Hi everyone!

Here we are in Week 9 already... not long until the holidays!  There has been, and still is to come, a lot of things happening for Room 8 students.... we are really going to need a holiday soon!!


Oral Language/Writing:
Last week we capped off our persuasive writing focus with our class speech competition. Mrs de Jong is so proud of the hard work that Room 8 students have put into this. She has been really excited to see how we worked through the Writing Process in a persuasive style, and produced great speeches at the end of it.

There were so many fantastic speeches, and poor Mrs de Jong had a very difficult decision to make as to who would represent Room 8 in the Ara Pakeke Speech Finals on Tuesday 15th September at 9am. 
We are proud to announce that Angel Churchward-White will go forward as the Year 4 finalist and Leila Claypole will be our Year 3 finalist. Congratulations to you both, and we wish you luck!


Reports/Parent Interviews:
Reports will go home at the end of Week 9 to students who are due them, and to follow there will be another round of parent interviews in Week 10. Please book interviews through the booking system on the Arahoe School webpage.

Arahoe's Got Talent:
The finals will be on Thursday 17th September at 10.30am. Good luck to everyone - parents welcome!

Syndicate Assembly:
This will be held on Friday 18th September at 1pm - parents come along again... we're keeping you busy this week!

Spring Fair:
This will be held on Saturday 31st October. Room 8's stall will be selling Jolly Jars! Mrs de Jong will post further information on these in the near future... let's hope for good weather on that day!

Topic:
This is drawing to an end, and we have had a brilliant time creating our various video games, board games and marble runs, while learning to follow a technology process. The only trouble the teachers have had is finding space in the classrooms to store everyone's work! Here are some photos Mrs de Jong took of the different groups at various stages in their product creations...

Mrs de Jong would have loved to have got around everyone to photograph their work, but she also needed to keep an eye on how her group (board games) were doing!
Well done everyone on some fantastic creations...
In Week 9 we will be reflecting on how well we followed the technology process, looking at what went well and what design changes we might make if we did it again.

Wet days...
Spring is here, so that means there have been plenty of wet days lately. It might be a good idea if we made sure we had a change of clothes in our bags, just in case we slip over in all of the mud that's around.
 Room 8 sure know how to keep busy in those wet lunchtimes...we have mature people in our room who read, draw, write and BUILD.  Look at our neat breaktime creations!!!

With more wet days to come, it might be a nice idea to bring some games from home to share with our friends. We will be responsible for looking after them, although Mrs de Jong is happy to lock them in the cupboard if we wish.

Thank yous...

• A big thank you to Sarina for her continued help in putting books away in the resource room
• Thanks very much to Whaea Leanne for donating a lovely big bag of aprons, which came in very handy during painting sessions at topic time!

Bye for now....