The week that was in Room 7 - week 8

Kia ora - welcome to week 9 in room 7.

SHARP - Room 7 had Mr Bleakly teach on Monday & Wednesday of last week and huge compliment to all of the children - he said they're a great class - and I must be doing something right (haha).
He really enjoyed his time in Room 7. It's so awesome to hear a reliever say that.
So hats' off to SUPER SHARP SEVEN!

Super SHARP students in room 7 - Fergus with his Principal's sticker from Mr Mackay for fantastic reading!

 Abigail with her SHARP morning tea - Abigail was the SHARP winner  for week 8. 
Abigail always goes out of her way to help the other children in our class and she is also one of the first children to make sure other children have a friend. 

Next week: Wednesday 17th June - Interschool cross country - good luck to the team going from Room 7. They have been doing some good training =)
Postponement date is Friday 19th June.

Wearable Arts help - week 10 Tues, Wed, Thurs - if you can help on any of these days - I would love your help in class. The children are in the mix of designing their wearable art - along with the materials they will need.
We have quite a few materials at school - but if you & your child have been discussing at home - anything else you have to add to your child's art will be appreciated.
You might like to talk to your child - and ask what they would like (extra) for their design. Maybe some shiny bling ;)
IF NEED BE - we can do some extra work on the Friday of week 10.

Disaster presentations: All the children, in pairs presented their choice of disaster to talk to the class about eg: Volcano, Tsunami, Earthquake, Floods etc...
I was impressed with 1) the way they presented their disaster work and 2) how most of the children worked so well together. 
The children presented using either keynote (like a powerpoint), puppet pals (more oral speaking), PicCollage - pictures & written information and bookcreator with pictures and written information. The children had to explain what the disaster was and how to be prepared for such a disaster. Most children had a good amount of information and a good use of pictures. 

SHAPES...The children started doing 'Real life shape' posters with Mr Bleakly - they had to draw each shape (using a ruler where need be) and name some of the shape attributes.

Here is Imogen with a die - all on her own accord she found the dice (die) and is counting the number of faces that a cube has. 














Milly & Daisy - head down - designing their real life shapes - and writing down some attributes.  

The above photo is of an iPad app: Geoboard - it's great for all sorts to do with maths. You can create shapes. Measurement - area/perimeter. And it's FREE!

And here's a good link to online basic facts practice:

http://www.prototec.co.nz/maths.html

AWWW look who came to visit. Thames the famous police dog. Thames is here with his handler Constable Mike Wakefield. Thames & Constable Wakefield visited our school assembly on Wednesday morning (a big surprise for the children). 

DISASTER PRESENTATIONS...Phoebe & Daisy are presenting their PicCollage to the class - well done girls!

Wow - how lucky are we? On Thursday some boys in Room 7 were saying how they're really enjoying the Zac Power books - well today - SURPRISE - Anna (one of our teacher aides) kindly gave Room 7 TEN - ZAC POWER BOOKS. Here are Dylan, Xaivier & Connor reading some of the books. And the wonderful PicCollages they made to say THANK YOU ANNA!!

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MADDY - 8 YEARS OLD! Wow we all grow up fast =)

 Maddy kindly sharing some lollypops. 

 Riley is really interested in hunting - Fiona one of our teacher aides had a great idea. She brought in a couple of animal skins, a rabbit and a possum. Here is Riley having a look and a feel of the skins.
Thank you Fiona for a fab idea and conversation with Riley.

A good experience - POSTING LETTERS. ROOM 7 wrote letters/newspaper report/picCollages/postcards to Abby's Uncle & Aunty in England. Matt & Amy kindly visited us when they were in Greytown earlier on in the year. The children enjoyed what they had to say about England  and Room 7 asked some good questions. Amy & Matt sent Room 7 a postcard - so we decided to write back to them =)
We also sent a good amount of thank you letters to JR Orchards for the juicy apples they gave to the Greytown Lions who then gave the apples to all the children at our school.
Room 7 also wrote some very well written letters to the Greytown Lions to say thank you! 

Some good reading,
Practical information about education for parents and carers
 http://parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school/learning-and-development-at-home/

Have a fantastic week all.....

Week 8 in SUPER SHARP SEVEN = 8th June - 12th June

Welcome to week 8 =)

Our SHARP students for week 7 - Imogen & Bailey well done.!!

 Fergus leading the class in our school karakia. Each morning the child who is sitting on the 'caught ya' chair leads the class in the karakia. 

What a busy bee week last week. The children did well with testing week. I must thank Roze & Fiona our super teacher aides. Riley was away so they were able to help in Room 7 with all the other children - what a blessing they are. Riley is back this week - I'm looking forward to hearing how his holiday went!
See what I mean - here is Roze helping in maths time - pointing out a star shape. SUPER STAR Roze =)

W.O.W - Our "WORD OF THE WEEK" is 'presentation' - I have talked to the children about when they present their work - they do their best best best! We talk about having PRIDE in what we and how they present. 

I have been impressed with the 'disaster presentations' so far - the use of technology whether it be keynotes on the laptops or using the iPad apps: puppet pals, picCollage or book creator, certainly help the children to make a good presentation. 

Any work your child does at home I ask you to please look at what they do - have a read, get your child to talk to you about what they have done and ask them: Is this your best?

Upcoming dates:

Tomorrow (Monday) I am on my CRT day, I will be at school finishing doing my reading testing. Mr Bleakly is in Room 7 - the children are going to love Mr Bleakly, he relieves quite a bit in our syndicate. He brings his guitar and awesome storytelling. Patrick will be following my daily plan.
Wednesday - I have a professional development course with Ms Perry on iPad use in the classroom. This is a timely course for me, as I need refreshing & updating of my skills.

Sunday 21st June: Matariki Garden Working Bee. Our lovely Matariki Garden (planted 10 years ago) has flourished and consequently is now in need of a good trim and prune. The newly formed FrOGS parent group is planning a working bee on Sunday 21st June starting at 9.30am. We would like to invite as many parents, grandparents and students as possible to come along and help to weed, trim and prune, and to also set a pathway through the garden. Our school Enviro Group together with Enviro School’s facilitator Esther Dijkstra, will be on hand to guide the working bee. Morning tea will be provided. BYO gardening tools. RSVP to Ms Leigh Perry: by June 16th lperry@greytownschool.com

Wearable Arts making - DON'T worry this is still coming up. The children are busy designing - and looking at what materials they will need. Thank you to the people who have offered to help - I'll let you know - nearer the time =)

Matariki - 26 June
Matariki celebration (Maori New Year). For those families that would like to attend - 7am we meet by Room 5 and proceed to the Matariki Garden (south field). This is a special event for our year 8 students. 


Students-led conferences - 30 June and 1 July
These will be an opportunity for your child to share with you their reflections on how they are progressing towards achieving the goals they set at the beginning of the year.  The online booking schedule will be coming out shortly. 

3rd July - last day of term 3

Progress reports - beginning of Term 3
Mid-year reports identifying how your child is progressing towards meeting the national standard at the end of the year will be sent home at the beginning of next term.  

Thank you for my birthday goodies - I loved the cards the children made - they certainly know me. They had drawn pictures of things I love!

Some birthday fun for Miss Burt's young 21st ++++ birthday =)

Prodigy - maths online activities.

Great to see some home learning going on - I see 3 parents have linked their child to this - yay!
At this stage we're not using Prodigy so much in class - but if your child can access it at home then that's awesome.
My Amelia is loving the site for her math's learning. I just asked Amelia what's so good about it - and she said "IT'S FUN!" - that's good to hear =)
I am sending your child's log in and password home again this week.

These things can help me at home 

– Key Competencies

ü  Help me learn that time and effort pays off. For example, when I say This is too hard, say, That’s great because now you have an opportunity to learn something new.

ü  If I make a mistake, celebrate it as an opportunity to learn. Help me to understand that making mistakes will help me learn.

ü  If I feel like giving up on a task, encourage me to stick at it a little longer and/or to try another way to do it.

ü  When I say That’s good enough, encourage me to ask if it is really my best work.

ü  Encourage me to apply the ‘can do’ attitude I have in rugby to my writing goals.

ü  Talk to me about the ways other people might see issues. Help me see things from a range of different perspectives.

ü  Give me increasing responsibility for a task that will help at home, e.g. I could feed the cat, empty the rubbish on Saturdays or help prepare dinner on Sundays.

ü  Help me to manage my television viewing time by giving me television tickets. Each week I could be given an agreed number of tickets that can each be used for 30 minutes of TV time. A variation is that any tickets remaining at the end of the week could be cashed in for 25 or 50 cents each.

ü  Help me see my problems are temporary, by saying they are glitches, snags or hard spots and talking with me about things I can do to get through them.

ü  Help me to role-play so I can see other people’s views as clearly as possible.

ü  Help me to take more responsibility for my school things. For example, have me choose a place to put a cardboard box, perhaps near the door of my room. Every afternoon, I will put my school things in the box. When my home reading is done, it will go in the box, too. In the morning I will check the box before I leave for school. 

ü  Help me to understand and experience the consequences of my choices.

Welcome to week 7 =) 2nd-5th June

Kia ora - and to all a great Queen's Birthday Weekend.

Week 6 was a great week in room 7 - we are getting information for our information reports. Completing our chimp flying into space stories.

We loved our hockey session on Thursday - and I was really impressed with the sportsmanship.
After the fun games of hockey the children congratulated each other - how awesome is that!!

We had a fantastic Mandarin (Chinese) lesson on Friday - Zhangzhang brought in chopsticks and taught the children to hold them. They had to pick up a wooden block and had a game (race) to put the most blocks in a container.
ANGUS won!

On Wednesday we have some visitors in our school - they will be looking at how we use IT in the classroom. Room 7 will be showing their iPad/laptop skills. The children are busy getting information about a natural disaster. They are working in pairs - so they are researching information into their own words. Then they will present the information using either keynote, puppet pals, picCollage or in book creator. The children are working in pairs and this helps them share their skills, knowledge and relationships of working with another person.

I hope you enjoyed your child reading to you this week:

SHARP STUDENTS - well done to Phoebe & Daisy. They both chose to wear mufti clothes. =)

Happy 7th birthday Miss Milly =) 7 in Room 7

Our SHARP winners - Daisy & Phoebe

Reading our chimp in space narratives to each other.

Izzie & Phoebe sharing chimp in space story. 

Bella & Bailey - reading their chimp in space stories. 

Riley trying out the chopsticks.

The class are loving these clips:

This is a good search engine on the internet if your child is looking up something on the net:
http://www.kidrex.org/

And a maths site for basic facts practice:
http://www.hoodamath.com/mobile/games/mathtimedtests.html

On that note - have a great week. Take care, Regards....Rachel 

Week 6 - Welcome to half way through the term!

Kia ora,

WOW we are lucky.

On Friday the Greytown Lions were at school and each child was given a bag of apples from JR Orchards. It looked like a scene out of Snow White ;) 

How generous of both JR Orchards - thank you so much!!

And...Greytown Lions for organising this.  Great apples!!

I love the LIONS they turned up in fancy dress. Xaivier and Dylan didn't recognise Stan Mangin who does reading with them each Friday. 

SUPER SHARP SEVEN STUDENTS:

 Toby with his special morning tea.
(below) - Abby & Millie wearing their SHARP mufti clothes.

Reminders:

Interschool cross country: this event is held at Kahutara School on Wednesday 17th June and postponement 19th June.

We are doing cross country training 3 x a week and the other children are doing a fitness circuit. 

We have also been lucky enough for Ms Pearse to lead us in a couple of Zumba sessions - the children look like they really enjoy this - it's great!!

WE love this video clip - please watch with your child and get him/her to talk with you about it. 

Growth mindset - we have been talking a lot about growth mindset.We love this saying - I don't know it YET! So when we are stuck with our learning we use strategies to help us. This is called EFFORT!

From the mouths of babes...
"If you don't try you can't do it" - Ella
"It's kind of like if you're stuck in a mud puddle you get out using effort" - Seb
"So if we're stuck with our reading words a strategy is to sound the word out" - Angus
"Never give up!" - Angus
"Practice, practice, practice" - Angus
"Try harder - even more than you did before" - Toby
"Give every thing a go" - Bailey
"If you get stuck in your maths - get a piece of paper and try different strategies" - Axel
"Put all your effort into it" - Sam BG
"If you think something is hard make progress instead of just sitting there doing nothing" - Imogen
"Keep on trying other ways - otherwise you will never learn it" - Evie
"If you're stuck in your maths you can use equipment" - Fergus
"Try yourself before you ask someone" - Daisy
"Talk to each other to get ideas" - Miss Burt
"Focus and lock it in" - Abby
THINKING THINKING THINKING!

SO...Who is the person who can do it - ME!!! YOu!!!!

Enjoy the photos from WEEK 5 - the week that was =)

Warming into week 5.....

Kia ora and welcome to week 5 in SUPER SHARP SEVEN.

What's happening in Room 7? We farewelled John on Thursday, John has worked with Riley for a while now. Room 7 spoke well, the children each said one thing that they appreciated John for. Some great responses.
We now have Roze Doherty working in Room 7 - Roze is Jethro's mum. We have Fiona who works on a Monday & a Friday. Roze who will be working on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays.

THANK YOU for all the recycling materials for wearable arts - keep them coming in!

We are in the middle of talking about disasters - What's the plan Stan? Talking about what we do in an emergency/disaster. Quite timely with the flooding in Wellington last week.
Here is a link if you would like to have a look:
http://whatstheplanstan.govt.nz/ Some good things to talk to your family about.

We are about to start report writing - which has tied nicely into our reading. The children have been reading reports. The children seem to enjoy reading non-fiction and discussing what they have read.
I am going to be doing fun writing on Thursdays and Fridays. The children love this - and it gives them the freedom to write about what they like.

Last week I just loved what was going on during literacy time: Jayden was writing a report about dinosaurs, I had a small group writing their own stories (chapters even!!), another group completing letters to Mr & Mrs Barton, another group working on the iPads writing facts using PicCollage and then another group completing letters, information about Greytown, postcards and jokes for Abby's Aunty and Uncle in England.
I love the fact the children are writing for an audience - like I will walk a small group of the children down to the Post Shop and they will help to post the mail to Matt & Amy in England.

 Our SHARP winners for week 3-4 - Abby & Milly =) Well done girls.

 The birthday girl Imogen ! Imogen shared her birthday news.

 Woohoo - 2 Principal awards for writing - Axel and Dylan holding up their Pic Collages - writing to Mr & Mrs Barton to thank them for letting us use their farm for cross country.

 Imogen with her Minecraft soft toys. Minecraft seems very popular with the children.

 John's last day in Room7. Riley is seen here presenting John with a book that Riley made =)

 John and his funny monkey card from Riley.

 And a fishing tackle box for John from Riley.

 Well done Fergus on changing his reading book - the book boxes are there for all children to change their book on a regular basis.

I was so impressed on Friday morning - I walked into class and I had 3 boys reading silently. Good on you Angus, Axel & Seb - what a pleasure that was to see!!

 Room 7 had a lovely time on Friday at 2pm. Room 5 joined us for a half hour - we sang songs, danced and read  a story. Look at us....

Awesome video clip showing a chimpanzee going into space - we are going to be using this for descriptive writing:
https://vimeo.com/11127915

Have a great week everyone!!!!

Rachel =)