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See What Has Been Happening Recently ………

Senior Production: The talents of our senior students and staff were showcased at

the end of Term production of “Once Upon a Time

Matariki Celebration: Arohatia te reo

Celebrating Matariki – the Maori New Year – has been a relatively recent

promotion in schools. At Hill, Jade Chamberlain and our Enrichment class led an

assembly to celebrate Matariki, the kapa haka group performed, and students from

the Enrichment class visited classes to present te reo.

A highlight was a Matariki Challenge led by Jade and a group of her students with

the whole school working in whanau groups

over the day to create a putiputi flower from

flax.

A number of classes also undertook their own

matariki activities.

In addition, Jade arranged a matariki sleepover

for the Enrichment class at the hall which

included rising early in the morning to view

the matariki stars (Pleiades or the Seven

Sisters) and also planting several fruit trees.

Cultural Mufti Day: We celebrated our Culture Concept

with a mufti day with a focus on “This is who I am” and

asked for a donation towards St John Pukekohe. There was

an excellent response from families including over $600

being donated.

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World Vision Concert: Our school choir performed at the Franklin World Vision

Kids for Kids Concert with Jackie Clarke. An excellent opportunity for our students

to perform on stage with a talented professional entertainer and “make a difference”

by raising funds for the work of World Vision. Special thanks to choir trainer

Wendy Bates.

Lest We Forget Assembly: On Monday, 4 August

we had a significant assembly at the school

flagpole. We remembered that this day, 100 years

ago in 1914, was the date when New Zealand,

declared war against Germany which marked our

entry into World War 1. A number of our

Ambassador students presented some of this history

that shaped our nation including that out of our

population of just one million, over 10 000 were killed and 40 000 wounded

between 1914-1918. We lowered the flag to half-mast as a sign of respect and

observed a minute of silence in memory of all those who served their country.

Mathex Competition: Year 5 – 6 classes arranged their own class practices and

teams for Mathex, as well as Malcolm Lawrence taking a number of students for

related practice. An exciting and enthusiastically supported school championship

was held in the hall and 2 teams were chosen to represent Hill at the Franklin

championships. We were very pleased at this year’s results with one team gaining

3rd place and the other 10th place from the 40 school teams entered. This event

continues to be a highlight for Franklin schools, and was won this year by a Waiau

Pa team. Special thanks to Malcolm Laurence and team who organised Mathex at

school.

Mathex teams 2014 gain 3rd and 10th places at Franklin Champs

Virtues Are Us: The first virtue to start the term is “Tolerance”, and the virtue to

end the term is “Honesty”. The posters are displayed in classes, and our virtues are

also on a virtues display board in the administration foyer. The ideas of each sheet

are reinforced in classes, through newsletters and Pipps reports, and at syndicate

and school assemblies. Newsletters also encourage discussion about the virtues at

home.

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NSW Testing Centre Competition in Computer Studies: This year, 9 senior

Year 4 – 6 Hill students sat the Computer Studies competition and achieved

pleasing results. Children are usually nominated by class teachers with final

selection by Malcolm Laurence, and with consideration of the relevant Gifted and

Talented identification document. Malcolm

also provides some tutoring for students before

the competition test. This year, 3 students

received top 25% Credit Certificates, Dezarn

Bin Farouk, gained a top 10% Distinction

Award, and Jeffery Tolmie won a top 1% High

Distinction. Other competitions and results in

English, maths, spelling and science are still to

be completed.

Pasifika Group: After discussions with Wesley College, we have again been able

to start a Pasifika cultural group with over 40 students involved each Wednesday

afternoon. It’s intended to invite whanau to a school assembly before the end of

term so children can perform for their families and the rest of school.

Lunch with the Principal: At the end of term, 25 students from across the school

were invited to “Lunch with the Principal”

This event is to celebrate the academic progress, great attitudes to learning and

virtues shown by these students. Following the luncheon, each student also

received a special certificate at our school assembly. The delicious lunch was

prepared and served by Mrs Smart and her Health Promoting student team.

CLASSROOM HIGHLIGHTS

This month, Classroom Highlights reports come from Room 13 teacher Sara Olsen

and Year 6 teacher Rachael Shaw.

Room 13: Kia ora, Bula, Talofa, Gidday and

welcome to Room 13.We are an Y1 classroom

of 11 boys and 9 girls. Our Classroom is a

learning zone. We know we come to school to

learn and we are responsible for our own

learning. We are enthusiastic learners who are

focussed and we consistently try our best. In our

learning zone we have rockets. Our rockets take

us on our learning journey to the stars. We

always try to stay in our learning rockets but sometimes asteroids try to intercept

our journey and we can go off course. So we try to avoid those asteroids.

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We are progressing well in our learning and

there is always exciting things to see and

experience. We loved the change concept as we

were able to experiment with many different

things. We were so fascinated with the milk

and dye experiment. We put some milk on a

plate and we put red, green and yellow dye into

the corners of the milk. We then put a cotton

bud into some washing detergent and slowly

put the cotton bud into the middle of the plate.

We watched as the dyes started to mix together and they made really amazing

patterns.

This term we are learning about our own culture as well as other cultures. It is so

interesting learning about other people’s cultures and trying and experiencing new

things. We have a cultural rotation with Room 10 and 27. Each week we celebrate a

different culture. In our first rotation we celebrated the Maori culture. We heard the

legend of the “Fish of Maui” and how Maui caught a big fish that became the North

Island of New Zealand. We made Maori headbands and sang waiata’s. We made

Maori bread which was yummy. We also learned E Papa with sticks.

This past week we learned all about Kiwiana. New Zealand has so many unique

things to celebrate. We have a special bird the “Kiwi”, we did some cool Kiwi

artwork and we learned about a drink called ”L & P” which is world famous in New

Zealand because it comes from a small place called “ Paeroa”. We made L & P

scones, which were yummy. In our next cultural rotation we will be learning about

the Indian culture.

We welcome visitors to our classroom, please come and visit anytime. We would

like to thank the board for all the support they give our school,

Yours warmly,

Mrs Sara Olsen and the lovely children of Room 13.

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Room 19 Highlights:

Room 19 has 31 students that are in full swing of a busy Term 3. Developing

independence and becoming motivated learners has been a major focus within the

class. The children have learnt that for them to be effective learners they must be

able to ‘own’ the learning process. Therefore we have spent considerable time

developing our goal setting and reflection skills.

Children are expected to understand themselves as learners and be able to identify

and use the traits of an effective learner. When asked the question, ‘what do great

learners do?’ they were able to confidently give a variety of responses.

These were some examples:

Take risks, ask for help when needed, they demonstrate determination, believe in

themselves, challenge themselves, accept failure, learn from their mistakes, reflect

on their work and go back and improve it, use initiative, never give up, follow the

success criteria, use knowledge for good, focus, go the extra mile, co-operate with

others, give 100%, make connections with the learning, choose the risky path – not

the safe path!, improve their skills, don’t settle for average, use imagination, be

creative, they strive to understand, they put themselves on the path to awesomeness!

The Culture concept has provided many exciting learning opportunities and allowed

many of the children to share their expertise about their own culture and learn about

other cultures around the world. A major skill focus has been to compare different

cultures with our own and the

children have been fascinated by

just how different other people

around the world live their lives.

We have also been developing

our skill of writing open

questions for inquiry.

An extension of sharing about

our own culture has been our

Treasures Exhibition that they are

excitedly preparing for the rest of

the senior school to view. The

children were able to identify a range of family treasures and talk confidently about

why they were valuable to them and their families. It was amazing what family

history and precious treasures were unearthed as a result of this unit.

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Writing has continued to be a major area of development this year and the class

have been benefiting from some excellent professional learning in the area of using

Assessment for Learning. We have consolidated our skills of identifying and using

a range of success criteria to help them become more successful in their writing.

They are also developing the skills to self-assess against them. The ability of the

children in Room 19 to talk about their learning and identify next steps has

improved greatly. Having the children taking greater control of their own learning

has been extremely beneficial. After identifying an overall weakness in our

development of ideas through the

use of exciting and precise

vocabulary, we have been working

really hard in class lessons to

improve this writing trait.

Mathex has had our heads reeling for the last few weeks as we have tried to get our

heads around some pretty curly math problems. In groups of 4 the class have been

becoming more proficient in putting much of their algebraic thinking skills into

practice as well as transferring their other math knowledge into new and varied

contexts. All the hard work paid dividends when one of our R19 teams won the Hill

School Mathex competition and another one came 3rd equal. Well done teams. 7 of

our class then continued onto the Franklin ASB Mathex Competition where we

placed 3rd equal and 10th out of forty teams.

The class have been heading off to Patumahoe

School each Tuesday to receive free swimming

lessons with Fulton’s Swim School. Increased

confidence, endurance and skill across the group has

been evident already. We have also been training

hard for Cross Country. Children have been

calculating the distances they train and have been

aiming to run the equivalent of a half of in some

cases a full marathon. All this training paid

great dividends.

We have already accomplished so much this

term; it is hard to believe that we are only half

way through!

Rachael Shaw Class Teacher