Welcome to week 9

    

Kia ora whanau,

We all hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend with your family and friends and managed to relax and put your feet up. 

Congratulations to Peyton Riri, Amoe Wharehinga and Manaia Haenga who represented Te Tairawhiti at the Maori Netball Nationals in Hamilton this weekend. We look forward to the girls sharing the highlights of their trip at our team hui on Wednesday morning. 

Last week Matua Puri took 24 members of our syndicate to Tolaga Bay for the Uawa Waka Ama regatta. Turanganui would like to sincerely thank Matua Bruce Campbell for offering to train our children and for guiding them for their events. All of our students came back buzzing and eager to race again. Some of our students were first timers and their confidence soared through this experience. Thanks so much to all of our awesome whanau who helped transport to and from Tolaga too. The children absolutely loved it! Check out Matua Puri's highlights video in our last blog post.

Here are most of our gorgeous waka ama crews...trying to get this bunch to all face the right way and smile at the same time on a chilly morning was not an easy task......Nonetheless we had fun doing it.

Unfortunately, our touch teams did not get to travel away last Wednesday and Thursday due to the stormy conditions across the North Island. Pictured above and to the right are the Turanganui students who made these teams. 

All of these awesome students did not let this get them down, kept  smiling and got on with what was happening back at school. Hopefully they will still get to compete against other schools in the future. 

Last week Mrs Devery needed some support with a situation in the playground and these fantastic young men came to her aid. It is fantastic to be a part of a team who really look out for one another and so many of our Turanganui students are striving to follow our school values 

Congratulations to all of our awesome triathletes who competed in last Tuesday's school event. We were proud of you all and will now focus on the next whole school event which is the cross country to be held at the end of term 2. Check out this neat triathlon video made by Mr Fourie.

Respect, Integrity, Self Management and Excellence 

as well as our Turanganui values

Manaakitanga, Whakawhanaungatanga and Kotahitanga

Everyday we see so many examples of the children living and breathing these core school and team values and it makes all of the Turanganui teachers very proud. 

Team Certificates
Below are our new team certificates that feature two very important pieces.To the left is a beautiful Pukaia that Matua Walter carved for our team. This taonga will be presented each week by our syndicate leaders 'The Tekau ma Rua' to our most deserving student. Matua Walter spoke to our team last week about the significance of this taonga. 
The Pukaia has been placed in front of a piece of artwork also created by Matua Walter that is situated in three panels outside room 14. These art pieces have segments of 'Hautoto' inscribed on them and Matua Walter will be teaching the Tekau ma Rua who will then teach their classes this Moteatea/Karakia/Tauparapara that has a huge significance to our region through the Horouta waka. This also connects to the lessons all of Turanganui did with our Museum staff at the beginning of the year. We will get our students to relay their learning on their personal blogs throughout the year. All classes aim to have these set up by the end of the term as we will be sharing a lot of assessment data this way regularly and all students will be doing weekly goal setting and reflections for you to follow at home. 

In week 11 we will be holding our learning conferences and would love to see 100% of our whanau so we can celebrate your child's all round progress to date. Next week, a term 1 summary report will be sent home that tracks your childs progress in relation to the national standards. We ask that you bring this report along with you to the learning conference where we will set goals together. All Turanganui teachers will be emailing an online booking sheet out to their whanau on Wednesday if they have not done so already. We will make phone contact with our whanau who are not accessible via email. We look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks for these 20 minute conferences.

What's happening in Turanganui this week?

Tomorrow our students begin a new cycle of tech. Please look at the roster below to make sure you have all of the gear you need. 

Wednesday

Tech - 1st Session of new tech class

Thursday

Tech 2nd session of new tech class

Friday

Assembly

Kapa Haka

Kapa Haka Extension

Tech Extension

BOP/PBLake Swim

Reminders

If your child has not yet paid their $2 for the Mindlab visits a couple of weeks ago could you please give this to their classroom teacher asap. 

What are we working on at the moment?

1: Influential Person Project 

Please scroll through this project outline and marking guide for one of our team projects due at the end of next week. We have been covering lessons in class that pertain to this project and will have the finished pieces out for show during our learning conferences. The students had to select someone they were passionate about and who also inspires them. 

2:Reading Strategies - Through Values

• Main Idea
• Summarising
• Note Taking
• Inference
• Silent Reading - Reading for Enjoyment

Our Current Class Shared Readers

• Room 19 - Cry of the Taniwha
• Room 20 - Willie Apiata

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• Room 21 - The Whale Rider
• Room 22 - 2Much4U
• Room 24 - A Handful of Blue

3: Statistics, Number and Problem Solving for Maths

• Otago Problem Solving is coming up in the last week of school for our extension students. 
• Turanganui will also be offering our own extension groups for Writing and Maths. Writing begins this week and our students were selected based on their in class work and start of year writing samples. 

4: Collaborative Creative Challenge
Students are working in mixed ability teams to create a team performance. We aim to showcase these at a week 11 celebration of our learning/term 1 shared lunch on Friday the 15th April. 

5: PE Hauora - Health Unit

This has been very successful with a number of students actively working toward being more active and upping their personal bests each time. In term 2 we will look at doing some whanau hauora challenges too so keep your eyes peeled on our blog for more info. If you work in the fitness, healthcare sector we would love to hear from you regarding ideas on what to teach our kids in this area so they are fit, healthy and ready to learn.

Well that's all for now but please check back each day incase there are updates. We look forward to seeing all of our Turanganui Taonga on Wednesday.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa
Your Turanganui Teachers