Last week of school!

We were all warned to bring a change of clothes for lemon bobbing! It was hilarious when you realised the winning team would end up with all four buckets of water over them! Mr Payne could not cope being around you with the parachute game ... I guess you never got tired playing it!

We had a blast on the last day and we also stuffed our puku's with the shared kai!  The year 6's helped us polish off the food.

Well done to a brilliant year of learning! You move into year 5 being well prepared! Remember to set your reading, writing and math goals and ask questions if you are unsure how to meet those goals!

Have another wonderful year next year, and remember, continue to dream big!  

Ka kite ano.

Mrs Clark

Our Inquiry/Theme topic this term "Dream BIG Futures"

Earlier in Term 4, we had two visitors visit our class to share with us about their career.
Our first guest was Mr Subritzky (Holly and Ruby's dad) and he told us all about 'life as a grip' and the world of setting up and making movies.  We were all in awe for the 1.5 hours listening and viewing the presentation. Thank you for visiting our classroom and maybe, you will have created some future 'Peter Jackson's' among us!  A shortened video of the talk will be added here soon.

 

Last week, we had Constable McMellon visit our classroom and we learnt how there are different jobs to do in the police force.  On Friday we had an Army ambulance arrive at our school and it was very exciting.

 

Sorry, Mr Norris (our caretaker) for making you lie under the tent ...look at that grin!

 

 

Overall, we have had an interactive inquiry unit working with years 4, 5 and 6's.  We had a fantastic day out at the Linton Army Camp and now, we understand what we need to be better at to help us achieve our dreams  - whether that is joining the military, police or the film industry.  Anything is possible!

Week 8! Last week of school!

Can you believe it?  School is nearly OVER for another year!  I bet Room 2 are very excited about Christmas!  The weather has been very hot here so we can only imagine that we will be spending a lot of time in and around water!  The children will spend time this week learning about water safety.

This week will be another busy week but our reading, writing and numeracy (mathematics) will still be happening.  

We are helping our peers out in Room 1 by creating decorations for the Year 6 graduation on Wednesday night so we will be busy Monday afternoon.  On Wednesday we will be having a bake off!  Those who have completed their homework all year will be baking while the rest of us will be sitting back and hoping the food will be edible!  Thursday we move classrooms, Friday our artwork goes into our presentation books and then we hope to fly some kites.

On Friday morning we have our parent helpers morning tea (Stevie-Lee, please remind your mum).  Our school assembly will be this Friday afternoon where we will be presenting class awards.

On Monday, school is open only for a half day.  This will involve finishing packing and clearing out classrooms.  There will be activities planned for the middle block before going home at 12.40pm.  Please remind your parents you are finishing school at 12.40pm on Monday.  It is not compulsory to come to school on Monday.

Watch this space as I will continue to provide updates.

Have a lovely week.

Mrs. C.

Rooms 1 and 2 Field Trip to an Army Camp

What a fantastic day we all had!  This trip could not have been made possible without the assistance of Warrant Officer Tim Crowe and Corporal Kearne.  We had a action packed day which consisted of:

PT (physical training) with a REAL PT instructor.
Watching and listening to a presentation about careers in the Army.  We were full of questions!
A swim in the pool complex.
Faces painted with REAL Army camo paint.
Over half an hour clambering in, up, over the LAV.
Holding a REAL Army gun.

By the end of the day we had children and parent's buzzing over the interactive, informative day.  Thank you to our wonderful parent helpers - Kirsty - Kalani's aunt, Wendy - Rebekah's mum, Nicola - Josh and Chloe's mum, George - Stevie-Lee's mum, David - Alizay's dad, Holly and Ruby's Nan, Mrs Person - Marcus's nan, Krissy - Micah's aunt, Kellie - Jaron's mum.  I hope I have remembered everyone.

We will have one more guest speaker coming in to talk to us about the Police Force and then we will be finishing up our inquiry topic about "Dreaming BIG futures".

What a real imagination can create!

More ICT stories

Alert! Alert! Alert!

At 3.30pm on Friday it was confirmed that Rooms 1 and 2 will be going to the Linton Army Camp as part of our inquiry topic, "dream BIG future". Here we will be talking to Army soldiers about what they do, participate in some activities and have a swim.

Mrs B and I now need your help! On Monday a notice will come home asking for adult help so sound out your parent/s/nan/grandad now because numbers will be limited. Some adults can catch a bus and maybe a couple of adults could carpool just so we have a car out there.  The notice needs to be signed and returned on Tuesday.

Sorry for the very late notice but at least we've made it happen!

You will need to have a big breakfast because you might not have morning tea but we will have an early lunch.

You will need to fit in one bag:
A water bottle
A big lunch
Togs and towel
Sunscreen
School hat

Wear covered shoes so no jandals or sandals for safety if we walk through workplaces. If you do not have black shoes or sneakers please let me know.



On another topic, Room 2 is a hive of activity making our pictures move and talk. We are learning to make movies and this week we will be blue screening!

On Thursday, we had Wayne Subritzky visit our class to share with us his job working on a movie set! It was fascinating and we learnt so much! We will put the shortened version of the visit on here this week.

Make sure you write the dates on the calendar of events coming up at school. We have our performing arts afternoon and an evening performance, year 6 graduation and prize giving. Dates are in the newsletter.

Bringing our stories to life ...

Our latest activity has involved getting our own drawings talking.  Watch, listen and be amazed!

WALHT bring all our Te Reo Maori conversations into one visual display.  We hope you enjoy watching and listening.  More will be added here later this week ...

Below are some stories where we rewrote the narrative "Wombat Stew".  Listen to our own twist on the story!

Narratives

Perfect Pet Day

Today was Cloverlea School's Pet Day.  Room 2's highlights were:

"I enjoyed seeing all the pets"  David
"There were HEAPS of dogs" Jake
"I liked seeing the dogs do the course"  Chloe, Michael, Amy
"I enjoyed watching the police dogs"  Jayden
"I liked patting the horses"  Leko
"I liked patting all the dogs"  Marcus, Paige
"Seeing the different types of soft toys was interesting"  Matt
"I loved seeing the cats in room 4"  Jayde
"I got to lead a dog on the field"  Trinity
"WOW!  These cats are cute"  Josh
"I got third for the Christmas cracker"  Blake
"I thought the calf was cute"  Danny
"The fluffy dogs were cute."  James
"I enjoyed seeing the horses"  Micah
"The photos and photo frames were cool"  Kalani

Our viewers from around the world ...

Thank you to those of you who are viewing our class blog overseas.  We enjoy looking at the world map on our blog and we are excited to see that we have people in India and Russia looking at our work.

Welcome and we hope you enjoy seeing the type of learning we are involved in way down here at the bottom of the Earth in New Zealand.

(We learnt that we have birds [Godwits] in Foxton that fly all the way to Russia every year!  That is a very long way to fly!)

Kia ora.

Term 4

We have had a wonderful start to the term!  We arrived yesterday to find a different classroom layout and a unique way of learning where we now really need to manage our own learning.

Our topic in numeracy (maths) is financial literacy, working with money and we have begun to focus on the real cost of owning a pet which is very appropriate with Pet Day in two weeks.

Ukulele lessons started and already, two groups learnt C and Am chords.  We will be performing at the Variety Show later on this term.

Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, Mrs Burnett and Mrs Clark have combined the classrooms and we have various workshops running for our inquiry, "Dream BIG futures".  We had a very successful afternoon, so much so that the bell rang for the end of school before we knew it!

Our physical fitness focus this term will be gymnastics and summer sport - padder tennis, tabloid sports and summer football with Shane Rufer.

Pop into Room 2 and view our work ...

Week 9

What a fantastic day we had last Thursday at the Marae.  Check out our photos!

The year fours are busy writing speeches.  We have completed some amazing kowhaiwhai art, print making, animal sketches, flaxing and of course sport.  Room 2 students are now experts at graphing.  They can now ask a question and gather the information, graph using a computer and also draw a bar graph and turn it into a pie (no, not a mince pie but a graph pie!)

We have assembly this Friday showcasing the 'performing arts' at Cloverlea School.  Because of the number of items we will be starting at 2pm!  The more parents the better because we enjoying performing to an audience.  Come and hear the speech finalists, the singing, the dancing and the Double Dutch skippers!

Have a wonderful last week of school and keep safe over the holidays!

End of Week 8

Our morning began with excitement!  Yes, we received a lovely parcel from HRH Prince Charles.  Those of us who wrote to Prince Charles received an individual parcel containing a photograph, booklet and a personal letter!  How cool is that!

Please try and leave some comments ...

It will be nice to hear from you especially if you are in the Northern Hemisphere and if you work at a school. What do you think of our Blog?

Term 3 - well, nearly at the end ...

Here we are, week 8 and we have been so busy we haven't posted anything in this forum for a while.

WOW!  The last post was about writing letters to the Royal Family and GUESS WHAT!  Two weeks ago we got a reply back from HRH Queen Elizabeth!  What a lovely surprise.

We had another visit to the supermarket, this time to purchase the food for our lunch.  We chose the ingredients and then we made scrumptious sandwiches.  We can now read the labels on the food items and select the healthiest type of food and Jayden even discovered, that food with flash packaging isn't always healthier than the food that comes in plain packaging.

We have been involved in a lot of 'hands' on activities including how to make square meter and a cubic meter.  

ASSEMBLY WILL BE NEXT FRIDAY (WEEK 9) BEGINNING AT 2PM!  It will be hosted by Room2 and it will be actioned packed!

Letters to the Royal Family

At 1.15pm today (Tuesday) we posted our three packaged letters with illustrations to HRH Queen Elizabeth, the Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

We hope they enjoy our letters and we hope we get a response!

Term 3

It is now week 2 and already this term appears to be zooooooming by!
In week 1 we received a reply back from infamous New Zealand author 'Joy Cowley'.  What a wonderful way to get us writing when someone responds back to our piece of writing.

On Monday we drafted letters to the Royal family to congratulate them on the birth of Prince George.  This links with our connections to the Commonwealth.  We learnt about Coat of Arms and we created our own.

We had our first games of soccer, basketball and jump jam.  It is awesome.

Good luck to the students sitting ICAS on Monday in week 2 and the Year 4 Mathex team.

In week 3 we have parent/teacher conferences.  Please check the newsletter for more information about booking in times.  School finishes early on both days.

Have a wonderful week and make sure you pop into the classroom to have a look at our learning.

Busy bees ....

What an eventful term!
I believe the only way we can share with you what has been happening in Room 2 since the last post is through photographs!  Here are just a few snapshots of our learning in Room 2.

Making contact ...

If there is anyone overseas that could please make a comment about our class blog then that would be wonderful!

Click below each post on 'comment' and write a message.

Thank you.

Week 4-5, Term 2

Wow!  What a busy time we are having in Room 2!  We have cranked up our learning and are enjoying many learning experiences.  Congratulations to Jayde who was the first Year 4 girl home in the school cross country and Blake who was second Year 4 boy home!  The fitness of all the children has improved significantly and we are continuing on with morning fitness with Room 1.  Because of the cooler mornings we will be completing activities in the school hall.

At the moment we are retelling the story, "Wombat Stew" and we completed some marvellous print reliefs to retell the story.  Here are some of our own prints ...

 We are very proud of our work and they can be viewed in the school hall from Thursday onwards.

We are making huge leaps and bounds in our writing and our instant recall of basic facts!  Those students completing their homework are flying!

We are on the learning journey together, "kotahitanga!"

Term 2

Welcome back to Term 2!  We have all settled in well and we have been participating in fitness everyday  with Room 1 with training for cross country in week 4.
We have finished off our Insect Inquiry and some of us completed a project on ANZAC or insects over the school holidays.  Here are some of our pieces of work:

 

 

Week 12

This week was busier than ever with finishing our 'Insect Inquiry - Delicate flyers or deadly predators?'  We learnt a lot about insects!  See the Insect wordle to the right hand side of this page.

We spent the week learning about ANZAC, what it means, why we have it and how it applies to every New Zealander. We came to the quick realisation that the world would be a different place to live in!  We do not even stop and think about how lucky we are to have 'freedom'.  It was a hive of activity in Room 2 with making ANZAC biscuits and poppies as well as reading ANZAC stories about the horse "Bess", and the little dog in "The Poppy".

Some of our 'thinking' around ANZAC Day were:
"When soldiers died for us"  Matt
"ANZAC biscuits was what were sent to the soldiers in the trenches to eat"  Hamilton
"My great grandad fought in the war"  Brooklyn
"Soldiers died to protect our country" Jayden
"ANZAC stands for Australia, New Zealand Army Corp" Chloe
"People died in the wars for us.  THANK YOU!"  Kuini
"A lot of people died in Flanders Field"  Jayde

We also learnt the significance of the poppy!

Some children have now decided to create a mini project on ANZAC or on an insect over the school holidays.  I know we will be excited to see them now that we understand how to take notes and put them into our own words and to use an effective way to present our project.  Happy and safe holidays!  See you all on Monday 6th May.  Don't forget to top up your pencil case!

  

Week 9-11

Room 2 had a successful Easter Fair!  We made popcorn and cute little soap bunnies.  We also had basketball shots to try and win a HUGE slab of chocolate which was eventually won by Walter!

The weather was perfect and HEAPS of people turned up.  We made over $2000 dollars and now the school council get to decide what to spend the money on.

 We also had athletics at the Massey University track on Friday of Week 10.It was a perfect day.

In Week 11 we had an awesome time learning about food with the Food for Thought programme and we had a trip to the supermarket.  We had to write down the label details on healthy food and compare it to food that we should eat as a treat.  It was a fascinating activity.  Life Education then visited our school and we learnt more about nutrients in our food and the importance of eating healthy.

Our last week of school will be busy as we have soccer training with Shane Rufer!  We can't wait!

Week 8

What a busy bunch of bees we have become!  We are learning about the living world in science INSECTS "delicate flyers and deadly predators!"  We are learning about characteristics of insects and eventually, we will be writing an investigative report on an insect of our choice.

We had 28 children out of 29 participate in the school triathlon.  Even myself (Mrs Clark) participated in the teachers team!  We came in 6th place overall and I hear from parents that they will enter a team next year!  We look forward to athletics over the coming weeks, Easter Fair and of course somewhere in there is the Weetbix triathlon here in Palmerston North.

A huge achievement in Room 2 has been our progress in writing.  We have discovered some big words that can change an okay piece of writing into something magical and interesting by using:

- conjunctions to make our sentences longer
- a variety of punctuation including speech marks (when someone is talking), commas, full-stops, question and exclamation marks.
- interjections which are action words like "Wow!", "Hey!"
- compound words which help us with our spelling
- contractions that are shortened words like 'that's' instead of 'that is'.
- adjectives which are great, juicy describing words.

This week we identified all these wonderful writing tools in other peoples writing.

Later this week we hope to begin recorder lessons.  The recorder needs to stay at school and you are encouraged to use your own recorder if you have one.

Have a wonderful week and we hope to add our stories and classroom work here really soon.

Term 1, week 4, 2013

Welcome to Room 2, a multi cultural class of talented thinkers!

Already this term, we have settled into classroom routines including completing homework every week.

Managing ourself is a key competency and we are learning how to be organised for school everyday and to be responsible for our own actions.  We are also learning about quality work and how important it is to set ourselves personal goals and set the next goals and know how to achieve them.

For the first three weeks of this term we have been working on "All About Me" where we have gotten to know each other and we will continue to build positive relationships so we can work together (kotahitanga) and strive to be the best we can be.  Our waka on the classroom wall symbolises that we are all on the learning journey together, students, whanau, teachers and the wider school community.

We have been busy swimming and we have not missed a day yet due to the weather.  Our swimming assessment can be viewed on our classroom wall.  It is an education requirement in New Zealand that all school children learn how to swim so this is not an optional activity.  If you cannot swim due to medical reasons please provide a note.

Assessment takes place this term to make sure the students are grouped according to their learning needs in maths, reading and writing.

We have started a daily fitness programme and we will be learning a musical instrument and another language besides Te Reo Maori.  So, as you can see, we are a very busy class.

Enjoy viewing this site and we look forward to sharing our work with you.

Mrs C.
Room 2