3D shapes

Te Ngahere Newsletter #5 - Term 2 Week 4

Mike Crawford — May 18th, 2025

Approaching halfway through the term, here is what's been up, what's coming up, and info about cross-country and our camp fundraiser.

Cross Country

This Tuesday 20th of May is the Te Ngahere and Te Maunga Cross Country! Our akonga have been training hard over the last few months, and we are looking forward to seeing all their training come into action next week.

Our Year 4, 5 and 6s will be running 2km and our 7 and 8s will be running 3km.

Our course is slightly different from last year, as is our order of races. We will be starting at 11am and aim to be finished before 1pm. Below is a rough guide to when the races will be.

If we have to cancel we will let you know as soon as we can, however as it is Cross Country we will be running the race in most conditions. Our P/P day is the 21st of May.

We would also like to encourage our students to run in their Whare Manu colours! Ensuring that it is appropriate running attire too! If not Whare Manu colours then school uniform is the other option. There will be a prize for the best dressed Whare Manu!

11am	Year 8 Girls
11.10am	Year 8 Boys
11.20am	Year 7 Girls
11.30am	Year 7 Boys
11.40am	Year 4 Girls
11.50	Year 4 Boys
12.00	Year 5 Girls
12.10	Year 5 Boys
12.20	Year 6 Girls
12.30	Year 6 Boys
12.50pm	Prizegiving

Any questions - Please email - Miss Fitzgerald

Book Week

Get ready for a fun-filled week celebrating reading and books!

The book fair will be open before and after school for children to bring whānau to browse and shop. Children will be able to browse the fair with their classes, filling in a wishlist to share with you at home.

On Thursday, classes will buddy read, be read to by a different teacher and of course, the best part of the day, have a Book Character Parade at 9.15 on the Te Awa quad! We would love whānau to come along and watch the fun. Students will also spend time with their whare manu groups in the afternoon doing book related activities.

Mathematics

Classrooms

This week, students will be learning about fractions, like three quarters and two thirds. We will be using some materials called Cuisenaire rods, which are lengths of plastic or wood. They look like this:

Your child should be able to name fractions of a given rod. For example, they might say that the light green rod is three fifths of the yellow rod.

There is an online tool that lets you play with Cuisenaire rods on this page:

https://mathsbot.com/manipulatives/rods

Hubs

The context of our 'houses' unit was used to develop concepts such as drawing and modelling 3-dimensional objects, using coordinate systems to locate position, and use geometrical vocabulary, like edges, vertices, and surfaces. Check out some work below:

Anzac Learning

As part of learning around Anzac Day, the classrooms wrote letters from the perspective of soldiers writing home to their families. They managed to capture the conditions of war and the longing to be back in New Zealand. Jessie chose to write her letter in Spanish, which she is learning at home, and then translated it back into English. Amazing job Jessie!	Anzac Letter
Anzac Cookies

Timestable Rockstar

Times Table Rockstar North Canterbury Tournament

Te Ngahere in the North Canterbury Times Table Rockstar Competition!

This year, Te Ngahere is excited to take part in the North Canterbury Times Table Rockstar Competition! It’s a fantastic opportunity for students to sharpen their times table skills while earning points for our class and school.

Students will be practicing during their allocated maths time at school, and are encouraged to continue at home if possible.

Competition Dates:
Monday 19th – Wednesday 21st May

Daily Game Time:
Each student can play for up to 30 minutes per day.

We encourage all students to get involved and give it their best effort. The goal is to have fun and improve their times table knowledge!

It is important to note that older brothers and sisters cannot help, and friends cannot use each others accounts to add to their score.

Leaderboards

Here is the current leaderboard across Te Ngahere with fierce competition knocking the Teachers out of the top 10.

Blake, Levi and Nixon break the coveted sub .7 mark while Tyler kicks the Teachers out of the Top 5 for good...For now...

A big shout out to our new Rock Heroes, Oliver, Arlen B, Arlen W, and Mikayla!

Matific

Check out our leaderboard for Matific - Our digital maths app for Te Ngahere that tackles all the strands of maths.

Big shout out to Mrs Hayes' class who dominate the leaderboard!

Change Unit - Dioramas and Triramas

The classrooms and hubs have created trioramas and dioramas. to showcase their learning and understanding of the Change Unit. Some of them made trioramas that depicted the changes to the urban area of Christchurch city after the devastation of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, and then made a second side of the triorama showing Christchurch after the rebuild. A huge amount of thought and creativity went into these designs.

Our Dioramas — Image by: nonzeroenfilade

Working Together

Te Ngahere 3 and 4 have been working together to experiment with and create movies using Stop Motion. They have made some clever and interesting animations with their buddy classes.

Welcome Back Miss Purves!

A big welcome back to Brooke Purves. Miss Purves took some time off for personal and bereavement leave. We are all really excited to have her back. Also, a huge thank you to Kerri Taylor who stepped in during Brooke's absence. Thank you, Mrs T, we couldn't have done it without you.

Swimming

Hello! Just a friendly reminder that swimming lessons will begin for the Te Ngahere Classrooms: Miss Fitz, Miss Purves, Mrs Hayes, and Miss Gardyne, in week 5 and 6. Please make sure to have all your swimming gear and uniform labelled clearly with your name. Thank you! More info will go out to these classrooms later in the week.

Swimming Lessons for Te Ngahere Hubs - Miss Wright, Mr Crawford, Miss Loose, and Mr O'Neill, will be in Week 8&9, more info to follow.

Camp Form

We are still missing under half of our students from the survey. If you have yet to fill out permission and your intentions for your child to attend camp, please fill out the form here.

Also check out the FAQ here slideshow here.

Camp Fundraiser

(see full article here)

Many thanks to a special school family business who have organised a camp fundraiser for the students attending camp this year!

The first aspect of this fundraiser will be a raffle for a trailer of wood. All students attending camp will receive an A4 sheet of raffle tickets which will be given out This Monday. Each sheet contains 20 tickets for students to sell. The sheet and payment must be given to Lucinda in the office to receive another sheet if this is required. The family will also be donating additional trailers of wood to sell on trade me with all funds going to the camp costs. ALL students will benefit from this fundraiser, and we would like to thank this gorgeous family for this generous donation!

Any Questions - Please email l.french@woodend.school.nz