Newsletter Week 3 Term 4

We are thrilled to welcome Kenneth to our school this week. It is great to have you with us Kenneth.

Next week we are very excited to start our swimming lessons for Term 4. We are very sorry that we cannot have adults on-site but promise to put a few videos and photos in the newsletters.

If for any reason you did not receive the notice with all of the swimming details, please let us know asap.

Behind the scenes we have been working on the details around the mandated Vaccination order that impacts on our staff, and any visitors/adults associated with the school. All of our staff are prepared for the mandate and ready to go. We are still seeking further clarification around the role the order takes with parents and volunteers as there are a few subtle nuances that we need to work through before we can communicate any strategies moving forward to keep our kids safe and our adults on-site again. I would like to take the opportunity to reassure you that the Vaccination Order places absolutely no requirements on our children. We do know that there has been some concern around the country that children will be vaccinated within the schools, and without the prior approval of families. I can 100% assure you that this will NOT occur within our school, or any other primary school at this point of time.

As clarification comes around the regulations, we will keep communicating with you about what we require in order to finally get parents back on-site where we can do safely.

To finish on a positive, next week we will be running our Book Fair in Tangaroa. This is where we will have a whole lot of Scholastic books available for immediate purchase before and after school. We do have to run it a little differently this year of course to ensure that we meet COVID requirements, however in a nutshell, we will have Tangaroa (the classroom at the very back of the school) open from 8am to 8.30am every day for purchases, and again from 2.45pm-3.15pm. We will need to limit access to five adults at a time, masked and scanned, and no children can be in the classroom while adults are in there. Apologies in advance for making it complicated, but we have decided that these hoops are worth jumping through in order to get books out into our families.

Nga mihi,

Gareth Swete

• School Swimming - Monday 8th - Friday 19th Nov
• BOOK FAIR - Monday 8th - Friday 12th Nov
• Final Assembly for 2021 - Friday 10th December, 2pm
• Last Day of Term - Wednesday 15th December, 1pm

Kia ora families. This week we welcome Kenneth to Papatūānuku!

We started the week with Music Monday, where we like to sing our favourite classroom songs. We also continued to learn some more Rakau. This time we were in pairs and were learning to co-ordinate our actions in time, and with our partner!

Our maths learning has taken us down the track of discussing Probability. We are using fairytales as the basis of our learning. After reading Little Red Riding Hood, we discussed items she would see, won’t see, and might see on her trip to Grandma’s house. We have continued the same discussions, using slightly different Probability language for other fairy tale stories too.

Miss Flannery has been teaching the tamariki about Native Birds. We’ve read a big book, looked at pictures, discussed their features and what makes them different from each other. We’ve drawn pictures of a native bird and today we are writing descriptions about them.

Last Friday we planted bean seeds. This week some of them have started to grow roots! It is so exciting watching the progress in anticipation of change! We have written instructions for “How to Plant a Bean Seed” if anyone would like instructions on how to do this!

For fitness we have been focusing on balance, and also developing our climbing, hopping, skipping, jumping skills. All good foundation skills that are fun to practise and very beneficial for our muscles to aid in not only our physical development but our ability to do our classroom work too. We have a set of “6 Pin Bowling” pins in our class at the moment and it is becoming a fun activity to see which team can get the most pins down!

We are looking forward to our swimming lessons next week. It would be super helpful, if the children could please practise getting themselves dressed and undressed at home over the next few days, and especially putting on their own socks and shoes! We are always very proud of the way the children step up their level of independence in this area during our swimming weeks.

Report by Mrs. Campbell

Hola from Hine Rau Wharangi.

This week in Hine Rau Wharangi we have been learning different greetings when we call our morning and afternoon roll. In our Ocean topic we have been busy working on how to paint a background for our Artwork and learning to draw a picture to the size of our piece of paper, with a focus on shape, size and space. We have been using different types of media to create our Art works and have been looking at the Artist Heni Matisse and how he produces Art by cutting paper.

With Miss Culbert we have been learning new P.E games and focusing on fair play and the importance of teamwork and how team work looks. Next week we will be beginning our swimming sessions so the children will need to bring their togs. Let's hope the weather is great as I know Hine Rau is looking forward to swimming, it is always a fun time for more new learning.

Adios from Hine Rau Wharangi

Report by Mrs. Brewer

Tāwhirimātea are really enjoying getting our hands mucky while working on our Paper Mache dinosaurs. We are creating the dinosaurs that we have been researching. We are quickly learning about the importance of skills such as perseverance and problem solving while we try to attach features such as long necks, tails, legs, heads and spikes. It's a bit of a balancing act trying to add these features while ensuring our dinosaur can stand on its own without tipping over! In Maths, we have been busy measuring dinosaurs and planning the layout of our parks, ensuring that each enclosure is the correct area for the size of our dinosaurs. This involves skills in measuring and multiplication and we are learning a lot about scale as well. We have really been enjoying the nicer weather at the moment. It has allowed us to work on our elastics skills during brain break time and we love getting out for a game of ripper rugby in the afternoons. It's so wonderful to see how the children are developing their skills while learning about the importance of working together as a team. Scroll down for a short video clip of Madeline scoring a try even though she lost a shoe along the way! You will also see a couple of photos of a dinosaur classification activity that Mr Fisher has been working on with the children. The photos show a venn diagram made with hoops. The children have placed the model dinosaurs into the hoops where they think they belong - dinosaur, non-dinosaur, herbivore and omnivore. After doing some further research and learning about this, they will repeat the activity using their new knowledge to make the necessary changes. Finally, just a quick reminder that swimming begins next week and will go right through until the end of the following week. Your children will need their togs and towel, clothing and footwear that they can easily get in and out of (unfortunately we are unable to have spectators so there will be no helpers supporting the children with this) and we often find that a little extra food in their lunchboxes never goes astray as swimming is hungry work.

Report by Mrs Swete

We are so excited to be presented the assembly shield for best class last Friday, and our Isabella was awarded the Person of the week trophy. We work well together as a class and support each other throughout the day.

Miss Law has taught us a new fitness activity called ‘Chuck the Chicken’ so much fun!

Our sunflowers are growing fast, with the right conditions they could grow 5 metres tall. Our beans are sprouting and we have used our observational and our descriptive writing skills to record what we see happening each day.

Some of us have begun to publish our ‘Gangsta Granny’ descriptions which we look forward to sharing with you later on. We are looking forward to swimming next week. Don’t forget to pack extra snacks for your child please.

Report by Mrs. Ruzsa

We are continuing to learn all about our bodies. This week our focus has been muscles. We have learnt about lots of different muscles in our bodies and where they are. We are doing lots of exercises targeting our different muscles, feeling where our bodies have been working.

The muscles in the front of our leg, thigh area are called our quadriceps. (Chaya)

Muscles are elastic. (Freya)

When you exercise your muscles rip apart, when they come back together, they come back stronger. (Ida)

Your gluteus maximus is one of the muscles in your bottom. You also have your bicep and triceps in your arms. (Anja)

Report From Miss Laing

Progress update: Position and Orientation Maps!

This week the children in Tane Mahuta have done SO well to make a lot of progress on their adventure park maps for Maths. We have now got some completed maps with great grid lines, clear coordinates and even a set of matching questions for others to practice their position and orientation learning! We are proud of our unique set of position and orientation classroom resources that we have put a lot of creativity and effort into. Ka pai Tane Mahuta, you have done an awesome job with this mahi!

Report by Miss Tenci

This Weeks results:

Touch Rugby

Team Awesome 2-10 L POD - Cooper

SBS Incredible 4-2 W POD - Jack C.

Team Touchdown 8-2 W POD - Chloe

Futsal

Year 3/4 0-4 L POD - Oliver

Year 5/6 0-5 L POD - Asher

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