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

End of Year Activities Week Timetable (Week 9 of Term 4)

(Click to enlarge)

If you would like to help on the Monday (Run and Ride event) or Friday (Days Bay picnic), please email your child's teacher to let them know. 

Year 3-4 Newsletter Term 4 2016

Hi Everyone!

Term 4 is here already! Classrooms are in ‘full steam ahead’ mode and each is a busy hive of activity. In a typical week your child will have had learning opportunities in all areas of the curriculum, including Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences, Art, PE, Te Reo Maori, all with our School Value and Key Competencies threaded throughout. 

Our classroom CARE (Citizenship, Achievement, Responsibility and Effort) programme is a reflection of our School Values and Key Competencies in action and will be acknowledged and celebrated at our Team Assemblies. 

Towards the end of the term we will have another ‘Celebration of Learning’ evening where your child will share with you the learning they have recently undertaken. Make sure Monday 28^th November, 3:00pm-6:00pm is a date left free in your diary.

 

Teaching and Learning in Years 3-4 in Term 4

Below is an outline of what you can expect your child to be learning this coming term:

Literacy

Our main writing focus for this term is poetry.  The children enjoy reading poems and especially love writing poetry, as it often breaks all the conventional writing rules!  We will be identifying visual effects and language features of poetry and exploring a wide variety of poem styles. There will be plenty of opportunities to write and recite poetry aloud to an audience.  We will also be learning the art of writing letters and will be developing procedural writing skills.  There is still of course, the ongoing focus of embedding effective editing, proofreading and re-crafting skills into every piece of writing the children do.

Oral Language will focus on skills of oral presentation, with an emphasis on using vocal expression, confident body language and addressing an audience.  Children will have opportunities to present their Inquiry based procedural writing, recite poetry and will continue to share news and items of personal interest.

Reading opportunities will be varied: teacher directed (reading groups) and independent (personal interest and enjoyment); and will be integrated across all areas of the curriculum. Children will be researching and reading for information, reading for meaning and understanding a range of texts.  We will continue to encourage fluency, expression and the reading of punctuation to enhance comprehension levels. As previously mentioned, poetry will also feature in our class reading programmes.

Numeracy

This term we will be revising all four number operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and will continue to develop our basic facts instant recall. We will also be covering Fractions and will begin our maths learning in our cross-grouped classes for the first three weeks of Term 4 before returning to our home rooms for the remainder of the term. 

Integrated Studies

“Everyone, everywhere needs water” is our term long Integrated curriculum study. Our big idea, which guides the study, is that “Everyone, everywhere needs water to survive”. On a rainy Wellington day, it can be hard to believe that water can sometimes be a Taonga and how we chose to use freshwater can impact on our quality of life. Children will be guides through a number of investigations into water and it’s use- firstly from a scientific approach- what is water, actually, and then we intend to branch into more social science investigations- how is water used, how much do people use, and what happens if water gets polluted- where does it go?  Later in the term your child will be given a small homework investigation to find out how much water they personally use in a day. A bucket may be called into use!

 

Physical Education
* Fitness this term  includes a fun rotation of games including: Bat Down/French Cricket, Number Hockey, Bounce Strike, T Ball and the game of Whack and Run.
* Athletics Every Friday in the lead up to our School Athletics Day in Week 4, the children will be taking part in Athletics practice.  Children will need to wear running shoes on these days to be able to fully participate. 

* Swimming is scheduled to begin in Week 7, however this is of course weather dependent. In our experience, the weather never really comes to the party at this time of the year to allow a solid programme of swimming, and we will play this by ear again this year.

* EOTC Week Planning for EOTC Week in Week 9 is underway, and we are planning a fun filled week of events.  More details to follow!

 

The Arts
Visual Art - Stitching and Sewing. One of our most popular arts and crafts topic, sewing returns again to each classroom.

Performing Arts - Each class will also have sessions with Ruth Hooke, our Performing Arts teacher. 

Te Reo Maori

Our children will be attending alternate Friday arts and crafts sessions where they will learn the significance of arts and crafts in Maori culture and will also be making a variety of Maori arts and craft, with a modern twist.

Housekeeping

~ drink bottles, sunscreen and sunhats are of course essential this term. We have a 'no hat - no play' policy!

~ stationary: many children may need a top up of their stationary items. Pencils,  pens, rubbers in particular.  Please check with your child as they will know what they require.

Parent Help

Many of you have kindly offered to help out in our classrooms this year. Thank you once again to all our wonderful parent helpers from Term 2 who listened to children read as part of our "Hooked on Books Programme".

EOTC week - We would love for you to come and join us at Days Bay on Friday 9th December for our annual Days Bay picnic. Please let your child's teacher know if you would like to attend- from 10:00am onwards.

Getting in touch

As always, your first port of call is your child’s teacher. We can be contacted by our email address (surname@muritai.school.nz), or feel free to pop in before/ after school for a quick chat. If you wish to talk about your child’s learning at any stage of the term, you do not have to wait until parent interviews to do so! Your child’s teacher will be happy to talk with you - however be aware that Monday and Tuesday after school are usually staff meeting times.

Dates for the Diary

Here is a summary of upcoming events particular to the Year 3/4 Team:

October        

Monday 24th ~ Labour Day – (School Closed)
Tuesday 25th ~ Teacher Only Day - (School Closed)

November

Tuesday 1st ~ Athletics Day
Tuesday 22^nd and Tuesday 23rd ~ Year 3 Anniversary reporting will take place. Further details to come!

Sunday 27^th- Eastbourne Carnival!!!

Monday 28th - Celebration of Learning afternoon, Swimming starts (weather dependant). 

December

Monday 5^th December ~ EOTC week begins
Friday 9th - Year 4 Reports and 2016 class lists go home.

Monday 12th ~ Meet the Teacher for 2016

Friday 16^th~ Last day of Term – Leaver’s Assembly at 11am

Looking Ahead to 2017

We are about to begin the thorough process of placing children into classes for 2016.  If you are considering moving out of the area and your child will not be coming back to Muritai next year please email me as soon as possible.

We all look forward to another great term. Our thanks for your support, as always.

Kind regards,

Richard Dobson and Gabrielle Heath in R7, Karen Chao and Christa Pitman in R8, Heather Mawby in R9, Mikaela Cody and Trish Theobald in R10, Jess Davidson and Fiona Ranchod in R11.