The start of Term 2

In Takitimu we have had a mixed start to the term.  While we have had a great start in the classroom, some students have been plagued with injuries, hospital visits, and family celebrations, so we have been missing a few of our lovely students.  Hopefully next week we will be back to full capacity.

This term our inquiry theme is The Living World - God's Gift to Us.  Our focus is "What's the Cover Story?" through which we will be exploring animal coverings and the links to their habitats.  We will also be continuing with our Wairarapa Moana study, following through with the actions we starting planning last term.  This will be helped with the funding we have received from Bayer and The Royal Society of New Zealand, to purchase two stream testing kits, and lots of plants and planting equipment.  We will be working on restoring a section of Donald's Creek.

In maths, we are currently working on probability, and will also be covering geometry and measurement, and multiplication and division this term.  We will be practising our basic facts each day, and will be trying to beat our previous day's score and time.

For writing, our first focus is on persuasion.  We will also be writing and performing speeches later in the term so look out for these.  Reading will be around our inquiry topics, and we will be responding to texts in a variety of ways, as well as working on refining our comprehension skills.

During goal setting at the end last term, the students and I identified that most of them needed to read more, and read more challenging and sophisticated texts.  To assist the students with this, and to help foster a love for reading, we popped down to the town library yesterday to get some books out.  I snapped a few students reading (much to their disgust), and got a few hiding behind their books.  Through our guided reading programme, the students will be required to write responses to these books, as they think deeply about what they are reading.  They will also use these books to read for a sustained period of time after lunch.

Our main focus PE focus this term is on cross country running, with an extra focus on big ball skills.  We will be running Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 12:30pm (not on Wednesday's due to technology).  Students are required to bring their full and correct PE uniform and running shoes.  They are advised to bring this gear even if it is raining in the morning, as it may fine up for us to run at 12:30.

In RE, we are currently looking at prayer and the different ways we can pray.  We will then be studying the God Strand and the Holy Spirit Strand.

The Arts will consist of a group creating a dance for SWAP, construction within our Inquiry, as well as pencil sketching.  I am also teaching a group of keen students the guitar during lunchtimes.

As you may have noticed, one of our focuses this term is on spelling.  As part of their homelearning, students are being asked to find and record a list of words that match a certain spelling pattern.  They are then asked to see if they can come up with a set of rules that explain the pattern (you may remember rules such as "i before e except after c").  This way of learning spelling is based on an inquiry model, where students are challenged to investigate spelling rules, and therefore develop a deeper understanding of spelling patterns and sounds.  This should, therefore, increase the likelihood of them transferring this knowledge into unknown words and their writing.  To help your child at home, please encourage them to find the patterns within the words, and the reason why there may be more than one way of spelling them (such as when making words plural, you can add 's', 'es', or 'ies', therefore what is it about the words that causes these differences?).  You could perhaps even have competitions with your child to see how may words with a particular spelling pattern or sound you can each come up with.

Other activities coming up this term include National Young Leaders Day, Catholic School's Day, Rugby 7's, cluster and inter-school Cross Country, and Basketball.  This, along with delivering a full classroom programme, will certainly keep us busy throughout the term.  What a great place to be!