Elm Park School Newsletter - 27th September 2013 - Term 3 - Week 9

Friday 13 September 2013  – Term 3 Week 9

From The Principal

Kia ora tatou katoa, Talofa, Malo e lelei, Bula vi naka, Kia orana Nga mihi nui ki a koutou, Namaste, Nihao, greetings to you all. Welcome to Week 9, Term 3 2013.

This is the last newsletter for Term 3 2013. We have almost completed another incredibly busy term. The children and the teachers are looking forward to a well-earned break. Our students and the teachers have managed to cover an enormous amount of work and the achievement data will be entered by next term on the e-portfolios with evidence and teacher comments where applicable.

The weeks have been filled with Maths Olympiads, Mathex competitions, Gymnastics competitions, sporting competitions, cross country and Jump Rope for Heart to name a few. We hosted International students from Shinan County in Korea and Hoshino Elementary School in Japan. Our Kapa Haka students performed to a very large audience at the Koanga Festival at Macleans College as well as welcoming Powhiri’s for our Trainee students and visitors.

Next term we will be expecting a visit from ERO (Education Review Office) in Week 4, November 4-6 to review the school. We look forward to these visits as it is great to hear what their perceptions of our school and to show case how our students are performing.  We will be welcoming them on Monday morning 4 November with a Powhiri at 9.00 am.  You are most welcome to attend.

Enjoy the holidays.

Up coming events for Term 4

New Term starts  Monday             14 October.
School athletics day                      24 October
Talent Quest - Auditorium             31 October
                                                  12.30 pm & 6.45 pm
Inquiry Learning Show Case          5,6 November in Auditorium
ERO visit                                     4,5 & 6 November
Push Play Day                              8 November
Student Led Conferences               13 & 14 November
Character parade                          15 November       
Athletics Field Day (Interschool)   19 November 
Garage Sale Fundraising               23 November
Celebration Concert                      29 November 

Have a great weekend

Kind regards
Trish Plowright
Trish Plowright
Principal
Key Events For Your Diary
Fri 27 September..... Term 3 Ends
Mon 14 October...... Term 4 commences
Thur 13 December.. Term 4 Ends
Looking Ahead
Open an account at the ANZ Bank in the school holidays and you can bank every week at school with Mrs Kerr and the ANZ school bank tellers. The school bank is open on Wednesday mornings, before school in the Library.
This Week In Review

Room 20 and Room 22’s Beach Clean Up - On Wednesday 18th September rooms 20 and 22 went to the Rotary Walkway to take part in a beach clean up along the Tamaki Estuary. It is one of the top five dirtiest waterways in Auckland. This trip was linked to our work Inquiry work which has been looking at sustaining coastlines.

When we arrived at the coast the teachers and parents handed the gloves and the rubbish bags out so we would pick up the litter with them. We were also very fortunate to have Riley with us, from Sustainable Coastlines. We all started heading to the beach to start our beach clean up. Riley showed us a little thing called nurdles. Nurdles is the base product of plastic, he explained to us about this and how it can be harmful to our sea life.

People found all sorts of different rubbish, from a car tyre to bottle tops. When we came to the yacht club we carried out a sampling activity. We had to draw a one metre by one metre square in the sand with a ruler. In the area we chose we had to list the organic and nonorganic things in our square. We each had a sheet of paper. On the paper there was a grid and we had to measure with our ruler in the sand exactly where the things would be in our sheet of paper. Underneath that we would list the things we found.

After that we played around, in a near playground. This experience has all made a difference to us, and we should all stop littering.

The Mighty Wekas - Congratulations to Andrew Thomas (Captain, James Ladopoulos and Lachlan McClintock for winning the New Zealand Junior Rugby Festival 2013 in Taupo last weekend.  Andrew was also awarded the Most Valuable Player of the Tournament.
The Pakuranga Under 11 Wekas have won 102 matches on the bounce since 2008.
 Coach Dean Thomas says that they are “one of the best under 11 Teams in the country”. 
“There is no magic formula says Thomas: It’s just good teamwork and being together for so long”. 
Everyone at Elm Park School is extremely proud of these exceptional Sportsmen and we look forward to seeing them achieving great things in the future.



PRINCIPAL’S AWARDS - It was a pleasure to celebrate the effort made by the Term 3 Award Winners who have demonstrated perseverance towards achieving their personal best all term.  This was acknowledged in the Awards Ceremony at end of term Assembly yesterday.


Focus on Children

SAVE WHALES AND OTHER TAILS
Check out Room 16's antonym diamante poems!  A diamante poem is a poem in the shape of a diamond.  Each line used specific number and type of words such as adjectives and verbs.  It does not have a rhyme.  These ones use antonyms as the topic. Reported by Imani (Rm 22).







On Wednesday 11th of September Room 15 were VERY lucky to take our class trip to East Tamaki School to check out their amazing Garden to Table programme. We have been learning about Enterprise, with a focus on food so this was excellent opportunity to see some very clever entrepreneurs in action and also get a chance to ask them about some of our focus questions in our inquiry.



We were very impressed to see the very large gardens that they had full of vegetables! Half of us worked here in the garden and helped find worms in the composts to go in the soil to help the gardens grow. We also made our own mini worm houses!

The other half of us went to work in the kitchen where we used the vegetables that were grown in the garden to make some fabulous Vietnamese rice paper rolls, an orange and fennel salad and some lemon muffins. Not only was this a fantastic opportunity to see the way in which they use their vegetables, it was a great learning opportunity in many other areas; we used out maths knowledge to work out what fraction of the muffins we were allowed to glaze in our groups, we used our time knowledge to work out when to take the muffins out of the oven in 20 minutes, we did lots of measuring and we even learnt a little science about liquid and solid states!




After the food was cooked, we helped to clean up the kitchen and set the tables. We then all got together and we were all able to eat the food we made! It was fantastic! Nearly all of us tried something new we had never tried before. We found the fennel and orange salad interesting, it tasted a bit like licorice!
All the left overs them went back into the compost and it began the cycle again!


 PHOTOS FROM OUR RECENT KOANGA FESTIVAL

 


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