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....

Week 7 Update....

Hi everyone!

Just a quick notice:

Homework: Instead of basic facts and spelling, our homework this week will be speech writing. We will save the new lists we made last Friday to use in Week 8. Parents, please try to support your child with their writing efforts as they craft their speeches during homework time over the next 2 weeks. They will be able to show you the steps they are using to create their speech, but any help you can give would benefit them. Once the children have their final speech drafted and edited, they can put them onto cue cards and start practising them.

The focus on speeches is in preparation for the Ara Pakeke Speech Competition  in Week 9.

Our class speech competition will be at the end of Week 8, most likely Thursday and Friday. It is from the class competition that a Year 3 and a Year 4 will be selected for the Pakeke competition.

Below are the marking criteria for the speeches. While the prop/s and slideshow are not compulsory requirements, they could potentially add another 10 points to the speech score. The slideshow only needs to be one background picture, to add interest for the more visual learners in the audience.

Going through this with your children will also help them to stay focused on what is required.
There has been an interesting range of persuasive arguments being cooked up so far in Room 8- it's going to be exciting to hear the final products!

Week 6 Blog

Hi everyone,

This term is going so quickly!!!  We have been working very hard, so that has made the time seem to go faster.

Here are a couple of important events for this Friday:

~Ara Pakeke Assembly, 1pm

~Ara Pakeke Disco.  Starts 6.30 pm, finishes 7.45. Please pick children up from the Hall..  The theme is "Game On". Dress as your favourite game character, or a game piece...use your imagination!!!  What a fun way to end the week.  We have been practising the "Continental Drift" dance for Friday, and there will be prizesfor the best dancer. Will it be a Room 8 person???

Here is a link to the dance moves for anybody wanting to get REALLY GOOOOOOOD


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMuJxd2Gpxo


Writing;
We are really getting into our Persuasive Writing now. We have just finished a persuasive argument about whether or not Rm 8 people think homework should be banned. Mrs de Jong was really encouraged to read that most of the people in Room 8 think homework should NOT be banned! That tells her that Room 8 value their learning a lot, and are already starting to think about their futures.  What an amazing group of learners Room 8 are.

  Mrs de Jong has noticed that some Room 8 students who were finding Writing tricky are starting to find it easier and enjoy it more when they follow the Writing Process, because "it gives me ideas on what to write, and helps me when I'm stuck".  (Moutaz)


 Here are some photos of  some of us as we were working through the Writing Process to produce our  persuasive work:

Reading:
A lot of us are really proud of the progress we are making in Reading, and so is Mrs deJong. Some of us are REALLY close to moving up...to help us get there we have to READ, READ, READ. And that means taking Choosing Books home.

Some of the boxes are a bit empty though, because people have been fantastic at taking them home, but are forgetting to return them to the box at school, so other people are missing out.  Let's have a good hunt at home and bring back the books that are hiding under our stinky socks, our cat's bed, under magazines on the coffee table, or in parent's cars. Thank you!!

Mrs de Jong has found other fun things for us to read at home to keep our skills growing... check out these great videos that we can read along and practise with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt6GSoouja0


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrlXLPP7c0U


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7GaRCw5HA


Maths:
As well as fractions, we are looking at Measurement in our Strand Maths. We have been deciding what the best benchmarks would be to measure things with.
We had fun with our discussions when we worked out that it's probably best not to try and measure a nose in KMs, a car in MMs or the Sky Tower in CMs!!!
We have been estimating then checking the measurements of objects around school, and thinking carefully about the benchmarks we would use.

Topic: 
We are right into making our prototypes now, it's really exciting! Mrs de Jong's Board Games group will need to remember to bring along any bits and pieces that they want to use to decorate their boards with, or make game pieces with.
The strong card for the base boards and card for use in the game will be supplied by Mrs de Jong.

Parent Interviews:
The next interviews will be in Week 10.

Bye for now!!

Celebrating Pakeke Talent!

We have had an exciting Friday, celebrating the talent we have in Ara Pakeke.

 2 students from Room 8 received certificates for excellence in their work, (Leila) and showing Arahoe values of Community Participation (Arizona). Well done girls, we are all proud to have you in our class!!!

We have  other talent in our room, too. Poppy is learning the guitar. if we are very lucky, she might play for our class when she feels ready. Go Poppy!!! 

At Ara Pakeke assembly, Room 10 did a funny dance, and Mrs Makani's choir sang the beautiful "Fireflies" song by Owl City...

Yesterday we had great fun trying out some new Maths games that Mrs deJong had made for our class. They are helping us to get stronger in our fractions and Basic Facts, and we learning about respecting property and looking after gear. Some of us really got into the games!

TOPIC....

We are nearly at the stage of building our prototypes, so if anyone is able to help out with donations that were mentioned a couple of blogs ago, we would be extremely grateful, thank you!

Have an awesome weekend!  😉

Weds 5th August.

APOLOGIES!!!!!  Make that  12:45 for Pakeke Assembly - sorry!

Wednesday, 5th August, 2015.

Just a quick note to parents that Ara Pakeke assembly this week has been shifted to 1:45.

All the best,

Christina de Jong.

Hello everyone!!

Welcome to Term 3! We hope your holidays were safe, and that you managed to get some relaxation time in.

Our Term is going to be very busy, with lots of exciting things coming up...

Topic: 
We are learning how to follow the Technology Process by inventing a wet day game for a classmate. It's going to be really interesting to see the process that real inventors go through when they create something new! We have been investigating different types of games, and what characteristics make them a successful game.
We have been selected for 3 different types of game-making groups:  Board/Card Games, Marble Run or Video Games.

Please would you mind helping us out with donations of equipment, if possible?  We would really love to have:
Marble Run Group: 
~Pizza boxes
~Gladwrap/Handeetowel tubes
~Ice block sticks
~Small boxes
~Toothpaste boxes
~Pringle tubes

Board/Card games:
~Stiff card/board for bases
~Dice/Counters
~Coloured card
~Stickers for decoration
~Plain white card
~Split pins for spinners

Any donations would be GREATLY appreciated, THANK YOU!!!  
Reading
A lot of us are ready to move up in our reading levels, and we're excited about it!  Mrs deJong is working her way through the class with some testing, to see which level we're sitting at now. When we find out, we're going to be proud to tell you!!

Writing
The main focus for our Writing this term will be persuasive writing, to get us ready for the Ara Pakeke Speech finals on Tuesday, 15th September at 9am in the Hall.
 It would help us a lot if you could give us some feedback on our speeches when it comes to the stage of practising them at home... we want to be the best!!
The topic for the speech is still to be confirmed.

Maths
Maths will be very interesting this term, as we learn about fractions and measurement. We have already been having great fun playing "Denominator Bingo", which gets us thinking about the correct name for denominators; eg: halves, quarters, thirds, fifths (tongue twister!!) and tenths.
 Maybe if you ask us, we could set up a game with you at home, and show you how to play it... but we will be hard to beat, because we're getting pretty good already!!

PE/Sport
Our PE focus this term is Gymnastics. We will be having a combined class with Rooms 7 and 12 on Mondays. We'll have to make sure we have a good breakfast on those days!

Homework
Mrs deJong has regrouped our Homework Basic Facts groups a little, based on test results from last term. For Spelling, we are using a mixture of words we got incorrect on our Essential Word List test at the end of last term, and words from our Topic Word Bank.
Please help us to keep climbing up to more challenging questions by regularly working with us on our homework. We want to get great marks on our Test Results Chart!

Milk at school
Arahoe School would like to hear some student voice around the milk routine at school. If we are interested and would like to have a say, would you mind helping us fill out this short survey in the link below please, and send it back to the address at the top of the form?Thank you! 

https://docs.google.com/a/arahoe.school.nz/forms/d/1ZyqU7LKFsBKhkzgd0cLID4FT096mWDFf6iZh75rH9-s/viewform?usp=send_form

Matariki
We had so much fun with our Matariki Celebrations, and the Matariki showcase on the last Friday of term 2 was awesome... Room 8, your Rona song was done perfectly!

We thought you might also like to see some of the fabulous Matariki artwork Room 8 have created. It is proudly hanging up in our window. We sure have some talented artists in this room!!

Arahoe's Got Talent:

Well done to those of us in Room 8 who are "giving it a go" and auditioning for Arahoe's Got Talent!  Here is the Google Doc form to fill in to register for your audition.  Good Luck!!!

http://goo.gl/forms/WHkuoB90pQ

Ara Pakeke Syndicate Assembly:

Please note that this has been shifted from Friday 1st August to Friday 8th August.

Bye for now!