LS7

We have loved settling into Term 3 with our fabulous LS7 students. It was great to see everyone return refreshed after the break and ready for new learning. The students have been grouped differently to support learning across the studio and allow new friendships to form. After a few tweaks here and there, we have enjoyed these new dynamics and supporting students in developing new friendships. 

Art
This term our students have started their calendar art. They were able to choose from pixel art, paint dot art, or native bird stencilling. We have enjoyed exploring the new artistic skills that these pieces have involved and the children have been very proud of the work that they have produced. Look out for this calendar art on the walls of our studios during Whānau Forum next week.

New Zealand History
Across the school our students are learning about New Zealand History. In the Senior School we are focusing on early encounters between Māori and Pākehā and seeking to understand how these contributed to the Treaty of Waitangi. This week our students are visiting The National Library to explore this part of our history further. Our writing and reading programmes have also revolved around these early encounters. Your children are looking forward to sharing their retellings of the famous Tahitian navigator Tupaia’s journey to New Zealand with you.

LS7 have enjoyed having kapa haka sessions with Whaea Vikki on Thursdays. It has been great to see Gianni, Leon and Rose taking on leadership roles and teaching the senior students traditional Māori waiata as well as a Samoan sasa. 

Maths
Our maths programme has centred around fractions and decimals in the last few weeks. One of our most popular fraction challenges was the Lolly Snake Game where students had to strategically line up behind a plate of lolly snakes before calculating how to share these out evenly with the students in their line using fractions. As understanding fractions links closely to understanding decimals, we then moved on to exploring how to represent tenths and hundredths as decimals. We used a range of materials to help the students explore these ideas and we could not be prouder of their engagement with this challenge.

As always please get in touch with any of the LS7 teachers if you have anything that you would like to discuss about your child. We are looking forward to seeing you at Whānau Forum next week!

Melinda, Laura and Sarah

LS8
We’ve been lucky enough to have a trip this week. LS8 and a few students from LS7 were the first to go down to the National Library in Parnell and explore some new ideas around New Zealand history. They put on a real show down there and we learned about navigation, the early history of New Zealand, as well as a bit of local history. The highlights were the chance to don some history appropriate costumes and act out a few pivotal moments in our shared past. Thanks to all our parent helpers who allowed us to take this trip.

We’ve also been working on a new art project. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been using paper-mache and making our own masks inspired by some we studied from East Africa. It’s a pretty messy way to spend our time and not all students love dipping their hands in the paste, but the masks are really coming together well. And, just like always, we were really happy to see such a broad range of artistic styles emerging.

Moving on to writing. We read a funny book about a real guy called Tricky Vic who was a con-artist. This inspired us to try and plan a kind of ‘heist’ or ‘con’ of our own and write this up as a story. We found out that it’s really hard to come up with a clever, complicated scheme. We will have these bound up in a book for you to peruse when you come along to Whānau Forum. We’ve also been crafting some quirky “Quick Writes” which have stretched our students' creativity, as well as their empathic thinking, with some excellent results.

During maths, we have been exploring probability and developing an understanding of chance, odds, and the likelihood of events occurring. No Lotto numbers this week though, sorry! Learning about risk-taking and chance by playing “Greedy Pig” was lots of fun and also very noisy. Most recently we’ve started working on some new activities involving decimal numbers.

We look forward to seeing you at Whānau Forum next week,

Terry and Peter

CAMP
Preparations are well underway for camp. Thank you so much to those of you who were able to attend our Parent Information evening, either in person or online. It was great to be able to share information with you and to respond to your questions. Your own knowledge and support can only enhance the Westmere Camp Experience for your child.

Thank you to parents who have registered to attend camp as a volunteer helper. We still have a few spaces available for either the full week (Mon to Thurs, staying overnight) or as a day helper. The final date for registration is next Friday 14th Aug. You can register online via this link registration form, or paper forms are available at the school office.

Please remember to return your child’s completed Consent form and Medical form as soon as possible.

Whānau Forum
Whānau Forum bookings are now open. We have made some changes to this year's format. Your session will be half an hour this year but with half the number of families in the room. We felt that a shorter sharper burst of time may help the children to share the things that they are really proud of (rather than every page of every book 🙂) while still giving you the opportunity to have a chat with one of their teachers.

Wednesday and Thursday 12-13th August
Classes finish at 12:40pm Thursday 13th August
Karma Kids will start from 12:40pm that day.
Book Here or go to schoolinterviews.co.nz and enter the code: nkgyr