3rd December, 2012

Mr Abraham taught for all of November and now he is back at College. We might see him again.
We did some pictures in Art with him about half-men/half-bird creatures.
We have been in "Production Season." Our two nights were as great as we predicted. We have also been to the Juniors, Seniors, Logan Park High School and it is the week of the Models. The Models had a Bake Sale for their production.
It is nearly the holidays, only 11 more days at school after today.  It is also nearly Christmas time, 22 more sleeps.  Lots of children went to the Santa Parade yesterday.
Today we are going to redo our Printing sample that we did in February.  Will it be better?  We hope so.
Next Friday on our reports it will tell us which class and which teacher we will have next year.
We have made our Duty pictures and talked lots about Duty.
Paige is in Thailand and India and she sent us an email with an elephant in it.
Merry Christmas to all.

Term 4

We have a new boy called Marc.  He comes from Quebec and French is his first language.  When Mr Abraham was working with us last term we made scraffito painted landmarks which you can see in our room.  Mr Abraham taught us for 3 weeks at the end of Term 3 and will be teaching us for most of November.  We have had the 2 weeks holiday break and Labour Day weekend very close together.
Last term some of us were in the music night called "Georgestock".  We are all studying about fractions in Maths.  The new value of the term is Duty.   It is really about all of the other values together.  It is a bit darker in out classroom because we have a sunshade over the lunch area.  R13 are having a Bake Sale on Friday to raise money for a poor school in Nepal.  Miss Clarke is going there at Christmas time.
We are very, very, very busy working on our Production.  It has singing and dancing in it and it will be on in the School Hall on Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th November at 7pm.  Room 17 parents are invited on the Wednesday night.  It will be fantastic, awesome, exquisite, exciting, splendid, wonderful, amazing, fun, excellent and funny.

10th September

We have finished talking about the Olympics, but now the Paralympics have been on and we talked about that.  Susie Bates - Captain of the New Zealand women's cricket team, and Sheldon - from North East Valley cricket club, came to give us some cricket coaching.  We all got a "goodies"bag.
There is going to be a Black and White disco this Friday 14th September because the All Blacks are playing in Dunedin at our Stadium.  We want money for our new Pasifika Group's T-shirts.  Mums and Dads and children can buy T-shirts for $25 until the end of the term.  You can order them at the Office.  Y3 have written their "Moment in Time" pieces and we had the class competition.  It was very hard to choose the two to represent R17 at the semi-finals.  It was Paige and Alex.  Y2's chose a favourite or fantastic poem to practise and share with the class.  Poor Mrs Phillips, Mr Abraham and Claire or Mel will have to choose three to share at the Junior Poem Day.  We have done the Art for our Calendars so Mum and Dad will be able to order these soon.  In Reading we did something different.  We had to choose a book, read it twice then fill out a "point of view" book review.  We put them into two clearfiles on the Topic Table to share.  Mrs Phillips thought we did an amazing job, most of the time.

27th August

We won Henry the Hippo for a week because we worked together as a class.  Ihu one one manaakia tangata.  We are trying to practise athletics because we are having a Sport's Day soon.  The weather has been going crazy, sometimes cold and rainy and sometimes hot and sunny.  We had Maths in the Hall, all the middle team, to practise very fast adding and subtracting and some groups did multiplication too.  We still have had some sickness so we keep practising coughing into our elbows.  Mr Abraham is away this week but when he comes back he is with us for the last 3 weeks of the term.  When Mrs Phillips is away we get Mrs Faulkner to look after us.  Mrs King can't do it as she is in R22 now.  We have a new Cultural Swap it is in R16 with Mrs Spencer and it is maori.

Cross Country

Yesterday we had our cross country.  We got a number on our hand when we finished to show where we came.  The Y2's did one lap and the Y3's did two laps.  There were four hay bale jumps.  Everyone had a great time and we were well behaved.  We have started the School of Fitness.  We do exercises and will go every second week.  On Friday we will start Term 3 Electives.  We had 13 activities and we got four choices.  today we will find out which group we are in.  We have published our holiday stories.  You can come into R17 to read them.  We have been watching the Olympics and at the moment we have got eight medals.  We keep track of them on our chart.  In our class we have had some illnesses. One of them was 'flu (influenza).  Seven children were away for all of last week and on two days 10 children were away.  most of us are still coughing but we know how to cough into our elbow and how to wash and dry our hands to kill as many germs as possible.  Caleb has gone back to Australia with his family.  We will miss his smiley face, so we are emailing him.

Welcome to Term 3.

We are talking about our new value Obedience.  We are going to have a new Learning Centre at our school.  Have a look at the plans in the corridor outside our door.  Mrs Phillips bought some new games for our class to play on wet days.  Thank you to the PTA for the money.  Our new College Teacher is Mr Abraham.  We are very pleased that he will be with us until the end of the year.  We have been learning about the Olympics.  They start on Friday night on London time which is Saturday morning on New Zealand time.  At Wicked Writing Time three people get to go on the computer.  We had a disco for book week last Friday night.  The disco was dark, fun, awesome, noisy, colourful, musictastic, fantastic and 100 percent great.  We also had a book character dress-up day on Friday.  The desks in our classroom have been switched around.  Mrs Phillips said it was the fairies but we think it might have been Mrs Phillips!

The holidays are very near!

We are very excited that the holidays are getting close.  We have finished our Electives for this term.  Last Friday we shared our electives with the whole team.  We have enjoyed ourselves.  What will be the choices for term 3?  Mrs Yeoman was in R17 for Maths today and she will be here with us tomorrow.  In Drama we have been exploring tension and focus.  We have been acting like Olympic athletes.  Last Friday the whole of G.S.N.S. was invited to go ice skating.  About half our class went.  It was cold and crowded, but fun!  We have started writing about a picture and describing it.  We are trying to make our writing interesting and descriptive.  Our new value for next term will be Obedience.  Sadly, our College Teacher Miss Hannah, will leave us on Friday.  We hope we will get a new one who is just as good as she has been.  We will miss her heaps.
For parents who wanted more maths websites go to:  
gsns-middleteam.wikispaces.com
or magicmaths.wikispaces.com

Term 2 Week 8

Assembly was amazing and awesome.  Mrs Phillips and Miss Hannah and Mel were very, very proud of us.  We have been sharing our learning commitments with the class.  We have learned lots.  Our class has finished "Kitchen Chemistry" and now we are going to talk about "The Olympics" and London.  We are on a new Cultural Swap.  It is playing the ukelele with Miss Greer.  Electives are continuing.  They are awesome, going well, exciting, interesting, terrific and cool fun.  Miss Hannah taught us the fun Fitness game called "Shopping List."  Miss Hill comes to our class on Tuesday Afternoons while Mrs Phillips gets some work done.  Parents should look out for Interview notices very soon and reports after that.

May in Room 17

We have been enjoying doing "Kitchen Chemistry".  Come along on Thursday night 5.30 - 7pm to see our experiments.  We go to soccer lessons on Wednesdays and we have learnt a lot about soccer.  We have a lovely College Teacher called Miss Hannah.  She will be with us until the end of the Term.  She has a special game to choose a good worker for the day.  We had the New Zealand Playhouse come to visit us and do a play about Cyber bullying.  The play was funny and the actors were good.  The message was important.  Last Thursday we had six College teachers come to watch us talk about disasters.  We are making our own disaster pictures to share at the next Assembly.  We are working in three groups at Writing time. Have you read our published holiday stories yet?
On Friday 1st June we will be the class of the week at Assembly.  Come along to see us at 2pm.

Welcome to Term 2.

It is the Winter term and Mrs Phillips said don't forget to bring your jacket every day as the weather is very changeable.  You leave your sunhat at home until term 4.  We have two new College teachers for two weeks.  They are Miss Cleaver and Miss Wiffen.  They have been reading books to us and taking printing.  The value for this term is Compassion.  Soon it will be Electives.  We choose something to do every Friday, for seven weeks.  There will be no more Jump Jam or team singing for a while.  Our new topic is "Kitchen Chemistry" and we will be experimenting.  We had last Wednesday off for ANZAC Day.  We talked a lot about it.  Cultural swap is now on Thursdays and we go to Room 11 to do Art.  It is Winter Sports time now and Summer Sports are over.  Our Maths classes have been doing Temperature for the start of the term.  We went to a Show called "Rhythm Interactive".  We all got a drum to use.  It was an excellent show.

Easter 2012 as dictated by R17

Tomorrow is the last day of school for Easter and the holidays.  We have been buying poppies this week for ANZAC Day which is on the 25th April, early next term. This is also a holiday from school.  Some of us have been playing drums and guitars with Mr Galloway.  Mrs Phillips has been to some meetings, but we have been very happy to have Mrs King, from R4 last year, to teach us.  Last time she was here we turned our autumn poem into a picture.  We have been busy writing so we all have new WALT's in our Storywriting books.  When it was International day we all dressed up and it was really fun.  We had a parade in the hall.  Today was the last Cultural Swap to Room 12 for computers.  Most of us thought it was terrific.  Every Thursday we put our poem of the week into our books to take home.  Tomorrow is our last day for our college teachers.  Next term they will go to new schools and we get a new college teacher.  Winter sports notices have been out as we have finished the summer sports.  Yesterday we had a fire drill practice and next term it might be a lockdown practice or another fire drill.  We need to be ready for the real thing if it happens.  Happy Easter and restful holidays everyone!

March in R17

We are enjoying mixing with the other Middle team classes for maths.  Our topic is Keeping Ourselves Safe and Constable Parcell has been to talk to us about it.  We are taking home sheets to do for homework.  The computers in the classroom are used in the mornings and wet days for playing games.  At reading time we do Lexia on them and soon we will be using them at maths time.  All the year 3's got to do a typing activity and they will practise some typing one day a week at WWT soon.  In writing we have been doing character descriptions.  We have met some amazing characters.  It has been fun.  We are getting our Time to Shine books ready.  Our College Teachers, Miss Kennedy and Miss Letica have been taking reading and maths groups, fitness, printing, stories and the start of the day.  On Wednesdays we go to Miss Potter in R12 for computer time at Cultural Swap Time.  Mrs Phillips says we are very busy and working very hard.  She also would like to thank all the parents for their time in coming to the Learning Commitment interviews.

What's new in our room?

Swimming has finished.  It was: wicked, awesome, fantastic, good, hard work, cool, great, nervous, fun, cold when you first get in, and sometimes hot.  Mrs Phillips said it was wet as she got splashed lots!
We have missed Fitness and Healthy Food Snack because of swimming.  We have just finished Probability as a part of our Statistics.
We are now all mixed up in our Numeracy classes.
Our new College Teachers for this term are Miss Kennedy and Miss Letica.  We like working with them.  They will be with us until Easter.
At Middle Team Assembly we talked about Respect and the teachers gave out Wicked Writing Awards.

The children in Room 17 tell Mrs Phillips what to write.

We have new people at our school in our class.  Only three people were in Room 17 last year with Mrs Phillips. All the rest of us came from the Junior school.  In Room 17 we are very lucky to have 2 teacher's aides, Claire in the morning and Mel in the afternoon.  We are going to the Art Gallery next week.  Next Friday we start our swimming at the D.N.I. pool.  In Maths we are doing Statistics and learning about bar graphs.  We like this.  Come and see our t-shirts hanging on the line in our room.

Welcome to 2012 in Room 17.

Here we are learning to work as a team.  Are we doing a good job?