Welcome to Week 4

Kia ora koutou,

Term 3 has been fantastic to date and there are so many awesome learning opportunities happening in and around Gisint. Of course the highlight of this term is bound to be action week in week 9. A gentle reminder that out of town trips need to be paid in full by the 2nd of September. Please keep in contact with the teacher in charge of the trip if you have any queries. 

We have started reading a new novel called The Bone Tiki by David Hair. The children have two task booklets to complete in relation to our reading strategies so if your child did want extra homework - this is always an extra option. Please see our team blog page for an outline of additional homework tasks. The book is highly engaging and chronicles a lot of NZ's historical events and personalities. There are five additional books in the series and if the children want to I will read the second one next. This story is our fifth shared reader this year after 2MUCH4U, Kensuke's Kingdom, A Handful of Blue and The BFG. We also do Current Events reading daily after lunch using the NZ Herald and Gisborne Herald online. Whilst reading students focus on their summarising skills and three or four report back to the class each day. 

As you can see from our team blog update our class continues to work confidently in maths. We have five students involved in the first Year 7 Mako Maths group with Mrs Barclay and another group of extension students will work alongside her in class. I am continually impressed with the students timetable improvements and all of our students are now finishing a grid in the allocated time. 

Here are a couple samples of what we have been working on in class. 

Eye Essays - Following on from our Eye Dissection Experiement

                                             





                                              

We will have a number of Kaiti Hill Tree Planting Procedural Texts to share next week and I will get the students to add links of their writing and maths pieces to their blogs. 

Finally, congratulations to Indy Ratana and Taimana Teneti who received our class certificates at assembly on Friday. Indy has been working hard in all curriculum areas and has produced some excellent writing and reading and Taimana has a huge responsibility in leading the whole school during kapa haka. Usually this responsibility is given to a year 8 but taimana is often called upon to lead our boys and does it so well. He also played a key role in coordinating the mau rakau segment of our movement sequence. Well done Indy and Taimana!

Have a great week everyone.

Thank you all for a wonderful term

Kia ora koutou,

We are now in our final week of term 2 and I want to thank all of our room 22 whanau for the ongoing support. I absolutely love our class and am proud of the students for the progress they have made this term in particular with their maths. We have seen a huge improvement in times table knowledge and almost the whole class are able to complete their tables grids in the allocated time. At the beginning of the year we only had a couple of people. 

Maori Whanau Consultation Survey

All schools are obliged to regularly consult with our Maori community and we would really appreciate you taking time to let us know what we can do better to meet the needs of your child and your whanau. It is our aim to get a 100% return rate so we can celebrate what is working and improve what could be better. Please complete by the end of this week so we can forward plan and we thank you all in advance. 

Please click on the link below to complete and/or  hard copies will come home tomorrow too. Please return to our class. 

Maori Consultation Survey 2016

Speeches

I was very proud of all of our class for delivering excellent speeches last week and meeting another Gisint challenge. A number of our students had not done speeches before and you would not have known this. Well done to Attlee Waitoa, Kia Manuel, Taine Chesley-Pirini and McKenzie Pepere who made it through to our school semi finals and to Mairangi Campbell from Room 24 who made it through to this weeks school finals. 

Cross Country

Our school cross country takes place this week and every Turanganui student will be competing in the team and individual events. Our hauora runs are actually longer than the school event so our children are all more than capable of competing in both events. We have a lot of talent in our team so look forward to some exciting racing and overall participation. Spectators are warmly invited to come in and watch.

Donuts and Green Card

A friendly reminder that donut orders and money must be in tomorrow but movie money for The BFG does not need to be in until Thursday. Students can opt to stay back at school and attend the YMCA and school based activities or attend the movies. Extra money can be taken to purchase snacks and we will be walking to and from town. 

Have a great week everyone and safe and enjoyable holiday if I don't see you before. 

Welcome to Week 7!

Evening all,

The term is passing by so quickly and I continue to be so proud of many of the students in our class. We have been working super hard on our basic facts and fractions, decimals and percentages for maths and many of our students are leading the way in Mathletics. Our team leaderboard will be updated in the morning.

Congratulations to the following students who said their 3 minute speeches last Thursday and did a wonderful job. The rest of the class will say theirs in the morning.

Sonny Perston - Trains

Attlee Waitoa - Being the middle child

Tamati Ingram - Duck Hunting

Andre Tangaroa - My Greatest Inventions

Taimana Teneti - Six Facts about me

Jazmine Manuel - Money

Lena-Marie Baty Akurangi - Child Abuse

Summa Raukawa - Don't drink and drive

We will announce our team finalists on Tuesday and they will be held on Thursday at 9am in the school hall.

Kensuke's Kingdom Book Reviews

Not everyone has completed their book review but Paddy and Indy were two of the first to get their reviews in. This book was very popular with the class and we are now reading our second Vince Ford book for the year 'A Handful of Blue' which is based out at Makorori.

Have a great week everyone and please check out our team page for lots of important information about the week ahead.

Welcome to week 6

Evening all,

Welcome to week 6!

I am absolutely thrilled with the work going on in our room and would like to celebrate these students for excelling in Mathletics last week.

1st = Summa Raukawa

2nd = Taine Chesley-Pirini

3rd = Ryland Tomoana

4th = Amorangi Standish

5th = Reuben Whaitiri

6th = Tomez Wharepapa

Almost every student in our room improved with their daily timetable grid last week. Keep up the outstanding work and remember

Congratulations to Lexi Birch Tawhara and Raewyn Edwards who received our certificates at Friday's assembly. Both ladies are a pleasure to have in our room, work hard and treat others well. Kei runga noa atu korua!

Have a great week everyone. 

Week 5 is here already!

Evening everyone,

We are heading into week 5 already and I am super impressed with the magnificent Maths going on in room 22. Every room 22 student is working diligently to improve their basic facts knowledge and every group has been working on Knowledge hotspots and fractions, decimals and percentage workshops. These concepts make up a large component of the year 7 standard so it is very important for our children to have a solid understanding. 

We have a class tracker board for our times tables and the improvement since the start of the year has been phenomenal. Most of the class are practising in their own time as well as at school and it definitely shows. Good basic facts knowledge ensures our kids have a strong foundation to make learning harder concepts easier so I am super proud of our class for their perseverance and desire to succeed. It is fantastic seeing lots of room 22 on our Turanganui Mathletics leaderboard.

All the best to Attlee Waitoa who is currently in Napier with our school stage challenge team.

Congratulations to Lena-Marie Baty-Akurangi and Daelyn Taumata who received our class certificates at Assembly last Friday. Both of these students are a pleasure to have in our room and at Gisint. They both work incredibly hard, treat others with respect and kindness and are grabbing as many opportunities as they can. Well done korua!

Our Turanganui Waiata

Matua Puri composed this waiata (song) for our team. It contains our school vision 'To grow great people' as well as encouraging our kids to strive for excellence. Here are the words in both Te Reo Maori and English.

Have a great week everyone and please read our team blog thoroughly for some other important information.

Nga mihi

Ana

Welcome to week 4

Hi everyone,

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

We are already into week 4 and it has been a great first three weeks back at school. We have been working hard in class on setting up our values rubrics, goals, maths, reading, speeches and getting involved in extracurricular activities outside of the classroom. Please check back with your children regularly to see how they are tracking against the goals they set at our learning conferences at the end of last term. I would also expect every student in our room to be working on their maths and reading for homework and practising their speech over the coming weeks. I have noticed a significant improvement from all students with their timetable knowledge in our daily grids which reassures me that there must be a lot of extra work happening at home too. Thank you all for encouraging this as it will make a huge difference to your child's confidence and ability in maths. Our class is currently leading in the number of hours spent on Mathletics but the others are right behind so we will need to ensure we are on as much as possible. Well done to the room 22 students listed for earning Silver certificates and for spending the most time online in our class.

We have been lucky to receive a few donations of cushions and another couch for room 23 but would desperately like a few more as we have over 50 students in our team who regularly utilise this room during breaks as well as during learning time. Any cushion, bean bag or old and clean, foam mattress donations will be gratefully accepted. 

We have a few students turning up to school without their full PE uniform (Plain black shorts and their Turanganui PE top). Unfortunately this means they spend their lunchtime in the reflection room and have to bring a form home to be signed by you. If there is some out of the blue reason for your child not having their gear they will need to bring a mufti shirt, shorts and a note. Self Management is key. 

Have a wonderful week and please check our main team page for lots of other important info and celebrations. 

Here are some helpful Maths posters to show what children need to know at each stage of the NZ curriculum. The children should know what stage they are working on as we have charts in class with where they are at but if they have forgotten then they just need to see me. A lot of our class are working hard to fill any gaps that they have and each day we do a daily maths grid and a knowledge 'hotspot' session before our days work.