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Look at those smiles! After just a few sessions on the ice, our tamariki are already showing huge gains in confidence and developing some awesome new skills from their coach; stopping, turning, balancing, jumping and, most importantly, giving things a go! How lucky are they to have opportunities like this as part of their PE learning?! Building skills, confidence and resilience… one glide at a time! Imagine how skilled they’ll be after six more lessons! Our talented students have you covered! They created this tutorial for you in just 30 minutes! Watch their hilarious guide and remember, our school app is the main way we share important news, notices, and updates with whanau. See Anneke in the office if you need help downloading and working on it. In Room One we have been learning about ANZAC Day. We imagined ourselves as soldiers on the battlefield and wrote postcards home to our loved ones. We used our creativity and empathy to think about what life may have been like for the soldiers during the war. I had three beautiful tamariki come and share their writing with me this afternoon. This was after the ANZAC service that Te Kakano held yesterday. Their goals are individual and they could tell me exactly what they were - use finger spaces between each word and write sentences independently. They were so proud of their writing and are super excited that tomorrow their teacher will show this clip on the big screen in the classroom! All three had huge smiles with their Deputy Principal stickers either proudly displayed on their uniform or in their book. Ka pai tamariki, what awesome authors you are! Over the past week, students in Room 15 have been learning about ANZAC Day and the important role it plays in New Zealand’s history and identity. We have been focusing on helping students build a deeper understanding of not only the events of World War One, but also the impact war had on people, families, and communities both in New Zealand and around the world. To support this learning, students have been using a variety of texts and resources to develop their reading comprehension skills, including identifying key ideas, making inferences, and using evidence from the text to support their thinking. As part of our class learning, students have been brainstorming and discussing the ways war affected people both on the battlefield and at home. We talked about the challenges soldiers faced, the emotions families experienced, and the long-lasting effects on countries after the war ended. These discussions have supported students to think critically and empathetically about history and its significance. Yesterday, students worked together to unpack the meaning of remembrance and reflect on what ANZAC Day represents today. Here are some of the key ideas students explored:
“I learned some people who survived and came home from the war may have later died from injuries, and they suffered from PTSD” – Amaya Duggaraju “People risked their lives for us, ANZAC Day is to remember those who have fallen.” – Tama Duncan “I learned there is a purple poppy, to remember the horses and other animals that served in the war with the soldiers” – Billie-Mae Teachers have been learning about new ways to develop student’s understanding of the relationship between basic facts e.g. if you know that 2 x 4 = 8, you also know that 4 x 2 = 8. We are focusing on developing this understanding as well as maths vocabulary, between now and the end of the term. Teachers will be using whiteboards and materials to make this fun and engaging. Yesterday Room 12 had a go at listening to a word problem and being maths detectives, listening for the clues. Here’s what they learnt:
When a problem says ‘shared evenly’ it means to divide. The phrase ‘groups of’ means multiplication. When dividing, we always start with the biggest number. When multiplying, the biggest number always comes at the end - the product. The understanding of maths vocabulary and the ‘family of facts’ is crucial to all learning in the maths curriculum. When students know their basic facts, they can be more efficient problem solvers. Watch out in our upcoming newsletters for some news about how you can help at home! Check out our new WGS News Crew clip about Learning Journals! Some of you may be seeing your child's journal tomorrow, we encourage you to leave a comment and return to school at the start of Term 4. Our Learning Journals are a partnership between home and school, focused on your child’s progress and achievement in the wider curriculum.  Life Education is an organisation that provides health education programs for children, primarily in schools, with a focus on building self-esteem and teaching about the human body and healthy choices.
Life Education Trust aims to empower children with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about their health and well-being throughout their lives. Here at West Gore School we are lucky enough to have an annual visit from Pip and Harold, where each class gets 3-4 visits over the course of the week.
This week our West Gore Speech Finalists for years 4, 5 and 6 performed for our judges Mrs Stevens and Kristine Wallace.
They had some very persuasive, creative and entertaining topics. Issy was awarded first place, Layla second and Grace third. Good luck to these girls who will perform again in the Eastern Cluster final being held in the Hall at 10am next Tuesday. |
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