Mahuri Term 4 Newsletter

Kia ora parents, caregivers and children,

Term 4’s looking like our best yet: Rongoā Māori workshops with Enviroschools Rongoā expert Arihia Latham, Athletics day, the school fair, kids-as-experts-workshops, visiting William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time at the City Gallery (for the Y4s) and creating a shadow pageant, swimming (for the Y3s), a student-led Amazing Race, walks to identify local native plants for Rongoā Māori, Zoo sleepovers, democratic classrooms, making kawakawa balm, walk to Red Rocks, hackschooling, school picnic, percussion jams…!

U-Learn conference

Last week Shanon and Amy A travelled to Rotorua with six other teachers from school for the U-Learn conference. We heard some fantastic international academics and New Zealand practitioners who gave us lots of food for thought that has inspired us to keep developing our teaching and learning practice. In M13 we are looking at how our classroom can be more democratic, handing over as much power as possible to children. Check out the hackschooling TED talk, posted below...

Inquiry: Rongoā Māori

Through the context of Rongoā Māori, we will explore the physical and chemical changes that occur to substances when they are mixed, heated and cooled. We’ll get hands-on, identifying and classifying local native plants, learning about their medicinal uses, and creating our own balms and other kinds of Rongoā Māori medicine. Enviroschools Rongoā expert Arihia Latham will come and run workshops with us in the Learning hub to teach us about Rongoā practices. Our reading and writing programmes will integrate with our Inquiry learning.

Our maths focus areas this term are Number, Problem Solving, Basic Facts, Algebra, and Statistics – probability. In physical education we will focus on athletics.

Music: percussion

We are running a music rotation this term – each class will spend 2 sessions with each teacher in the team, across the term. From rākau to sāsā to Stomp beats, we’ll be drumming and exploring different elements of rhythm, beat, and percussion.

Parent help

If you can support our class programme with either regular or one-off parent help, we’d love to hear from you. Spelling testing and reading with children are particularly useful ways to help. We always welcome parents visiting to read a favourite book or share some knowledge or expertise; even if you’ve already read to the class, we’d love you to come back again!

Home learning

A reminder to return home learning folders to school on Mondays. Each Monday children will bring home a new list of ten spelling words, an updated Reading log (if needed) and basic facts to be learned off by heart during the week.

Dates this term

Tuesday 21 October                         Rongoā Māori workshops in the Learning Hub

Wednesday 22 October                   Whole School Athletics Day at Wakefield Park

Thursday 23 October                       postponement day for Athletics Day
Friday 24 October                            Whole School powhiri, 9.15am

Monday 27 October                          Labour Day

Saturday 1 November                      School Fair

Tuesday 4 November                       M13’s trip to the City Gallery

Wednesday 5 November                 M12’s trip to the City Gallery

Thursday 6 November                     M14’s trip to the City Gallery

Tuesday 11 November                     Southern Zones Athletics

Tuesday 2 December                       Mahuri inquiry exhibition, 9am – 10.30am

Thursday 4 December                     Day walk to Red Rocks

Monday 8 December                       Amazing Race

Wednesday 10 December               M12 & M13’s zoo sleepover

Thursday 11 December                   M11 & M14’s zoo sleepover

Monday 15 December                      Whole School picnic

Tuesday 16 December                     Portfolios come home

Thursday 18 December                   Poroporoaki, last day of school

Thank you for your ongoing support. As always, if there is anything you would like to discuss regarding your child’s learning, please get in touch to make a time to talk.

Ngā mihi,

Shanon, Adele, Ximena and Amy

What would you like to learn and practise in maths this term?

To add ideas, double click on the wall and write a question or idea...

Created with Padlet

2D and 3D shapes and our reflection on giving feedback

We are learning about 2D and 3D shapes at the moment. We are trying to make connections between 2D and 3D shapes, and to identify what the 2D cross-section of a 3D shape would be...

To explore 3D shapes, we have been using isometric paper to help us draw cubes.

Last week we started by learning about Little Boxes together with our learning buddy.

We also discovered some new language: vertex, vertices, edges, faces...

We've been using multilink cubes to help us create and visualise the drawings we're making.

At the end of our lesson, we have a gallery walk where we have a look at each other's learning, and then we give feedback to other kids by writing them a star (something they've done well) and a wish (a next step to work on) on a sticky note.

Today we had a few issues with giving each other feedback so we had a problem-solving session after break. We put on our (Edward De Bono) black and yellow hats to help us. After we identified the problems, we talked to our learning buddies about solutions then shared them with the class:

What were the problems?	What are some solutions?
Some people had too much feedback while others didn’t have enough.	Share out feedback evenly; look at other people’s learning.
Some people didn’t give a star and a wish.	Make sure you give both a star and a wish; get your sticky notes ready with a * and a à first.
We couldn’t understand the feedback.	Think about it before you write it down; ask your buddy, “does this make sense?”
Some people weren’t listening when we asked them to be fair.	Listen. Think about others’ feelings.
Some people gave conflicting feedback.	Read the other feedback first; make sure your writing makes sense.
Some people repeated feedback unnecessarily.	If your ideas have already been said, say something different/ go to someone else’s learning.
Some kids were arguing over who got to give feedback.	The first person who gets there gets to write the feedback.
We got feedback on the wrong learning.	Write the date on your learning. Does it matter? It might still be useful feedback.
Some people weren’t listening to the teacher’s instructions.	Make sure you are listening yourself; encourage others to listen. Follow instructions – if you don’t hear, ask your buddy. Ignore distractions.
	Take your time; do it properly.

We're pretty good problem solvers! We're looking forward to our next gallery walk and feedback session so we can put all of this in to practice.

Fractions

We are learning to find fractions of a set...