each other and introducing ourselves.
During the challenge we all had roles - such as ambassadors (these people did the talking on skype), directors (these people keep everything orderly and everyone on task), detectives (these people did all the searching on Google Maps), the reporters (they ran the questions to the directors and ambassadors). We also had a scribe - who wrote all the things we found out up on the board, and a photographer who captured the learning and fun we were having.
Everyone was really engaged with their learning and learnt a lot from the experience.

Hollie and Troy were our Ambassadors 

Millie was a Director

Aylah kept track of everything we found out

Arlo was a Detective using Google Maps 

These are the Ambassadors from St Heliers School 

Art

 Our wonderful works of art are nearly finished and are looking fabulous! Here's a few of the finished ones. Check out your child's blog over the next couple of days to see their finished products.  They will be judged by the Toko Hall Committee over the holidays.

 

Bits and Bobs

As the term draws to a close I thought I should share a bit of what we've been up to recently.

The class are going full steam ahead with their Science Fair investigations and entries. There are some fabulous topics under investigation - do homemade fire starters work better than store bought ones, which washing powder gets your clothes the cleanest, which battery gives you the most bang for your buck - just to name a few.

We are also busy creating some works of art that could potentially end up on the Toko Hall wall. Each child has taken a photo of rural life and then printed and enlarged it. They have then made a grid and on an A2 piece of paper drawn another grid. This is to help them transfer their photo into a scale sketch before turning it into a painting.

All Year 5 - 8 children are participating in this art activity. The Toko Hall Committee will then judge the pieces and select their favourite ones to be placed on the outside of the hall. 

We are also flat out writing debates at the moment. Our topic for the cluster debate at Pembroke is: Children should be allowed to climb trees at school.   Students are working in teams to plan their debate. On Friday we will be sharing the debates at school and from those debates we will pick our Year 7 team and our Year 8 team to represent Toko next Wednesday. 

As well as having Jones Cup yesterday, we are involved in a Rippa tournament tomorrow (Wednesday) at Yarrow Stadium. Hopefully I'll have some good photos to share later in the week. 

Next week we will involved in a Mystery Skype Challenge where we are matched up with another school somewhere in New Zealand. The challenge is to ask yes or no questions and race the other school to find where in the country we are. The students use google maps and all have a role to play on the day. As part of this a photo scavenger hunt is underway with all the kids taking photos of 10 different things. I'll share those next week too. 

As you can see, with only a week and a half to go, it's all on - no winding down for end of term here! 

What's Up - Week 8

In maths this week we consolidate our subtracting decimals knowledge and begin to look at reversibility. This is when you can use the opposite operation to help solve a question. For example you may have a subtraction problem like 4.2 - 1.3. Using the reversibility strategy I want to turn it into an addition problem, therefore I turn it into 1.3 + __ = 4.2. If it is a multiplication problem I could reverse it into a division problem. A really effective strategy which also helps our basic facts knowledge. For example with times tables if I know 4 x 7 = 28 I also know 7 x 4 = 28. I can then use reversibility to remember my division facts, 28 ➗ 7 = 4 and 28 ➗ 4 = 7. So with every 1 times table I know I actually know 4 basic facts. On Thursday we also have to squeeze in the Otago Problem Solving challenge.

In writing we start to look at debating with the upcoming rural schools debating competition in week 10. We will learn what a debate is, what it involves and how to debate effectively. We are working towards holding debates in class to practice our new skills.

Reading becomes very self managed this week with the children being given a list of must do activities that they can achieve in any order as long as they are all completed by Friday. We will continue to strengthen the use of our prior knowledge to help us comprehend texts.

We are full steam ahead with our science fair investigations this week and children will be given the chance to develop their experiments and get things organised so they can start their tests. The kids are really enjoying this and it is great to see some of the creative ideas they are developing. Not only are they creating science experiments we also have some creating posters, capturing photos of chemical reactions, drawing scientific drawings of seeds and making water rockets.

We have Jones Cup practice again on Friday so remind children come to school with the correct sports gear.

Girls: sport shoes

Boys: mouthguard and boots

Jones Cup itself is on Monday of week 9. The newsletter this week will contain information about what children need to wear.

ANother busy week! Enjoy!

What's Up - Week 6

We are halfway through term 2 now and time is flying by and With a 4 day week this week it will continue to fly.

This week in maths we continue to develop our knowledge of decimals. We will be learning how to add decimals. Students will be able to work at the level that best suits them through using a system of practice and check. When they get stuck students will use short videos and teacher help to move them onto the next level.

Writing will be spent reflecting on our year so far. Students will be required to look back on the year and comment on different areas using a positive, minus and interesting format.

Reading continues as normal as we develop our reading comprehension strategies to help us understand the texts we read. Texts will be based around our respected enviro focuses.

Miss Jury and Mrs Hancock are both out of class on Wednesday morning as we have some Japanese PD to help us with teaching a different language.

Enjoy your week and feel free to pop in and check out some of our tech week creations. Toko Tv will also show some of what everyone got up to in tech and of course each student has completed a blog post about their tech experience.