Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The fast and the furious


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)














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