Junior News

By Felicia Ward | Posted: Monday April 12, 2021

Term 1 is ticked off and what a time it has been!

Swimming

This term we completed another successful eight days of swimming with JC Swim School. We cannot stress enough how important it is to learn water skills and it so heartening to see the big smiles on the children’s faces as they learn. A huge thank you to all our helpers during swimming. We are incredibly lucky to have such supportive parents and grandparents!

PBL

We are now well underway with our PBL voyages topic, learning about mapping and identifying where we are in the world as well as being scientists and investigating floating and sinking with different materials. Using our floating and sinking knowledge we experimented with boat building using things like tinfoil, paper, play dough and walnut shells. This week we had a visit from boat expert Craig Martin, Captain of the Ramble on Rose superyacht. He talked to us about different kinds of boats and gave us some important tips to think about for our waka building next term.

Kaik Values Award

Congratulations to Dale Rempel (R7), Betty Hart (R9), Layla Thomas (R10) and Josie Kelly (R12) who received the Term One KAIK Value nominations. These children have all showed exceptional use of our school values, in particular, showing kindness to others. We are so proud to have such thoughtful and caring children in the Junior Syndicate.

Lastly, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday and look forward to another action-packed Term 2!

Many thanks

Junior Teachers

Reminders

8.30 am Bell: A reminder that children and parents are not allowed in classrooms until the 8.30am bell. This is important prepping time for teachers and meetings may be taking place.

Change of clothes: As the colder weather approaches and the return of muddy grass we strongly recommend that all children have a spare change of clothes in their bag.

Classroom Updates

Room 7:

What a busy few weeks we have had in Room 7. The children absolutely loved swimming and it was great to see the improvements they all made. For our buddy class afternoons, we have been focusing on stem challenges and the kids have enjoyed building towers, bridges, and baskets strong enough to hold Easter eggs. For P.B.L we have started looking at ‘Voyages’ we have made tinfoil boats and paper boats and are looking forward to making some larger boats next term.

Room 9:

This term in Room 9 we have been doing swimming, Techie Tuesday, Funky Friday and PBL. For PBL we have been testing things that float and sink and making waka hourua. We also had a visit from Captain Craig to teach us about boats. For maths, we have been doing statistics and we learnt that the favourite food in Room 9 is snacks.

By Betty

Room 10:

For our “Voyagers” PBL, Room 10 have been enjoying doing lots of 'hands on' activities. We have been scientists, conducting experiments and finding out all about the many materials that float and sink. We have also had some STEAM challenges - the first was to make a boat out of a ball of play dough, the second was to make a boat out of tinfoil and the third was to create a boat out of a walnut shell. We are now learning about the many things in the natural world that our Polynesian ancestors used to navigate across the Pacific Ocean, such as the birds, stars, sea currents, clouds and the sea creatures. We are having a lot of fun and learning so much!

Room 12:

The Room 12 children have had a great start to school life this term. We are an extremely enthusiastic crew who are keen to learn. A real highlight this term was swimming which was a fantastic introduction to our floating and sinking topic that followed. The children have started looking at different boats, essential components and design and building a prototype. This is part of our Project Based Learning looking at voyages -beginning with Kupe. We all enjoyed listening to our special guest Captain Craig Martin this week. Next term the children will build their own model waka incorporating their new knowledge and preliminary trials. We look forward to sharing these with you. 

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