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.