Newsletter Week 1 Term 4
Sawyers Bay School 20th October 2022
Principal's Message
Kia ora koutou,
We are very pleased to have our kids back with us for what promises to be another busy term. I would also like to welcome Hunter, Liam and their family to the school this week, we are very pleased to have you with us.
This week's highlight has been the sports rotations running in the afternoons in preparation for the West Harbour Sports Day. A big thank you to all of our families for returning your permissions and the kind offers of help. We look forward to having all of the parents who have offered their help with us for the event on Tuesday. As we have no school on Monday (Labour Day), we will send a notification on Monday night to remind you all of what to expect the next day and what to bring.
As many of you will be very aware, there is going to be significant disruption to traffic around the school over the next month. We will be doing the very best to maintain a safe route to school for children, but would strongly encourage you to make a plan with your children and encourage them to use the safest path to school each day.
You might notice in the school calendar that School Swimming starts in Week three and will run for ten sessions over two weeks. This is a compulsory part of our school curriculum and we will be expecting all children to participate. If your child is not well enough to swim, they may be not well enough to be at school. There will be more details coming home next week.
Finally, and on a very exciting note, we would like to invite parents back to Assembly from Week 2 this term. Just a reminder that Assembly starts at 2.15pm and families are welcome to join us. There is no assembly this week due to sports rotations.
Mā te wā,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Labour Day Monday 24th October - School Closed
- West Harbour Sports Day Tuesday 25th October (Postponement day Thursday 27th)
- School Swimming Monday 31st Oct - Friday 11th November
- Final Assembly - Friday 9th December
- Final Day of Term 4 - 1pm Thursday 15th December
Certificates Week 10 Term 3
Te Akonga o te Wiki
Papatūānuku
Welcome to Term 4!
We are excited to be back at school and ready to head into a fun-filled term.
We started the week by sharing our Spring Holiday Highlights, firstly to the class as an Oral Language activity, then as a Written Language activity. I really enjoyed hearing about everyone’s highlights. They’re now pasted into the children’s Literacy books (the ones that come home each night) so you can read them too. The illustrations are marvelous.
What a great week of Spring weather we’ve had, to enjoy our Athletics rotations. We come back each afternoon, fizzing with excitement about the fun activities we’ve just participated in. This is great practise for our West Harbour Sports Day next Tuesday. Please come and watch if you can!
Our Maths learning this week has been a mix of numeracy activities and probability discussions. We are learning about place value (e.g how many groups of ten in the number 17? 25?). We also enjoy a fun activity called Numble, where we roll the dice and get 4 numbers, and then try to use those digits to make as many different numbers or equations that we can. We are learning to write down these equations too. The kids are getting so quick at this now and thinking more widely which is exciting to watch! Our discussions about Probability have related to things that we WILL see, WON’T see, or MIGHT see, in a variety of situations. We enjoy using fairytales or legends to help us with this learning, along with relating it to our real life too.
This Friday will be our first SBS Starters session for about 2 years! If you know of any families that have children that are soon-to-be turning 5, that would like to come along, please let them know.
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
Mālō e lelei, kia ora, talofa, hello
Welcome back to all of our families. The Hine-Rau-Wharangi students have begun the new term with a hiss and roar. We are well into our weekly routines and you would have noticed that your children have begun to bring reading books home already. Could I ask families if they have any reading books hiding around the house? It would be great to have them returned. This week we have been recapping some of our previous learning in Math to keep a continuation of our Mathematical knowledge. You may also have heard your children talking about our sports rotations and how much fun we have had in the afternoons during the different activities. We are looking forward to the West Harbor Sports Day for Hine-Rau-Wharangi. This is their first time participating in these activities so they are super excited. If you haven't heard about these, it's a great opportunity to talk to your children about their favourite one. Our Topic this term is Job Expos. We will be looking at the different types of jobs we would like to be doing over the coming weeks.
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
What a roaring start to the term! You might have noticed some exhausted children coming home this week. That's because we have been practicing our athletic skills in the afternoon in preparation for the upcoming sports day. Hopefully some of you can come and see us in action next Tuesday.
This term's topic is all about careers and we have begun by becoming our own business managers for our very own Dinosaur Parks. This week we have started with a budget of $1000 to purchase our dinosaurs, which we will then design our park around. As you can imagine, there is a lot of excitement about this topic. We have also opened our very own classroom 'bank accounts' which builds upon our learning about money from last term. We will be earning a weekly wage, paying expenses, and learning about savings and investments. Hopefully you would have seen a notice that came home on Wednesday about 'Banqer' so that you can look at the classroom accounts at home together.
For Oral language and Writing, we have been working on our debating skills and writing persuasive texts which contain an opening statement and 3 convincing points. So far we have written about whether children should be made to do chores at home and if we should allow scientists to bring back the dinosaurs! We have also begun learning to play the marimba. We are learning to read music notes and to play in time with the beat. Below is a video showing a small section of a song we have been working on.
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora
Welcome back to term 4. The students have shared so many wonderful memories and adventures with you over the term break. They have written moments in time, which uses the 5 senses to describe a scene they enjoyed.
Our term four inquiry is about careers and we were able to begin the term by interviewing Community Constable Emily Plew. She shared lots about her current role in the police force and jobs she had done as she was growing up. Your child has an interview form for you to share about your career and maybe jobs you have done in the past. This will be shared in class on Friday.
We also have begun discussing how to make a business as part of our finance literacy unit. We will be building our own classroom business based on a popcorn product. MMMM…. yummy as well as many great learning opportunities.
Our sports practices are running smoothly and our athletic skills are improving every day. We are all looking forward to next Tuesday.. It is such a fun day!
Thank you again for being vigilant on coughs and colds. Yes they are still floating around.
Ka Kite
Report by Miss Ruzsa
Hinemoana
Welcome back to Term 4. We hope everyone had a great break and enjoyed the sunshine (and the snow day!) The children in Hinemoana have definitely come back to school with lots of energy and enthusiasm and I have enjoyed hearing all about their holidays.
In Writing we are recapping recounts and our holidays are providing the perfect inspiration for this. We have each chosen one event from our holidays, from becoming Uncles to going to Megazone, and are writing about this with lots of detail. We have worked hard on having an interesting hook to draw the reader in which includes dialogue, a sound effect or a thought / feeling. Check out some of our hooks below:
Slosh! The paint splashed on my face. (Bella)
Scribble, scribble, scribble. I was drawing a picture when Grandma called me to lunch. (Beth)
‘Rrrrrrr’ whirred the elevator as it moved down the shaft. (Isaac)
'Peow, peow, peow’ the sounds of laser guns bounced off the walls at Megazone. (Harrison)
“Arrrrgh!” I screamed as water splashed across my face. (Chloe)
“Bang!” My ears rang with the sound of the gun. (Monty)
“Ew, what’s that smell?” I yelled as I covered my nose.
We have begun learning all about money! We have explored what the children already know and I was very impressed with the knowledge they already had. We looked into New Zealand currency and investigated the different people, plants, birds and things on our notes and coins. We have begun adding money and calculating change which is pushing us to further explore our decimal knowledge to two places (tenths and hundredths). We are doing lots of different games with decimals. 3 in a row and ladders are super fun and easy games you could also play at home. I’m sure your child would be happy to teach you.
In preparation for West Harbour Sports Day, each afternoon we have enjoyed the sunshine while participating in Athletics rotations. We have got to practice our shot put, high jump, long jump, relays, frisbee, sprints and even hurdles!
Enjoy the long weekend and we will see you back on Tuesday all ready to go for Sports Day!
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
Welcome back to Term 4! It is crazy to think that we have reached the last term of 2022 already. It’s been great hearing all about the fun things that the Tane Mahuta children have been doing throughout the holidays this week. We shared about these activities in a fun activity called “Holiday Links”. For this activity we made a big spider web out of wool connecting to each other with similarities about our holiday experiences. Take a look at our photo to see how intricate our web got!
We had pretty diverse holiday experiences in Tane Mahuta - everything from being trusted to help drive a boat, to going to the pool, the movies and more! We took our holiday learning a little further also by thinking about and describing a dream holiday destination and why this place would be so amazing to visit! There were some interesting places that people wanted to travel to for their dream holidays like: Japan, Scotland and England! We hope you all had an awesome break and are having as much fun getting back into the term as we are.
Report by Miss Tenci
Community Notices
Contact Us
Email: office@sawyersbay.school.nz
Website: https://sawyersbay.school.nz/
Location: Sawyers Bay School 99 Stevenson Ave, Sawyers Bay, Dunedin 9023, New Zealand
Phone: 03 472 8981