We gave Mr Bertrand a little visit to see how his first week as our principal has been. He said that one of his highlights has been meeting so many friendly people. He is looking forward to making Te Aroha Primary even better than it already is.

Mr Bertrand grew up in Te Aroha so we just had to ask him how he liked being back in our town. He answered with “I love it. It's so cool seeing people I haven't seen in a while. The last time I was in town was in 1993.” WOW - that is 29 years!

Welcome back to Te Aroha Mr Bertrand.

This week on the first day of the term we had a mihi whakatau to welcome our new principal, Mr Bertrand. We also presented him with our school korowai as a sign of his leadership and mana. This is a special taonga for our school (gifted to us by the McGall family).

Congratulations to our house leaders who led our first school assembly this term, which was dedicated to the acknowledgement of ANZAC day.

PMP started for the first time this year last Thursday. PMP is run by Mrs Hazelton and is for students in Rooms 1 and 2. PMP helps refine students' motor skills to prepare their brain for classroom learning. Every week helpers (Parents and/or Friends of the school) come in to help Mrs Hazelton run PMP. In PMP there are many different activities for the students to enjoy including colouring, following lines, eye tracking and many more.

A warm welcome to Week 2.

Week 1 was a busy week with fitting in activities for Anzac Day and Mother;s Day. I hope that all the Mum’s had a great Mother’s Day yesterday. The children were very excited to do PMP last week.

This week we will be working on our number knowledge in maths along with time. In writing we will look at different ways to start a sentence. Thank you to those that are doing homework as this reinforces what we have been doing in the class during reading time. The children are doing really well with the sounds of the letters but need to practice to blend them to say the word.

Have a great week!

Welcome to Week 2 and it is good to be back! I felt super special when Room 3 delivered some very sweet Autumn cards for me this past week. Thank you!

This week will be filled with re-establishing routines and expectations of our awesome classroom and getting stuck into some great learning!

Writing: We are going to look at opinion writing this week using a variety of topics. This is always a favourite as everyone has an opinion. We will eventually be able to justify why we choose our opinion.

Reading: We are back in full force with our reading programme and everyone will be setting an achievable goal to reach by the end of this term. Homework is an integral part of our reading programme as it reinforces the learning we have done in class!
Maths: We are jumping straight back into revising our teen and ty numbers, continue to look at addition and subtraction with number lines and counting on from a larger number with addition problems.

Reminders for the week:

Library visit days are on Fridays
Please remember your drink bottle, homework books and book bags everyday

Please don’t hesitate to contact me via Seesaw or email mswan@tearohaprimary.school.nz

Have a wonderful week 2! 😊

It has been great seeing students arriving back, settling into our class routines and reestablishing friendships after their time apart. We were very pleased to welcome Nala to our class last week! 😊

Mathematics: Our Addition and Subtraction Unit has us adding 3 numbers together and learning to explain how our answers have been reached. It is interesting to see the different ways our minds work when putting the numbers together.

Reading: Our class poem last week was lots of fun to act out. It is nice seeing students volunteer to read out our poem so that the rest of the class can echo it back to them. Our Novel The Good, The Bad, and Everything Else has really engaged the class and we can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Writing: We really enjoyed working step by step through our Panda reports last week. We liked getting to draw and talk about pandas. It was good to use our research skills to find additional facts and information using the Chromebooks.

Reminders / Online Learning - Homework

Our Spelling words and weekly poem will be available on Seesaw for all Room 5 students who are keen to work on them at home. They also have free access to sites such as: Prodigy, Sumdog, Sunshine Classics and Epic! These sites have a focus on reading, mathematics and spelling and are presented in a fun and engaging way for the students. Reading material will be sent home for those students reading below Level 19. Unless specifically requested, those working above Level 19 do not generally have books sent home as they will be working on Journals and these are needed in class each day. Many students have elected to take home easy chapter books and these can be returned and swapped as needed. Our Library day is Monday.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact Miss Entwisle via the school office: 078848803; email: mentwisle@tearohaprimary.school.nz or through the Seesaw message function.

Last week we welcomed Helakon to Room 6 and TAPS. We will be starting our work on NZ History this week. Mrs Bartram will be teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday while I am participating in Maths Professional Development. In maths we will be continuing to learn about transformations - sliding and rotating shapes and objects. We have a focus this term on reading comprehension, thinking carefully about what we have read. In writing we are learning to add detail to our character descriptions.

Home Learning Reminder:

Your child will be bringing home a home learning book which will contain a reading log, basic facts practise and spelling words to practise. These are due back on Friday each week.

Kia ora whānau and families.

It is super awesome to be back at school for Term 2 and I could tell the students were feeling good about it too. In maths we continue to explore different strategies we can use when we are looking at multiplication and division. Each week we will explore bigger multiplication numbers so learning times tables at home is a huge advantage, also available on Seesaw from last term.

For Literacy we are looking into some Deaf awareness over time, this ties in with NZ Sign Language Week. In topic, we are also exploring more local history in our area. You may also enjoy these discussions at home too, and help students learn more about their own family history within Te Aroha and the surrounding areas, share what you know! I am amazed at what I’ve learnt so far from the students, Ka pai.

Friday hub sport was a real hit and we will continue this every week, complimenting this with ball skills sessions as well throughout the week.

Extras:

We have moved our library day to Wednesday now, this means students can refresh their book mid week. It is expected that every student reads for half an hour everyday at home. I have a lot of students tell me they have no time for reading in the evening so please help by encouraging and making this a priority.

Looking forward to the wonderful week ahead.

Kia ora everyone, it’s so nice to be back in Room 9 again, honestly it feels like I never left.

It has been a great start to the term, reestablishing routines, connections and sharing a laugh along the way.

Inquiry: We have really enjoyed discussing what we think history is and what history is good for. Researching the bombing of Hiroshima and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior has developed a spark for most to learn more about these significant historical events. This week our focus is on our own family history, where we have come from and how we came to live here in Te Aroha. We will also look at other historical NZ figures and learn about their life stories.

Maths: We have made a great start in revising our multiplication facts. This week will begin to look at strategies we can use to solve multiplication and division problems. We will also finish off our learning in strand (Position and Orientation), where we were focusing on following compass directions, distances and grid references on maps.

Literacy: Linking to our inquiry topic, we will learn about our own family history by constructing interview questions. Students will conduct interviews at home to gather more knowledge and information. In reading, we will continue to develop our reading strategies to help us identify key information and summarize what we have read. Writing biographies will be our focus in writing. Keep your eye out on Seesaw to see our amazing work as it develops.

NZ Sign Language Week: To celebrate NZ Sign Language week we will learn some basic sign language, maybe even learn how to sign a song or two.

Home learning:

• Daily reading at least 20 minutes

• Times Tables practise

• Along with any other incidental activities that will help to complete in-class learning for example talking at home about the local and national historical events and doing some research where required.

Have a great week everyone!

Mrs Gamble lgamble@tearohprimary.school.nz

Kia ora koutou - tu māia, tu kaha (stand tall and strong)

What a joy to all be together last week - great to see Rm 10 working hard and having fun.

This week, we continue to explore NZ Music Month through a different soundtrack each day and students will also be assigned a taskboard to explore and celebrate NZ Sign Language Week. Some of these activities will be shared on Seesaw.

Maths - we begin looking at strategies to efficiently solve multiplication and division. Having an instant and accurate recall of times tables is the key here - please let me know if you would like a times table chart to support your child to learn these.

Integrated Learning - it was so interesting to explore what makes history and investigate the Pencarrow Lighthouse. This week, as part of our NZ Histories Inquiry, we investigate “My History” - students will need some help with this from home. Reading and Writing will be explored through the investigation of the loss and possible rediscovery of the iconic Pink and White Terraces.

Art - our sketches are amazing (we will share these on Seesaw) - Definitely some talented artists in Room 10.

Team Sport - this was awesome and will take place again this Friday.

So proud of Room 10! Here is to another amazing week ahead.

Arohanui - Mrs B dp@tearohaprimary.school.nz

We need these firms to keep our school cashflow and community relations going strong. They are generous to us which enables us to benefit your children so I would ask you look at the team of sponsors and where possible, use them as we all gain.

Please use these tools we provide - we use them to alert, inform and effectively communicate with parents.

Check it out - there is plenty for you to find out.

If in doubt please ask your child’s teacher as we will be using these platforms on a regular basis to keep our parent community informed and up to date.