Tena Koutou !
It has been a ‘fast and furious’ start to
term 3. The Y5/6’s have been very busy
getting involved in their learning in a wide range of contexts. Early this term we had a timely reminder about
our attitudes towards learning and life from a special guest, NED (a special
show), which stands for Never give
up, Encourage others and Do your best. I think the Yo-Yo craze was well and truly
brought back too.
As always we continue this term with our
streamed maths classes, which we have each morning. The focus for maths this term is fractions,
proportions and ratios as well as some learning in the statistics strand. The students have also had the opportunity to
challenge themselves further in mathematics through the Otago Problem Solving and
the ICAS Maths test. There is another
great opportunity for our top Y5/6 mathematicians later this term, a selected
few will be chosen to compete at the Mathswell competition.
The students have been focusing much of
their literacy time on the preparation of their speeches. This week they have been ‘a-buzz’ with
excitement as they have had their opportunity to give their speeches. I have been very impressed by the preparation
and performance, so far, of many of the students. After the students have presented their speeches
to their classes the top 2 Year 5’s and top 2 Year 6’s will be chosen from each
class to present their speeches in front of the team. The top 8 students (4 Year 5’s and 4 Year
6’s) overall will then progress to a final where they will present their
speeches in a school assembly. A speech
cup will be presented to the best Year 5 and Year 6 finalists. This term we are also exploring the narrative
genre in writing. This style of writing
is a nice contrast to the speeches the students have been preparing and
presenting.
This term has already seen a number of
students represent the school in sporting competitions such as zone
netball. Later this term there is the
zone hockey tournament and an ASB girls 5 aside soccer tournament. It was a real shame that the weather did not
come to the party earlier this term as the inaugural sports exchange with
Boulcott and Hutt Central Schools was cancelled. The students were really looking forward to
mixing it up with the students from those schools and were quite
disappointed. Another much anticipated
WRFU barefoot rugby tournament was also canceled. On more of a positive note, students have enjoyed
the gymnastics in the PE programme. We
are also looking forward to the Muritai School Mini Olympics next week.
The arts will take center stage soon as we
have a number of students involved in the Art Splash Choir. We are also moving towards full-scale
preparation for the school production, Uno’s Garden. We will be spending more and more time in
preparing and rehearsing for this over the coming weeks. Ms. Berry has created a wonderful production,
which I’m sure will WOW the audience. Ms. Berry will also start up the visual arts
club that will begin this Friday lunchtime.
There are always ‘extras’ that happen
through the term. Over the past few
weeks Mr. McMillan and Mrs. Ryan have been working with a small group of
students to prepare for the BP technology challenge. It is sure to be an awesome challenge. Another one of those extras is
homework. The students need to continue
to do the basics every day, which includes spelling, reading and
mathletics. Over and above that this
term is an inquiry based around the Olympics.
The students will be given an outline, which will guide them as to what
is expected for the next 4 weeks for their inquiry.
As you can see it has been and will be,
this term, a full and vibrant learning environment for the Y5’s and 6’s. It is always important for us as a teaching
team to make the partnership between home and school effective. We invite you to ‘come in and see’ whenever
you would like, there is always an open door.
We encourage you to visit the class blogs, which will give you a window
into the teaching and learning of each classroom. Each class will show you their uniqueness, which
is always important to celebrate.
Mauri ora! Kia ora!
Mr. McKay
(on behalf of the Y5/6 teaching team)
