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
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!
All the left overs them went back into the compost and it began the cycle again!
PHOTOS FROM OUR RECENT KOANGA FESTIVAL
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!
PHOTOS FROM OUR RECENT KOANGA FESTIVAL
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