Thursday, February 22, 2007

A new year!

Welcome to our blogsite if this is the first time you have viewed it. This site is updated each week by two students in the class with details of what we have been learning, upcoming events, and reminders.

This week I have decided to post the first blog.

We had the very successful swimming sports on Wednesday morning. Many students displayed a great deal of skill and a number of students demonstrated their determination to give anything a go. The staff were very impressed.

As you will have heard in the school newsletter, the highlight was when the whole school realised that the Year 6 boys were going to beat the Year 8 boys! The school was on their feet and screaming! So proud! What a moment! Congratulations!

We have had a very busy week with PAT testing. The students have completed four tests; reading comprehension, reading vocabularly, maths and listening. While standardised testing has its obvious downside, it does help us to gauge where students sit generally in the bigger scheme of things. These, along with individual testing where necessary, and testing for the Numeracy Framework, assist me to more accurately place them in appropriate groups for Reading and Maths.

On Tuesday of this week I was away with the Year 3/4 Rippa Rugby Team. I have taken over from Kurt Knoche as P.E. and Sports Co-ordinator. I will have other days out of the classroom on other such sporting trips (mainly in Term I and IV) but am setting up the routine in the classroom very simply and clearly so the class will barely miss me on these occasions.

As I mentioned in the note that went home last week, the culture of the class we have this year has impressed me already. We have a lovely quiet atmosphere in the class; focused for learning times and appropriately silly for some fun times. I think everyone is pretty excited about the year to come!

Some photos of the Eastbourne trip to finish. You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

All the best
Theresa Bowen
PS Please leave us a comment if you feel so inclined!