Te Henga team learners...

Some Weekly Reminders...
*read every night, with or to your child
*basic facts practice via Huapai website:  http://intranet.huapaidistrict.school.nz/
*spelling practice of essential lists, very important that these essential words are being used throughout school work, not just on tests  :)
*library is on Tuesday
*class swimming is on Friday

Meet Te Henga Team
This year we are part of Te Henga team which is made up of...
Room 11:  Years 1/2:  Esther Bahg
Room 20:  Years 3/4:  Allisa Holbrow and Traci Mihaljevich; Marcelle Waugh (TA) and Erika Kuschel (LA)
Room 13:  Years 5/6:  Ben Hutchings
Room 12:  Year 7/8:  Tina Knott

On Monday afternoon we had our first team meeting and were lucky enough to have a great team photo taken.  Check us out, aren't we fabulous!!!

What type of learner are you?

This past week we looked at different learning styles.  Through Gardiners' Theory of Multiple Intelligences, we all took a little quiz to find out what learning style based on the eight intelligences we might be.  Our class results were interesting.

From our results, we all collected class data and began to present it in our own unique way. We had to collaboratively work with each other and on our own to come up with the best display for our findings.  Our next learning step will be to research about our learning style and learning intelligence to inquire about how we are all unique in our learning.

Spelling...

Many of you have been asking about spelling words.  Any word your child may struggle with when writing is a great word to start with!
Essential List spelling testing began last week and will continue this week.  From last weeks testing all students will be putting a spelling list into their spelling notebook to go home and be revised. Many students will have words which they should know and spell correctly in their everyday writing. These are words we would like reinforced and used correctly when writing, as they are the essential words and make up over 50% of the words we use daily.  If your child is worried that they are on a list lower than the end of last year, do not fret.  As previously stated, these are essential spelling words which make up the backbone for all writing and must be spelt correctly, at all times.  With a little revision and perseverance, they will be back up to where they think they were at last year.  Spelling will be an integral part of our independent learning programme.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

T

Week Two...

REMINDERS...  class swimming is every Friday.  ALL children are expected to participate in the Friday class swimming lessons, as we have a qualified swim instructor to assist us!

Lunchtime swims are on every Wednesday and the waterslide is up and running every Thursday.  

WHAKATAU...

What a fantastic ending we had to the second week of school.  
On Friday at 10.15 am the entire school gathered in the hall for the school Whakatau, to welcome new staff, students and families into the Huapai Learning Community.  Afterwards, we had a shared morning tea with our buddy class Room 13.  This proved to be a great opportunity for all of the students to meet one another in a more informal situation.

ROOM 20's HELPING HANDS...

We created and displayed colourful hands all about us!  Each finger contained one word which represented us, a way to introduce ourselves to our classmates and express ourselves for others to see.

All About Room 20:  "Helping Hands"

CLASS TREATY

We have been looking at what a Treaty is and why a Treaty could be important to our learning environment in room 20.  Through student voice, room 20 has come up with some key points they would like to be on our Treaty:

A class treaty will help to remind people what they have to do. By Jacob, Thomas and Jackson
Don’t talk when the other person is talking. By Oscar
Put your hand up when you want  to ask a question. by Falcoln and Latuga

Be kind, be happy. By Sharlyn

Do not be disrespectful  to the materials. By Tyler

Listen to each other. By Mathew and Troy

Don’t be late to  school.  By Trent

Listen to what the teacher says.  By Samantha

NO STEALING  OTHER  PEOPLES PROPERTY!!

By the end of week three, our Treaty should be completed with all student voice included and posted where the students feel a suitable place is, for all to refer to when needed.

TREATY OF WAITANGI... I see...I think...I wonder...

As part of our Culture and Identity Inquiry focus, we have been discussing the Treaty of Waitangi. This week we looked at picture interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi and thought about what we saw. Students expressed their thoughts through means of what they SEE, THINK and WONDER. We created a wonder wall with the help of our room 13 buddy class.

This week for reading we also looked at the Treaty and completed a Treaty of Waitangi question and answer activity with a buddy.  We used our chrome books or other class devices and worked simultaneously to create our document and answer the questions together in a shared document.

We are looking forward to another great week in room 20!

Statistical Wonderings ......

How are we unique?  How are we the same or different?  As part of our maths learning this week we have been exploring these key questions through statistical investigations.

What is a statistical investigation?
What could we carry out a statistical investigation about in order to learn about each others identities?

Each person wrote down what they would like to investigate as a wondering.

We had think about .... who would benefit from the results of the investigation before we started.  We discussed how we could collect and then display information, and show results.

We set success criteria for tally, bar and pictographs and chose the graph that we thought we needed to work on and set off to work.

Here are some of our data displays.

Some of us also worked on using a key and a scale when displaying large numbers of data.

Identity

Today, we looked at our hobbies/talents and likes.  These are part of our identity.

We linked this to spelling by putting ten of our hobbies/talents and likes into alphabetical order.   We were able to see that in some ways we are the same and other ways we are different.

We used google docs to show our initial ideas and then we put them in order. 

Here is an example:

Tyler like all of us has many amazing talents, hobbies and things she likes.  Are yours the same or different?

swimming dancing soccer singing acting  shopping playing biking homework family

acting biking dancing family homework playing shopping singing soccer swimming

As part of our identity.  We discovered we might learn differently to others.  We did a quiz to see if we were right or left brained.  Many of us were equal brained.

If we were left brained we are more logical and like detail.  If we are right brained we learn through being creative, and by being curious. We like visuals.

What part of your brain do you use the most?

http://braintest.sommer-sommer.com/en/

The challenge for the class was can you present this data? What ways could we present the data? We brainstormed and tomorrow we will be working on a range of graphs to show how we learn. No one was exactly the same.

Here are Sharlyn's results:

We also enjoyed some power writing today. This is to foster a love of writing. Our challenge is to write more each time and love getting our ideas down on paper. We can choose our own topic and have the chance to be creative. We have 5 minutes to write on our topic.

We love all the different learning spaces we can choose from in room 20.

What another busy day in room 20!

Day 2

We continued to get to know each other and build relationship with this fun ice breaker activity.

Skills: relationship building, communicating with each other, oral language.

Who Am I?

• Each of us shared a favourite food, place of travel, hobby, sport, book, toy, etc.
• We then recorded the items about us on a Post-It; making sure not to put our name on.
• We put all Post-Its in a bag
• One by one we reached in, grabbed one, & found the person who we thought wrote it.

We had to list as many personality traits/characteristics  about ourselves using single adjectives; and we chose the best five to describe ourselves writing one on each finger of a traced hand.

We got into small groups and discussed each others characteristics and what can make them unique. We had to guess whose hand we had.

We added our name to our hands and decorated them so it was representative of ourself.

As a class we talked about ....

What is a treaty?

We made a list ideas of what we thought a treaty is and why one is important, especially to us as room 20.

It is Waitangi Day on Friday.

What is Waitangi Day?

It is our national Day, the day in which the Maori people and the Government of New Zealand made a written agreement about governance, protection, rights and privileges.

The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between two groups, the Maori and the government of New Zealand.