Student Led Conferences and Term 4 Update

Kia ora Tūhono whānau Just a reminder that we have a busy week ahead with Student Led Conferences after school and in the evening of Tuesday and Wednesday. There is no need to wait to be invited into the learning hubs - just come in with your child and find a place to sit and share together. We are really looking forward to sharing this time with you all. Ukulele classes will be held at the usual times that were happening before we joined the class together for our Festival Rehearsals. The first class at 3.20-3.50 and the second group, 3.50-4.20pm. We were so proud of the group that performed at the TSB Stadium last Thursday night and the accompanying singers in our choir were fantastic too. We will use this expertise at our end of year assembly to farewell our Year 6 students and our school community. Also on this week is our Puanga Festival on Friday. Tūhono has 26 students involved in this. We will be getting ready at school from 6.15am onwards. Our bus leaves to take our group to Waitara at 7.15am as we are one of the first groups performing. It will really be exciting to perform and also to have some time to watch some of the other groups perform as well. If you are able to help us with our ta moko application during that early hour, please let us know via our emails. Thank you to all of you who volunteered to help at Carnival - if you can spare one hour of the morning on the 10th please let us know and we will slot you into an activity. Many hands make light work. We are busy making our Carnival Art - if you have any craft gear such as buttons, bling, ribbon etc we would love any donations. We also have some students making 'robots' from tins and cardboard rolls and boxes so please send these in too. This includes lids from bottles too. There are a variety of crafts being designed and constructed. We can't wait to see how they turn out.

We hope everyone has had a wonderful Labour Day break - the term is speeding by and as we work together in our final term it is interesting to reflect and think about the skills and attitudes that have developed in a positive way within our student group. Our motto of 'choose kind' continues to be utilised in often unexpected ways and without adult prompting. We will continue to encourage this over our coming weeks. Lastly - thank you for the lemons. Some delicious lemon honey was made and I even resisted layering it on my Vogel's toast!!!!! If you want some, come buy at the Frankley School Carnival. Here is a little 'word' joke as the students in Tūhono have such amazing senses of humour!!!

Grocery Raffle - Let's Knock it Out of the Park!!!

The Frankley School Grocery Raffle is World Famous......and certainly depends on the generosity of our families. Have a good search through the pantry or pop a couple of extra items in your trolley to donate towards our raffle.

Some families send the groceries all at once or else you can choose to send them along by following the schedule. The Learning hub with the most contributions wins a 'Milo, Movie and Munchies' reward. We are certainly excited about Tūhono's chances:)

Ngā mihi nui

Kim and Anna

Mountain Artworks

Come in and see the wonderful artwork that was produced at our recent Govett Brewster Visit. Did your family get a chance to go into the Gallery or PukeAriki during the holiday break? Lots of hands-on learning activities such as the 'bat-cave' and predator trapping. Do we have native bats in Taranaki....why or why not. Is this something that we should be concerned about.

This will be an area of research and discovery that we are embarking on with learning linked to our Mounga. We tramped on it so we may as well find out as much as we can.

Tūhono is hitting the Town!!

Day Three on the Mounga

Check out this handsome and beautiful bunch of tamariki!!!

Our Beautiful Mounga

40 of our tamariki took a bus up to North Egmont today to take on the Veronica's Loop walk and also do some bush walking and survival with the help of TOPEC instructors.  What a beautiful day for our trip and all of our students took part positively and sensibly - even though we had to climb like a million steps but the view was worth it!!  There may be some tired bodies tonight :)  Check out some of our photos from today...

Mountain Trip Gear List

All You Need to Know to Survive Term 2!

Let's Get NZ Writing

Tūhono students hard at work putting together their postcard puzzle - ready to send away to St John's School in Rangiora. Stay tuned for our wonderful poetry that came about as a result of exploring some fantastic ideas.......

Week 9 - Feeling Fine!

Week 9  Update for Tūhono

Tēna koutou Tūhono whānau,

We are excited to be working with our Tūhono learners as we head into Week 9 of our 11 week term. Our students are becoming more adept at using their ‘trackers’ each day to record the tasks they are working on. They also have access to our weekly ‘wataka’ (timetable) to help them to plan and organise daily tasks. We aim to foster a growing sense of student voice and decision making in our learning hub.

WEETBIX TRYATHLON

Some of our students will be participating in this event on Tuesday.

We have sent out a Google Form link via email or you could complete by accessing the link here:

Weetbix TryAthlon Form

SWIMMING CELEBRATION

This Wednesday we are hopeful of going ahead with our Year 4-Year 6 swimming celebration at Highlands.
The weather is not looking that promising but we will try to go ahead with it if at all possible. If it is not possible
we will put a cancellation notice out close to 8.30 am. We will have Juicies for sale at the event ($2).
Ensure your child has lots of warm gear to wear and lots of snacks and water to see them through the day.
Check entries for the events in your child’s wataka (timetable).  Click on this link for more details.

SEESAW LEARNING JOURNALS

This year Frankley School has decided to move to online learning journals rather than blogs.  We have carried out a
lot of research into the benefits of using such a programme and Tūhono trialled it last year with great success.  
You will be receiving an email this week with instructions on how to sign up to your child’s account online or
through an app that you can download onto your devices.  All whānau can be invited to your child’s account,
so if they have grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins etc. that want to see their learning, sign them up too.
These online journals will carry on with them each year and are able to be downloaded when your child leaves
Frankley School.  Find out more about Seesaw by clicking on this video.

WHĀNAU PHOTOS

Another special display that we have in our classroom is our whānau wall.  This is a place where we show off and
are proud of all of those people that help us in our learning, because the students and we, as teachers, could never
do it alone.  Thank you to those families that have already sent their photos in. We are looking forward to seeing
more of them. Could you please send along a beautiful family photo with your child for us to hang on our wall,
or alternatively you can email it to Mrs T or Mrs Cribb for us to print it for you.

READING

We are now usually starting our day with reading. Get your child to show you this week’s wātaka (timetable)
which the students receive each Monday via their own email. This may be reading text from a book or from an
online source. We have many students who are using EPIC and some amazing new facts and vocabulary are being
discovered.  Click here to check it out.  Can you please check that your child does still have a reading bag (keeps
the books waterproof) for library books or if your child has a browsing box to choose books from school to take
home.

Our Chapter Chat novels are underway and have proved to have some fantastic storylines that we are able to
relate to. The ‘Wonder’ novel is still going and the ‘Mouse and the Motorcycle’ group will be moving on to
‘Runaway Ralph’ which is an offshoot from the first story. Twitter has not always been our friend as it has locked
us out when we all try to access it but we are persevering as all great learners do!! The exposure to new vocabulary,
themes and ideas have allowed us all to explore some very meaningful ideas around relationships and friendships
which has fitted in perfectly with the needs of our students as we move through this first term.

WRITING

We are enjoying exploring a variety of vocabulary as we select appropriate words for our camp poems and thank
you letters and also for our shared writing that we are sending down to South Island Schools as part of our ‘Let’s
Get NZ Writing’ initiative. We will post images regarding this after next week as our work goes to schools in
Dunedin and Ranfurly. We receive work back in return. Making connections across NZ is particularly exciting
and gives an authenticity to our writing. We are also doing individual writing samples this week which we will
co-analyse with the students so that we can collaboratively set writing goals together.

MATHS

We kicked off this term with a focus on Symmetry and used the traditional tapa cloth as inspiration.  We have had
fun discovering words such as rotation, symmetry, translation, reflection… Our fractions knowledge is also being
explored and stretched in our math workshops and we are also working towards helping each student to choose
their own personal goal for their math knowledge. Students are consulted individually so during our math sessions;
we have one teacher teaching a workshop and the other working with individual children/groups on their goals.
We also have learning Assistants in our room during our math times. Learning is accessed in a variety of ways
including our on-line classroom, selected worksheets and activities to support the chosen goals. This allows
students to work with others who have the same goal as them and to personalise their own learning as much as
possible. We then have activities linked to these goals as well as workshops available with teachers.   
Online Classroom

KAPA HAKA PERFORMANCE GROUP (Kahikatea Rōpu)

We are now into the business end of Kapa Haka with a group of about 60 tamariki rehearsing each week as well as
whole school sessions.  We currently have 25 of Tūhono involved in the rōpu (group) and we are very proud of
their efforts in giving Kapa Haka a go. They do have weekly home learning in the form of practising their words
and actions for waiata and these can always be accessed through the Kahikatea Kapa Haka blog.  
Kahikatea Blog for Kapa haka   

TŪHONO LEADER

Each week we will have a class leader who will be doing all of the very important duties such as answering the
telephone (it is surprising how many of our students have never done this) and being our class messenger.
Shiloh is proudly wearing the badge as she completed the first week of duty.

HOUSEKEEPING

Although we are not perfect, we do try hard to keep our students and whānau informed about upcoming events and
expectations. We are still chasing some families for responsible user agreements for accessing our school
internet/devices and some BYOD agreements as well. We also appreciate those students who are consistently
bringing their own devices each day.

Week 9 Events:

Monday Writing Samples (please all  BYOD devices to school please)

Tuesday Weetbix TryAthlon  (some of our students participating)

Wednesday Swimming Celebration at Highlands

Thursday Rippa Rugby sessions  (all to participate during day)

Friday Te Puāwai Whakangahau 2.15-2.45

Remember if you want to chat or just have a question, feel free to email us or drop in to catch up with one of us or
both of us! Thank you also for all of the lovely messages regarding the upcoming addition to the Trinder family -
it is most appreciated.

Ngā mihi nui

Anna and Kim

anna@frankley.school.nz

kim@frankley.school.nz

A good reminder about sharing GREAT writing together. We are well underway with our two Chapter Chat Novels - 'The Mouse and The Motorcycle' and 'Wonder'. Ask your child about the storyline and characters. We are working on comprehension and vocabulary extension everyday. We also link in with other students across NZ every Friday morning as we share our learning together.

What's Up in Tūhono this week??

Camp Vertical Horizons - all you need to know!

All About Tūhono

What to ask my child.......

Some great questions to ask your child at the end of a school day which may be great conversation starters....

Stationery List

Thank you to all of you who have organised stationery. We should be ready to start using this next week. Some of you are covering books this weekend (not compulsory) so here is a list of the subjects to include on the labels. My Literacy Book 3 - please label 'Literacy' My Literacy Book 3 - please label 'Tracking' My Everyday Book - please label 'W.I.T. My Everyday Book - please label 'Maths 1' My Everyday Book - please label 'Maths 2' 3B1 Notebook - please just name with your child's name Everything else to be named please which may mean you need to use tape on some on the pens as vivid rubs off so easily. If you are having trouble, we can help out back at school on Monday.

Introducing Mrs Cribb........

Introducing Mrs Trinder...

Welcome Back to Term 1!