Week Eight - Be Respectful by Listening to All Adults.

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

Just a quick update and message this week! Please remember that we have our Beach Education Day on Tuesday next week!  This will be an amazing day and will provide the students with many learning opportunities! Please ensure that if you have any of these things that you bring them; a hat, a pair of sunglasses, sturdy covered in shoes and some sunblock. If you do not have these things or are unable to get a hold of one or all of these things the school will be able to provide hats and sunscreen.

If any parents or whanau over the age of 18 would also like to attend please feel free to approach me at any time before or after school!  Any extra help is much appreciated!

I hope you have had a great second to last week of school and have an amazing weekend!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Seven - Look After the Environment and Equipment

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

It has been great getting to complete Numeracy and Literacy testing and seeing how far the children have come since the start of the year! Every student has made positive movements towards National Standards and it is so pleasing to see that they are also enjoying their learning.

There are a couple of important dates to keep in mind over the coming week.  Tomorrow (Friday 1st December) we have the Junior School Athletics Prizegiving, next Wednesday evening we have the Christmas Concert and next Friday is the school Leavers Assembly.

Please if any whanau would like to assist with the Beach Education trip on the last Wednesday of the term please let me know.

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Six - Being Respectful by Following Instructions from Adults Straight Away

Kia ora whanau,

The end of this week has marked another step in the students learning journey for 2017. The students have done so well this term and their effort should be commended. Even though there are only three more weeks this year, the students continue to work very hard to achieve to their upmost potential.

Some of the important dates to keep in your diary for the upcoming week include; the Athletics Sports Prize-giving and the whanau gathering. Don't forget also that we have our Beach Education Day in Week 9. If you would like to be a parent helper please get in contact as soon as possible.

I thought that this week it would be a really cool opportunity to post some photos of the akonga from across the year and to highlight some of the amazing learning which we have completed in 2017. 

Nga mihi,

Nick Shimasaki

Week Five - Being Respectful by using 'Kind Hands, Kind Feet and Kind Words'

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

What a fun week the students have had!  The effort and participation during the Linwood North School Junior Athletics was commendable and it seemed like all of the students had a great time!

Please see some of the wonderful photos taken during the event.

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Four - Athletics Day and Show Day

Kia ora whanau and caregivers, 

Coming up in the following week we have two very important events. The first is the annual Linwood North School Junior Athletics Day and the second is the Canterbury A&P Show. 

I send out a warm welcome to any whanau or caregivers who would like to attend the Linwood North School Junior Athletics Day as I know how much it means to the tamariki seeing their; mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandads and caregivers out there supporting them. 

The Canterbury A&P Show is also a great event for putting the students into some 'real' learning scenarios. Not only do the children get to experience some great kai and entertainment, it is an opportunity for them to learn more about animals and the things they require for their care.

Finally, the homework which was given out today and will be due back next week. This is due to sickness among Room 5 staff and it being a short week next week. I felt that the fairest approach to the homework would be to hand it out today and give the students the rest of this week, the weekend and next week to complete it (but don't forget it will be due on Wednesday or Thursday of next week!).

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I can wait to see all of the students again on Monday!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki 

Week Three - Back into Normal Routine and Beginning to Practise for Junior School Athletics Day

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

What a week it has been! This feels like the first true week of summer with such consistently hot weather! Either that, or we didn't notice it last week as we were in the pool! 

I hope everyone has had a wonderful week and has got the opportunity to do some cool things to keep their minds engaged. At school the children have been working exceptionally hard to settle back into the normal routine after swimming. As the time until the end of the year creeps ever closer, Mrs Mackie and I are working exceedingly hard alongside the learners to try and help them to surpass all of their learning goals for Term 4 and blast into Term 1 of 2018. They are doing well so far and need to maintain this momentum going into next year.

Please remember to complete the weekly spelling and reading with your tamariki as they will earn 2 house points if it is complete and handed back in before Friday!

Below are some photos of your tamariki at AquaGym which we not ready to share last week when the blog was posted:

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Two - Taking Advantages of all Learning Opportunities and Growing our Knowledge of Swim Safety

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

With it being a short week, this week has been jam packed and full of excitement for all of the learners!

Not only did they get to enjoy swimming, in our explanation writing, the students also got to make and eat chocolate chip cookies!  Their hard work and dedication in writing is evident and they can't wait for you to see their new writing samples for Term 4.

The students have really been focusing in swimming and have learned a number of new techniques and skills to keep them safe in the water. The students last day at swimming is Friday, so if any whanau or caregivers from Room 5 would like to attend, please feel free to come along to AquaGym.

The photos below show the awesome learning which we have completed this week!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week One - Welcome Back!

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

Welcome back to Term 4!  It will be great to see you all next week and I can't wait to hear about all of the exciting things which the students have done over the holidays!

This term is going to go exceedingly quickly and the students have a lot of fun activities coming up which means Room 5 needs to be really organised! The first of these activities will be swimming. This is beginning the first day back of Term 4 and requires the students to be at school ready with their swim gear prior to 9am. Please don't forget that the students will need a swim cap to participate! There are only a very limited number available to borrow from AquaGym.

If there are any queries regarding this please don't hesitate in contacting me.

Again, have a wonderful last day of the holiday and I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Ten - End of Term and Swimming for Term Four

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

Thanks for a wonderful term!  It has been an amazing opportunity to grow the students understanding of their learning and work towards the goals which they set at the end of Term Two.  The students are showing great progress against their learning and we are currently building the students knowledge in the areas which they require growth in to meet National Standard.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday and I look forward to seeing you all again in Term Four!


Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Nine - Move Appropriately Between Different Areas

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

This week the students have been practising moving sensibly between areas and remembering what school expectations are. This is in preparation for our beginning of term swimming lessons at AquaGym. 

Please remember that our lessons begin the first day back to school in Term 4. The students will need to also remember their swimming caps from Term 2 as these are a requirement to enter the pool at AquaGym.

The students had an amazing time sharing during Friday Shine Time and were so happy that there were as many whanau and caregivers that there were who attended!  Next Friday we have a shared lunch and house competition for students and their whanau. Please if you would like to come, prepare a plate, bring it in on Friday at 12:30pm (or send it with your tamariki in the morning) and come share in the festivities with us.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and gets some well deserved rest!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Eight - Sharing our Learning with Pride

Kia ora Whanau and Caregivers,

This weeks Positive Behaviour for Learning goal was to focus on 'Sharing our Learning with Pride'. The students have been putting in a lot of work remembering to share their learning with pride and have shared their learning this week with their whanau, their peers and other teachers. Interestingly, for many of the students they found it easy to make positive comments on another persons work but they found it significantly more challenging to make positive comments on their own work. All of the students in Room 5 have put in a huge effort this week with their learning and should be very proud. 

As part of our Positive Behaviour for Learning goal Room 5 discussed how it is OK to make mistakes and that mistakes and errors are steps towards learning new skills. We also practised positive self-talk and practising to show others our work with pride. By the end of the week the students were confidently sharing their work with others and were celebrating others success!  This was a pleasure to see! 

Next week Room 5 will be hosting Friday Shine Time. This is an opportunity for any whanau who would like to attend to pop in half an hour early on Friday (22nd September) to celebrate their tamariki and the learning they have achieved. There will be time for sharing, for some kai, for the children to read you their latest Reading book and also some time for the tamariki to teach you some of their learning games!  It would be great to see you all there!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I look forwards to seeing you all on Monday!

Nga mihi,

Nick Shimasaki

Week Seven - Rugby, Dance and all Sorts of Other Fun Learning

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

Week Seven has been an amazing week for student learning and achievement in Room 5. The students have participated in some really exciting learning experiences and have been able to take a lot more responsibility in selecting the tasks which they complete to show that they have achieved their learning. In Dance the students considered sounds and how they might represent a certain feeling (like being scared or being angry). They have considered how these feelings might be represented as movements and explored locomotor and non-locomotor movement. This study of musical interpretation began with superhero theme songs and has culminated this week in the analysis of local Māori music. 

In Physical Education Room 5 has been practising a host of different large ball sports. The students and I began this unit by working collaboratively to select three different sports to participate in and practise. The students selected; football, rugby and netball. The students have since shown great patientce, practising and developing knowledge of each sport. The skills which we have focused on were; passing and recieving, stopping and scoring, and teamwork.  

Nga Mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Six - Being Responsible by Using eLearning Devices with Respect

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

The students have been practising this week using the classroom eLearning devices with care and respect. They have done an amazing job and together we even found a great video for practising our skip counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s. The students are beginning using their knowledge of skip counting to move into 2, 5 and 10 times tables and division.

Please see the video the students found below:

Week Five - Students Celebrating Success in their Learning

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

This week has been all about celebrating success and effort at school and at home. This has meant that the students are practising supporting one another with kind comments about each others work and also being kind to themselves by using positive self-talk. 

The students continue to work amazingly hard in class to achieve their learning goals and it is clear that they are all very proud of the hard work which they have put in. In Room 5 we have also been revisiting our mistakes and acknowledging that mistakes are a step in the pathway of learning and that everyone, no matter how young or old, big or small, makes mistakes. The students have shown an understanding that they can grow from their mistakes and are using them now as stepping stones on the road to success. The students no longer see mistakes as an adversity, but rather a challenge to be overcome!

Below are some awesome photos of Room 5 students celebrating their work and sharing their successes:

Nga mihi,

Nick Shimasaki

Week Four - Exploring Freeze Frames and Catchphrases in Drama

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

The past few weeks we have been exploring space, locomotor movement and non-locomotor movement in Drama. The students have considered the catchphrases of their favourite superheroes and have come up with catchphrases which they believed they might say.

The students initially planned their work on a storyboard showing the different progressions of movements and poses that they thought their character might do. They also wrote catchphrases underneath which buddied well with their poses.

Please see a sample of some of the students work:

Please also see our students in their mufti and crazy hair below:

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki

Week Three - Be a Learner by Using eLearning Tools for Learning

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

This week has had a lot of exciting learning experiences for the students in Room 5. Not only have the students had a lot of fun continuing to explore position and orientation in Strand Maths, the students have also been exceedingly lucky in getting invited to go to Te Pa to attend the production of "Mana - The Spirit of Polynesia".  Please see the photos below of the students wearing their wonderful Meridian Energy beanies and Kids Can jackets, ready to walk down to Te Pa.

Nga mihi,

Nick Shimasaki

Week Two - Being a Learner by Using eLearning Tools for Learning

Kia ora whanua and caregivers,

This week the students did a great job of remembering to use the devices in an appropriate way and use them to support their learning.  It was really great this week to invite a number of students into Room 5 to become Linwood North School Tech Tuakana.  These students are going to pioneer different apps and programs to support their learning and are going to be tech guides for when their teachers roll the apps and programs out for learning in their classes.  

I have been really proud this week of all of the students and there willingness to try their best and give everything a go.  A number of students have had challenges with their learning, but have persevered and have succeeded!  

I hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoys some extra time to relax!

Nga mihi,

Nick Shimasaki

Week One - Being a Learner by Trying New Things

Kia ora whanau and caregivers,

This week has been a really awesome week for learning! The students have come back to school filled with enthusiasm and ready to learn!  We have also started some new areas of learning which the children are really enjoying. One of these areas is Strand Maths.  The new area which we are focusing on in Strand Maths is Position and Orientation. This unit of study is exploring shapes and how they can be moved or rotated.

The students have been able to explore this area of maths through very interactive lessons where technology and movement are heavily integrated.  One lesson which the students really enjoyed was exploring positional language and movement through designing and sharing a challenge course. 

To do this, the students were given a small number of objects in the classroom and they had to design a challenge where another group had to move by changing their position or orientation, using high or low movements, and also using locomotor or non-locomotor movements.  The students completed this well.  One member of each of these groups took photos of each step of the challenge with the iPad and they are creating instructions using positional language on how to complete their challenge course.  Some positional language that they are learning to apply to themselves and shapes are North, South, East and West, and forwards, left, right, back, over, under and around just to name a few.

Please see the photos below of our exciting Maths learning:

We have also been doing some great learning in Drama.  The children in Room 5 have been exploring Superhero Freeze Frames and Catchphrases.  Please see an example of one of our Freeze Frames below where a student is posing as the superhero Hawkeye!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I look forward to seeing you all again next week for more exciting learning!

Nga mihi,

Nicholas Shimasaki