YEAR 3 AND 4 NEWSLETTER - TERM 4 2017

Kia ora kotou

Welcome to Term 4!

The year 3 and 4 teachers hope you had a lovely break from routine and that you were able to enjoy some of the beautiful spring days that Wellington can give us.

This will be a busy, action packed term, filled with learning and new opportunities.  We know it will speed by.

Farewell and Welcome

As you know we said goodbye to Mikaela Cody at the end of last term, She has left us to take an exciting new role in Early Childhood Education.  We would like to welcome Kate Salisbury to the Year 3 and 4 teaching team.  Room 8 are lucky to have Trish Theobald teaching on Fridays.

Term 3 Round Up

What a fantastic term of learning we had last term!

We finished the term with a fantastic Arts focus.  Congratulations to all our students for the amazing artworks they completed for the Muritai Art Exhibition.  We hope you all managed to come and see the work,  your children are talented young artists.

Many of our students were part of the Artsplash concert held at the Michael Fowler Centre.  This is an amazing opportunity to participate in a performance of this size and one the students will always remember.  Thanks to Ruth Hooke for all the work she put in to this special event.

TERM 4

Our theme this term will be Fairy Tales.  Fairy Tales will give a context for our learning activities.

Inquiry Learning

This term we will have a Technology/Makers focus.  Children will work collaboratively with practical, hands on experiences, designing and building solutions to a problem.  We will use a mixture of modern technology, eg robotics and practical making during the term.

Literacy

We are taking part in Chapter Chat again this term.  Our book is The Wild Robot, the story of a robot who is washed up on a deserted island and has to survive in the wild.  Our students enjoy the many activities around the story and sharing their work during Twitter Chat time on Fridays.














Numeracy   

This Term we are focussing on Fractions and then spending time consolidating learning in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  We have been impressed with the improvement in the student's knowledge and recall of Basic Facts and we will continue to focus on these as well.

PE

Our PE skills focus will be Athletics, the skills of running, jumping and throwing.  Classes will have a 45 minute session with Kelly Sports each week.  School Athletics Day is Monday 30th October.  Students will move, with their year group, around different activities in the morning.  Then we all gather at the Rec after lunch for class and house relays.  You are more than welcome to come down for all or part of the day to watch your child.  More information will be sent home closer to the date.

EOTC

Planning is underway for our EOTC week near the end of the term.  When we have confirmed dates and times we will let you know all the details.

Art

Fabric and Fibre is our art focus this term.  This will fit in beautifully with our Makers focus.  watch out for some wonderful creations.

THINGS TO KNOW

Term 4 is sunhat term.  All children need to wear a sunhat when they are outside, if they do not have a hat they will have to stay under the shade at lunch and playtimes.  Sun hats should have a wide brim or be a legionaire style cap.  Caps are not suitable for school.  It would be good if your had a named sunhat to keep in their desk, sun hats taken home every day tend to get lost and forgotten.



Your child also needs a drink bottle every day as the weather warms up and we get outside more often the need to stay hydrated increases.  Having a drink bottle, rather than needing to visit the fountains all the time is a lot less disruptive.

Finally if you have any questions or concerns regarding our classroom programme or your child's learning, please do not hesitate to contact us.  Feel free to pop into the classroom before or after school or send us an email:

Kate Sailsbury: ksailsbury@muritai.school.nz
Karen Chao: chao @muritai.school.nz

Heather Mawby: mawby@muritai.school.nz

Jamie Power: jpower@muritia.school.nz

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Nga mihi nui

YEAR 3 AND 4 NEWSLETTER TERM 3 2017

Kia Ora Koutou

Welcome to Term 3!

The Year 3 and 4 team hope you all had a relaxing break and managed to spend some quality time with family and friends, despite the miserable weather. 

TERM 2 ROUND UP

What a busy term of learning and new experiences we had last term.  We have just about covered every letter of the alphabet in our learning.

Here are just a few highlights:

AFL Kiwikick 

AFL Kiwikick

Cross Country

Cross Country

Science fun

Science fun

Making plastic from mi

Visiting Eastbourne Library

Tuakana - Teina time

Filming with What Now

TERM 3

We are already over half way through the year and are heading into another action packed term. Here is a brief outline of our learning programme for the term.

INQUIRY

Our theme for the term is Fame! Kiwis have made a big impact on the world.  We'll be finding out about some of those people and thinking about the impact they have had on the world and on us.  We're also going to explore what fame is and find out more about famous places.

LITERACY

Our Inquiry will continue to influence our Reading and Writing programme.  Students will be refining their research skills by learning to read for information, summarise the main ideas and to gather information from a range of sources.

In writing our focus is specifically Report Writing, presenting information about an object, animal, person or place.  We will be encouraging our students to explore different ways to present their information, including digital presentations.

We are excited to be taking part in CHAPTER CHAT for the first time.  This is a Twitter book chat for New Zealand kids, based around a book read aloud in class.  This term's book is The Sasquatch Escape, by Suzanne Selfors.  Each week we post pictures of our work on our Twitter page and we take part in a live chat on Friday mornings.  If you want to see our work our Twitter pages are:

Room 8:  Muritai School Room 8 (@Muritai8)

Room 9 & 10:  Muritai School Room 9 (@Muritai9)

Room 11:  Room 11 (@Room11Eastbourne)

MATHS

This term we will be focussing on multiplication and division. Basic Facts will continue to be our knowledge focus, students will be working to improve not only their accuracy but also their speed of recall for both addition and subtraction and multiplication and division facts. We will also be focussing on the Statistics strand, gathering, presenting and interpreting data.

PE 

We continue to have regular fitness sessions this term.  We are also going to be learning the skills of throwing, catching and striking (hitting a ball with a bat).  We will be using these skill in some new games which we hope the children will enjoy playing at lunch time.

ART

Planning is underway for an Art Exhibition at the end of the term.  All students will have an artwork exhibited and an entry in the school photo competition.  More information will be available a little closer to the time, so keep an eye out as you won't want to miss this event. 

The art exhibition will also include a photography competition, so part of our art focus this term will be around the art of photography.  

TE REO/TIKANGA MAORI

We continue to focus on greeting and farewelling others, introducing ourselves, days of the week, months of the year, counting and colours.  Our Tikanga Maori focus this term will be Myths and Legends and we hope to bring this into our Fame theme with some legendary figures like Maui.

THINGS TO KNOW

Homework will continue to be sent home on each week.  

As the cold, wet and often windy days are now well and truly here it is important to be prepared. Shoes need to be taken off before coming into the classrooms so your child may like to keep a pair of slippers at school to wear in the classroom.  It would also be a good idea if your child has a change of clothes in their bag each day.  We don't want to discourage their active play, but we also don't want the mud from the field in the classrooms.

At the end of last term we farewelled Christa Pitman, who has taken up a position at Wellesley.  We wish her all the best for her new adventure.   We are excited to welcome Lisa Allen to our team, she will be teaching in Room 8 on a Friday.  many of you will know Lisa as our Learning Support teacher. 

Finally if you have any questions or concerns regarding our classroom programme or your child's learning, please do not hesitate to contact us.  Feel free to pop into the classroom before or after school or send us an email:

Mikaela Cody: cody@muritai.school.nz

Karen Chao: chao @muritai.school.nz

Heather Mawby: mawby@muritai.school.nz

Jamie Power: jpower@muritia.school.nz

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Nga Mihi

Year 3 and 4 Teachers