Kia ora Koutou,

It is so great to have all of our children back with us this term. I would particularly like to welcome Alexis, Gracie and Madison to the school, we are very pleased to have you with us.

Hopefully you would have received a notification this week to inform you of an upcoming Teacher Only Day on Tuesday 23rd August. We appreciate that this puts pressure on many families to find alternative care for children, and do appreciate your support. We very rarely hold Teacher Only days for this reason but we have a very exciting opportunity for the staff. We have been working with Rob Proffit-White for the last six months. Rob is a internationally renowned Mathematics expert. He is highly involved in the refresh of the NZ Maths curriculum, and has been guiding our school, along with four other Otago Schools, through some very exciting mathematics teacher development. We have the chance to have Rob all to ourselves on the 23rd for a full day of whole school mathematics development. Thank you for your understanding as we look forward to continuing our journey in keeping in front of the curriculum changes in mathematics.

Hopefully you should have also received a notice home this week regarding PCT discussions for Week 3. We will be running PCT (Parent/child/teacher discussions) on Monday 8th and Wednesday 10th August. These are a great chance to sit down with families and have a really good chat with your teacher. Please let us know urgently if you did not receive this notice and we will get one to you.

Mā te wā,

Gareth Swete

Mālō e lelei, kia ora, talofa, hello

Welcome back everyone to the new school term. The children have made a great start to the term getting back into their routines. I just wanted to say how proud I am of the children in Hine-Rau because of the way they come into class on these wet days and busy themselves getting ready for the morning routine. We have taken the opportunity to take some photos of us as a class learning collaboratively in our Reading routines and at break times. This week we have begun a new Topic where we will be looking at flight. We have been reading our weekly poem about Aeroplanes and have produced some art of an aeroplane flying over the night sky past Mount Everest that we are showing in assembly this week. (Keep an eye out for up and coming photos)

In Maths we have been learning to play a new game called dicey addition that we will be able to use when we are working with partners and groups at Maths time.

Report by Mrs Brewer

We have had the most AMAZING start to term 3! The children have come in rested, settled and excited to learn. This weather has had us writing raindrop poems using our rhyming skills. We have started a new math topic where we are learning about money and how to add tens and ones - which also conveniently ties in with our new reward system where we earn Tawhiri dollars to purchase a ticket and other exciting items for an end of term movie day. We worked together to come up with criteria for earning $1, $2, $5 and $10, and money is quickly flying out of the Tawhiri bank and into the wallets of all the children! Our topic this term is called “What's going on here?” so we are getting hands on with science. This week we have begun learning about magnets. We had great fun on Tuesday afternoon exploring different ways in which magnets can be used and trying to work out how their forces work. The photos below show us exploring a selection of magnets and working out what magnets are attracted to around our room, having car races using the repelling force, competing to build the tallest paperclip tower on our magnets and playing with a train set that uses magnetic forces to connect parts. Below are some of our findings from our exploration

• You could move the iron shavings with a magnet even though they were stuck to another magnet. Emily M

• The Magnets didn’t always stick to each other - North and North or South to South poles wouldn't connect but North and south do. Cooper

• You can drag things with the magnets. Emily Mck

• The magnetic force pulled through the paper clips so they stuck to other paper clips. Isaac

• The curtain chains must have iron in them because the magnets are attracted to them. Silas

Report by Mrs Swete

Kia Ora from Ranginui

We are having a wonderful start to term 3 (despite the weather). Ranginui children look well rested and are happy to get back into our daily routines.

This term our inquiry is based on science - The physical phenomena of light and colour. We began our discussions under the stars, well, an electronic star hologram. We know that light is energy and we will be exploring the physical aspects of it.

Our Written language is linked with learning how to write explanations and information reports and the texts we are reading are non-fiction.

The children are developing their number work through a decode, decide and defend approach called ‘Odd Number Out’. Ask them what it is and how they go about finding their solutions.

We will join an arts rotation with the Senior Syndicate - Dance, Drama and Singing this term. We began with drama this week - so much fun!

Report by Miss Ruzsa

Yay! This week we have started off our Senior Syndicate Arts Rotations for Dance, Drama and Music. The kids in Tane Mahuta had a great time focusing on Dance this week and exploring and thinking about the different Elements of Dance. The Elements of Dance are: Space, Relationships, Body Awareness, Energy and Time. We broke into groups and brainstormed lots of different ideas about what these elements look like in relation to Dance. We thought about the different ways we can use our body when dancing to match songs and show different emotions. We thought about the different tempos that we can move at when we are dancing to different music as well as making patterns if we are dancing in groups or pairs. We finished off our Dance session by looking at a clip of some professional dancers and how they used the different elements of dance to make their performance look effective. It was really interesting to break it down and think about how many different elements of dance they were using! We are excited to keep learning more new things at our Art Rotations!

Report by Miss Tenci

Nominations are open for the election of 5 parent representatives to the school board.

All eligible voters will receive a nomination form. Use this form to nominate yourself or someone in your community. You will also receive a nomination cover letter calling for nominations. Information on who is not eligible to be a board member is provided with the nomination form.

If you need more nomination forms, please contact the school office.

Nominations close at noon on 3 August. You may provide a signed candidate statement and photograph with your nomination.

The electoral roll is held at the school and can be viewed during normal school hours.

As nominations are received, there will be a list of candidates’ names kept at the school up until election day, which you can view.

Voting closes at 4pm on 7 September.

Kyla Martyn

Returning Officer

Kia ora all,

The next Book Club is coming up, next Monday – 1st August

Join us at the usual time of 3.15 for snacks, followed by a creative activity and games from 3.30pm-4.30pm.

(Please let staff know if you are being picked up before 4.30pm)

We look forward to seeing you and hearing about the books you’ve been reading

Ngā mihi,

Lucinda, Katy and the Port Chalmers Library team.