Junior News

By Felicia Ward | Posted: Thursday November 3, 2022

What a way to kick off Term 4!

Swimming

Once again, we have had another successful eight days of swimming with JC Swim School. While it has made the start of the term very busy and tiring it has been fantastic to see the children growing in confidence in the water. With summer just around the corner, it is the perfect time for children to learn and to practise water safety skills. A big thank you to all our helpers who gave up their time to assist on swimming days. We were on a tight schedule and it would not have gone as smoothly without your support. I also want to thank the junior teachers and support staff - Emma, Hannah, Paula, Courtney, Tony, Kelly, Sue, Jacinda and AK. They have spent many hours at the pool over the eight days, missing morning teas and adjusting programmes to fit everything in - absolute stars!!

PBL

How can we, as retailers, design, create, and market a product to sell to our community?

On Wednesday, we had our Entry Event for Term 4 PBL. Entry Events help engage and inspire students to dive into a PBL Unit. As well as providing a clear and authentic reason to do the PBL, the Entry Event also serves as a "hook" to capture students' interest. For this PBL event, we wanted to incorporate play so the junior space was transformed into a variety of shops - restaurants, cafes, toy shops, book shops and clothing shops. Each student went to the 'bank' to receive their money to go shopping. Children also took turns working in the different shops, taking their roles very seriously! So much fun was had and we now look forward to diving deeper into this topic. We noticed that once the children had spent their money they came back to the bank to ask for more. We quickly recognised the need to learn about the value of money, how people earn it and the different jobs people have. For this PBL, we will also be creating products to sell on our school market day in Week 7.

Fundamental Skills

This term the Juniors have been lucky to have visits from Emily Shea, a student from Otago Polytechnic to teach us fundamental skills. Emily visits us on Monday and Friday afternoons with Rooms 5 and 6 having the first visits this week. This week we practised throwing and catching with a tennis ball.

Welcome

We are thrilled to welcome Emma Riley back to Room 6 from maternity leave. It is great to have your smiling face back at school, Emma!

We also welcome Jacob Downing, a 2nd Year College of Education Student. Jacob is spending three weeks in Room 6.

Reminders

School hats: School hats must be worn in Terms 1 and 4. These are available to be purchased from the school office.

Change of clothes: Please ensure your child has a change of clothes in their bag. We are also missing lots of spare school clothes. If your child has worn these home please send them back to school washed as soon as possible.

Lost property: There is already a mountain of lost property from this term. Please ensure all items of clothing are named so they can be returned. 

Ngā mihi nui, 

Felicia Ward  

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