Welcome Back to Term 3

Welcome back to Term 3 and another busy term of learning.  The newsletter that came home earlier this week had lots of information about our learning for the term and the special events happening across the school.  These include an art and writing exhibition and our 60th celebrations.

Our inquiry for this term focuses on puppets from around the world, we will also be writing and sharing speeches.  All students will start new Smart Words spelling books this term - please ensure you have filled in the notice that came home in the last week of term two regarding the books.

This term our sports focus is on gymnastics.  The whole Kawau team will join together after lunch on Wednesday afternoons to do a rotation of different gymnastic activities.  Here are some photos from our first session yesterday.

Stardome

Today we had a wonderful visit to Stardome to complete our learning this term on our inquiry into the Solar System.

It was a beautiful day, so after arriving we ate our morning tea outside.  We then split into 2 groups and the first group headed in to Stardome while the second group went to play on the playground.

Inside Stardome an education officer gave us a short talk about the Solar system, demonstrating in scale how far apart the planets are from each other and the sun, and also telling us about how the Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the Earth and how this causes night and day.

Next we split into smaller groups and were given 10 minutes to try and find the answers to a quiz on a tablet around the exhibits.

 

Finally, we went into the Planetarium and sat back to watch a show about an alien family trying to decide which planet they want to holiday on.  After the little movie our Stardome educator brought up on the screen what the night sky above Auckland will look like tonight and pointed out some of the different clusters of stars.

After lunch, group one had their chance to play on the playground and then it was back on the buses and we headed back to school.

Stardome have given us vouchers for a free child entry to a planetarium show which will be given out to the students on either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

If you'd like to do a bit of star gazing this week why not see if you can spot the International Space Station passing overhead?  Check out the times it passes over Auckland this week here: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/


A huge thank you to all the parent helpers who came with us, you're help was truly appreciated.

Cultural Groups

This term we have spent half an hour most Fridays learning a new dance as part of our Year 2 and 3 Cultural Groups.

From Kapa Haka to Pacifica, Line Dancing to Folk Dancing, Chinese Fan dancing to Indian dancing with a bit of Poi and Maori Sticks for good measure the students have learnt lots of different moves.  This has been great for fitness, understanding other cultures, co-ordination and team work amongst other skills.

Last week we got together in the hall to perform what we had learnt so far and show our friends our fab moves.

Here are a few photos of some of the performances.

Kapa Haka

Chinese Fan dance

Line Dancing

Poi

Maori Sticks

Monster Art

This term Mrs Dawe has been working across the Year 3 classes on a fabulous Monster Art project using fabric and paint.

The art is looking amazing, and the students have also produced some great writing about their monsters.

Today I sneaked in to class to see how the students were getting on and was really impressed with their attention to detail and creativity.

Well done Room 20, I can't wait to see the completely finished pieces.

Literacy Learning

As part of our literacy time we do warm ups that get us thinking about words.  This includes spelling, vocabulary, word families, blends, prefixes and suffixes, and much more.

On Wednesday the students really got their brains working when I challenged them to think of new words to replace the words big and small in the following sentence:

The pumpkin was big but the pea was small.

They certainly rose to the challenge thinking of lots of words they could use instead.

On Thursday we looked at plurals and how we change word endings when there is more than one of an item. We talked about how there are rules to help us know which ending to use, but there are also words that are exceptions to the rule.

Here are photos of our fabulous thinking.