Newsletter - Term 3 Week 2

Kia ora koutou!

What a great first week we have had! It has been fantastic to have Tyler join us and become part of the Totara team. It is great getting to know you Tyler! Our visit from ERO (Education Review Office) went really well and they were impressed with the learning stories the students had to share. Well done everyone. This week we are running through our new timetable and starting new topics in Social Studies and Visual Art.

Check out the class blog - http://sevenoakstotara.blogspot.co.nz/ - for some snippets of last week. One that was especially fun was a drama game the class played which is worth a look to re-live the moment! There are other movies about to go up there this week. Over time you will see this area being more well-used by everyone in the team.

In maths this week students will be working more on Mathletics. All student user ID and passwords were emailed to you all prior to the holidays. We encourage you to get your son/daughter to show you at some stage this week how they use it. This system gives us detailed reports on participation as well as which areas are strengths and which are areas to develop in students maths skills. If you have any questions about this please email Rob.

In Science this week we are continuing with our crime scene investigation work where students had to conduct experiements to figure out what 3 common gases were... more on this soon

Rob, Kerry and Judith

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Fractions Intro

Here is an introduction to fractions for todays maths session:
Once you have done some discussion and recorded your ideas as comments to this blog post, watch the video. Those that finish the activity early can log in to Mathletics and I have some activities for you to complete.

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Totara News - Term 2 Week 7

Kia ora koutou!

The Peace Game has begun! What an amazing opportunity for students to be working together, meeting new people and attempting to solve some of the worlds current issues. Well done everyone, it has been wonderful to see you all bring your skills to the game and be challenged at the same time.

Well done everyone in your use of our new Google Apps system - one of the advantages of these tools is that both Kerry and Rob can ‘see’ what you are up to each week as you learn to use the various tools within it. Please remember to keep everything you wish to share with the class and us inside your individual folder - that way we can give each other feedback and help if needed. We encourage students to log in to show their families how this system works!

Helena sharing her photography blog...

In celebration last week Helena shared her amazing photography blog - here is a photo of her leading the school through this and showcasing her great skills! Well done Helena. Well done also Reuben who is currently leading our school celebrations!

In English and Social Studies this week, we are going to look at where you are all at with your assignments and make sure everyone has the right amount of time and resources to enable them to complete the assignment in a meaningful way. We will do this on Tuesday morning first thing, straight after we have another look at the kids news site that we explored last week. Here is the link if you’d like to explore the site further:

http://www.kiwikidsnews.co.nz

Learning to read an asTTle assessment - to identify next steps...

This week we will introduce you to a tool called Mathletics, which will be used to supplement our maths programme and target the skills you each need to practice. 

Your asTTle maths assessments will be used to personalise the Mathletics activities you do, once you’ve had time to learn and play with the various tools within it of course!

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