Week 7

One week four days to go!!
On Monday students will meet their new teacher for 2012 from 9-11am.
Tuesday :Ange will come and gather data about what we now know about Technology.
GOOD LUCK TO MALACHI, TARQUIN & MELBOURNE they are competing in the Wellington Interschool relay race.

Monday 12th December- class trip to Carterton Park 9-11.30 followed by a shared lunch at 12.00

Term Four

Welcome Back Everyone

Congratulations to the All Blacks on winning the World Cup!! I was lucky enough to go to the Semi Finals in Auckland with New Zealand playing the Wallabies.

It was back to work last week and what a great start we had in TOTARA.

We harvested the beetroot from our garden on Friday. Altogether we counted 14 beets. This week we are going to experience the taste by cooking them and turning them into fritters :)

Our trip to WELLINGTON is in week 3 on Tuesday.What a fantastic day we will have.

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Week 10

What a fun week we have planned!

Last week we shared Discovery Time with our buddy class Kauri.

Talking Days: What have we learnt this term

Spelling: Revision of the terms words

Writing:Instructions

Maths:Geometry- Tesselations

PE: skipping

Rich Concepts: Reflection of terms learning

What's on this week

Monday- normal day

Tuesday- Jane Lloyd- art workshop

Wednesday- trip to Taratahi Training Farm

Thursday- calendar art

Friday- Reflection assembly

You are invited to the Reflection Assembly on Friday at 9.15am

Have a fun holiday- I am off to watch the All Blacks playing in the semi-finals(i hope that's what happens)

WEEK 9

Two weeks to go till the holidays!!!

Spiders and Fish made kumara chips during READING
Emily is practising her skipping:GO EM!

What's Happening this week:

Talking Days: Rugby World Cup

Writing: Rugby World Cup

Maths:Geometry-Translations, Rotations, Reflections

PE:Skipping

We have been finding out about countries that are playing in the Rugby World Cup. We know how to use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the information.

Good luck Seniors on your production this week.

WEEK 7

WE ARE AWESOME LEARNERS IN TOTARA !!

This week we will learn about:

Spelling: ing and ed words

Maths: Fractions & Geometry(position/ transformations)

Writing: Finding out about NZ

PE: Skipping

Oral Language:News Item

The Rugby World Cup has begun!!

On Friday we dressed up in colours of countries playing in the World Cup.Can you guess who was representing which country?

We have been discussing why New Zealand is unique and have come up with a few ideas which you can read about in our big topic book.

WEEK 6

Get ready for another week in TOTARA.

Last week we had the Netball Party to celebrate a fantastic effort of hard work, practise and committment by all players and coaches. This is the Sapphires team.

Congratulations to the Ripper Rugby players who played on Thursday against other schools. You did us PROUD!!

Our learning for this week:

Sounds of the week: ing and ed words

Writing: places and important things in NZ

Maths: Fractions & Time

PE: Ball skills - rugby, soccer, netball

This week we will learn more about New Zealand.

WEEK 5

Talking Days:New Zealand

Sound of the Week:Short u

Rich Concept:'What is Unique aout New Zealand?'

Writing:Narrative

Maths:Fractions & Time

Last week Solway School had a visit from the ERO team. They thought Totara was working hard and learning lots of purposeful things.

On Tuesday and Wedneday we visited other classrooms to start the 'Capture' part of our topic 'What is Unique about New Zealand?'

Totara children enjoyed all the activities especially eating 'pukeko poo'in Titoki!

We will brainstorm all the things that we found out and ask questions about what we would like to find out.

PE:We have started ball skills with practising rugby passes. We are working on using team skills to be successful.

Week 4

Talking Days: New Zealand

Sound of the Week: short o

Rich Concept: What is Unique about New Zealand?

Writing:Write your own Maori Legend

Maths: Fractions & Time

We have been recording our Oral Language CD's for the Achievement Books. The success criteria was: 1. loud voice
2. clear voice
3. interesting voice

We retold the Maori Legend of 'In the Beginning', a story about Rangi and Papa.

Last week we had snow!!! There were only eight children at school on Tuesday. We made snowflakes, just like the outside ones!!!!

This week we will start our Rich Concept topic of 'What is Unique about New Zealand?'. On Tuesday and Wednesday each class will rotate around the syndicate and experience different capturing activities about New Zealand.


We have been using Maori Myths & Legends as an inspiration for Drama. Groups of students practised a retelling of a legend for an audience.

SNOW Monday 15th August

Wow - look at all this snowy weather. No school today!!!!

WEEK 3

Sound of the Week - short i- eg. igloo

Grammar focus- contractio
Talking Day Topic- Own choice (come prepared)

Values - Obedience & Values

Writing-Myths & Legends

Maths- Fractions, Proportions & Ratios. On Friday we will be learning about Time

Library- Wednesday



This week we will be working on recording our Oral Language CD's for the Achievement Books.




On Monday we will do the Maths PAT test to see what we have learnt.


POI-

we are learning to follow maori commands using poi.


Last week Anne Tolley the Minister of Education came to open our new Learning Centre'Pohutakawa'. We felt proud of the book paddles we made for the Library.

TERM THREE

WEEK 2

We are all happy to be back at school.
Sound of the Week - short e - eg. head, friend
Grammar focus- contractions
Poem of the Week- Patterns
Talking Day Topic- Values- Obedience & Respect
Writing- Values & Myths & Legends
Maths- Fractions, Proportions & Ratios. On Friday we will be
learning about Time
Library- Wednesday

We had a fun time celebrating being at school for 100 days last term.

WEEK 10 Totara Term Two 2011

Over the next two weeks our topic will be 'OUR ENVIRONMENT'.

We will be talking, reading, writing, making and designing around
'OUR ENVIRONMENT'

TALKING
This week we are talking about the Maori language.

THINGS COMING UP:
Reflection Assembly - Thursday 14th July 9.15am
Opening of our new Library-Pohutakawa July 15th 2pm
End of Term - Friday 15th July 3pm

Virtual Pet Cat for Myspace

Last week we had our school cross country at Solway Show Grounds. Luckily we had been practising hard because it was a long way to RUN!

We have nearly finished making our book paddles for the Library. We have just got to spray 1 more coat on the paddle then they are ready to be hung on the new board. YAHOO!!!

This week is our class assembly where we will show what we have been learning about recently.

Term 2 Week 5

READING We love reading plays with our reading groups. Mack dressed up as a robot.

SPELLING
This week our sound is er.We know there are different ways to hear that sound:ir,ur,or

MATHS
We are still learning about Multiplication and Division. I hope everyone is learning their times tables at home!!!

TECHNOLOGY
We have been making book paddles for the Library.Thanks Cherie for coming to help us paint.The paddles are looking awesome and all we need to do now is polyurethane them. Hopefully Mr Hurrell will help Totara get a board to display them!

CROSS COUNTRY
Thursday is the school cross country at Solway Showgrounds. We still need some parents to take us there in their cars. GOOD LUCK everyone you have been training hard.

TERM TWO

WEEK THREE

Welcome back to school everyone! In the holidays I went to visit my brothers who live in Adelaide AUSTRALIA. We had very warm weather which was fantastic.

This is the season of AUTUMN.On Friday we had Discovery Time with our buddy class KAURI.We participated in these activities.

• Leaf stencils
• Texture rubbings
• Photography
  

The whole school was buzzing on Friday morning as we discovered new skills and enhanced our social skills.

Spelling

This weeks sound is 'oo'. On Monday we will brainstorm as many words as we can and choose 10 for Spelling Homework. Our phonics trigraph is 'ght'.

MATHS

We are learning about MULTIPLICATION & DIVISION.
We know that there are different names for multiplying - groups of, rows of, times and multiply.
We are learning the 2,3,4,5 and 10 times tables. Skip counting in 2,3,4,5,and 10's is another number knowledge activity we are practising. On Friday we are learning about MEASUREMENT - these are some of the words we need to understand
short, shorter, shortest, log, longer, longest, less, more ...

Writing
We are writing Explanations this term. So far we have written about our values. This week we will explain the reasons why things happen in and around our school.

The Arts
This term we will learn more painting and printing skills.
We looked carefully at the autumn colours of leaves and then with a sponge we dabbed paint onto a piece of paper overlaying 3 colours. We are proud of the way our pictures turned out.

Welcome
Emily joined our class this term and she is a
Year 4. We are loving having Emily in our class.

Week 11

Our last week of school before the holidays!

Spelling
This week we will concentrate on learning the essential word lists.

In Maths we are learning about algebra and patterning.

We have completed our Technology creations and will probably show them in the Celebration Assembly on Friday.

Week 10

We have started talking about Technology. We are learning new vocabulary. A technological outcome is an object made for a purpose. We wrote about chairs and hose reels.

Today we worked with a partner and designed and made a technological outcome.

Spelling- This week we are learning words starting with fl. We will all try to get 100 points for our group by learning our words!!!

Our achievement books go home this Friday. What a fantastic term we have had learning.

Week 8

This week our blend is bl.
How are you going with learning your spelling word?

Make sure you do some learning every night.

Talking Days
This week you can bring a baby photo and tell your classmates all about yourself as a baby.


LIFE CYCLE
We have been waiting for our caterpillar to hatch from its chrysalis for many days.

On Thursday we were out doing athletics when the caterpillar decided to emerge!
What a beautiful monarch butterfly it had turned into.




BALLOONS
On Friday Mrs Hurrell saw the balloons on her way to work.


Technology

Ange came last week and talked to us about what we thought technology was. We answered her questions as best we could. We will be learning about this subject for the rest of Term 1 and during Term 2.

Talented Kids!!

The students in TOTARA are very talented! We have painted our self portraits over a few days. We were very proud of how they turned out.

Swimming

We share our swimming time with Matai. We have been practising our strokes and improving our breathing and arm strokes.

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