The students in Room 9 have had another fast-paced learning week at Tamaki Primary.
We had some of our beginning of year assessments this week, with the PAT Maths, PAT Reading and e-Asttle Writing assessments taking place over three mornings;
the School Picnic at the Panmure Pool complex was cancelled due to stormy weather, and instead we did some learning about symbolism in art, looking predominantly at some of John Pule's art, and then we designed and started to work on our own piece of art, which contained symbols relating to us as individuals;
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| John Pule art work |
we have continued reading 'Once' by Morris Gleitzman, and we have been learning to interpret what the characters in the story might look like based on the information contained in the text;and quite a few of the students in our class are in the Eastern Zone Softball teams and we have been practising every lunchtime (even in the rain). The competition is being held on the 1st of March at the Domain in central Auckland.
It's been another hot week in Auckland and it's been firing up Room 9's learning.This week we have been continuing to read Morris Gleitzman's 'Once' and learnt a little more about what it was like for some children living in Poland during Hitler's dictatorship;we wrote some amazing poems about emotions, which will be going up on our blogs this week;we met up with our Buddy Class, which is Room 2 this year. We introduced ourselves and drew pictures together. We shared about our families and what some of our favourite things were;
we have our first Senior Syndicate P.E. session, where we played some fun games in mixed groups of students from Rooms 6 to 10;our first Year 7&8 softball practise was held on Friday at lunchtime;
we had our first Senior Syndicate Assembly in the hall. Matthew received a 'Caught Being Good' certificate for looking after our new student Vuni, and Raena received a 'Caught Being Good' certificate for being a great role model in Room 9;we had our first music lesson with Caleb. We learnt about beats and rhythm, and did some individual and group exercises clapping to 'pear', 'apple', 'watermelon', 'strawberry' and 'kiwifruit'. This was hard for most of us at first, but after a little practise and a lot of concentration we got it. We had a group competition and one of the boys groups won in the end.
Room 9 had an energetic start to the school year.We learnt that each student has their own unique strengths and created our own word art;we created a mandala, which included drawings that represented our identity and what was important to us;we analysed a children's narrative 'Baby Bear and the Big, Wide World' and began drafting our own narratives for our 'Buddy Class', which is Room 2 this year;
we started reading 'Once' by Morris Gleitzman and began to learn about the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights;
we worked on our own mihi/pepeha, which we will present to our class next week;we discussed two current events issues - the Zika Virus and the TPPA, using the 'SPEECH' model, which will help us develop deeper understandings of issues such as these;SocialPoliticalEconomicEnvironmentalCulturalHistoricalwe re-visited our school values - Manaakitanga, Rangimarie, Tukumarie and Whanaungatanga, and we were introduced to the new school value - Ako, which means shared or reciprocal learning;and we briefly talked about our hauora or well-being in relation to Mason Durie's Te Whare Tapawha.
At the Manaiakalani Toolkit course we have been learning about blogs. We have learned about backgrounds, headings, collages, gadgets and many other helpful tools that will help us in our learning.
