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