Monday 18th March

Today we started with oral language. Students shared with their talking buddies taking turns to share about their weekend, or anything else they wanted to share. Our focus today was on 'good listener' qualities. So, after each student had completed their sharing they rated their talking partner on their listening qualities (looking at the speaker, sitting sensibly, showing interest). Students were fantastic and I think every student earned a tino pai.

For writing we took the nouns from Jellie Park ( see photo from last week with all the nouns) and put them into sentences.

First we just used one of the nouns (although it ended up being two).
Then we used ...and ... to link two of the nouns.
Finally we made a sentence with two nouns using 'because' as a linking word.

We also proofread our sentences for [a] CAPITAL LETTERS are the start of the sentence and [b] fullstops to show the end of a sentence.

This is an important focus as students need to be able to use capital letters and full stops correctly, and independently by the end of year 4.

Here is a photo ( from camera girl Mya) of the sentences.

We then did 'timed writing'

Students wrote in the back of their story drafts (free writing section) on any topic they wanted. The aim was to write as much as you could in 10 minutes. After 10 minute we counted up the number of words, wrote that number beside the last word, and highlighted it in green. Next time we do 'timed writing' the aim is to write more words.

For good measure we used our green highlighters to highlight the nouns we used in our writing.

Handwriting

Today we looked at what we are aiming to be able to do by the of year 4. This includes sloping, flicking and linking - a writing style rather than a printing style. Today our focus was the " down and around" movement - letters using this include - n , m , h , k , r 

Assembly

This afternoon we had our fortnightly Kauri team assembly. At each assembly we give out a COMMUNITY award for a student who has best displayed this quality. Today it went to the wonderful Leanna. Here she is receiving her certificate. Well done, Leanna.