Deevon's Been Teaching His Monster To Read!

In Room Six we have been creating monsters and then teaching them to read! We are using the computer programme called 'Teach Your Monster To Read'. It complements our classroom programme by helping teach us all about letters, sounds, words and sentences. When we first went on it asked us to create a monster. Then we have been teaching our monster letter names and sounds. This is part of the first Teach Your Monster game called 'First Steps'. There are three Teach Your Monster games altogether:

1) First Steps

2) Fun with Words

3) Champion Reader

We work on the Teach Your Monster game during our literacy tumble after morning tea and we sometimes work on it during other parts of the day too. We love completing levels on it and are working towards completing each game.

A super-dooper congratulations to Deevon who has completed the first game and is now working on 'Fun with Words'. He receives a certificate with his monster on it - well done Deevon!

Encourage your child to work on Teach Your Monster at home. It's free, or you can download an app if you want to. Use this link and then your child can enter their username and password. Then they're off! (Their username is their first name, with one capital at the beginning and their password is a basic sight word which they all should know...and we've been learning should be kept secret! If your child has forgotten his or her password get them to come and ask Miss McKenna what their password is.)

Welcome Alexus and Rocio!

Yesterday we welcomed two new students to Room Six. That's right, Room Six, we moved in the holidays! You might know the children who started yesterday because they are the younger students of two of our existing students - Kori and Rafa.

Kori's younger sister is Alexus and Rafa's little sister is Rocio. All the children in Room Six were excited to have them join us yesterday. In fact, so were other children at morning tea and lunchtime!

Thank you to Rafa and Kori who came and looked after their younger siblings at breaktimes. It's great to see you showing love and service for your whanau members by helping them settle into school. We look forward to your exciting learning journey ahead at Christ the King Rocio and Alexus - welcome and enjoy your Duffy activity books!

Kia pai tou tatou Matariki!

Did you know it's the Maori New Year? Matariki is the Maori New Year and it is celebrated each year when the group of stars called Matariki reappears in the sky.

Towards the end of the term we learnt about Matariki by reading some picture books about it. We learnt that Matariki is a good time for being with family, eating yummy foods together and remembering people in our family who have passed away. It is also a good time for planting some different kinds of plants.

Elena and Trelia planting their seedlings and watering them.

In Room Two we each got to plant a seedling. Miss McKenna had bought some potting mix and some different flower seedlings for us to transplant into our own containers to take home. We put on gloves to protect us from the soil and then Miss C. helped us put our plants into our pots. There were three types of flowers to choose from - primula (pink), viola (yellow, white and purple) and antirrhinum (red, yellow, peach and pink).

Our class with our plants. "Happy Matariki!"

On the last day of term we took our plants home. Please help us to water them and take care of them so that we can help them get bigger and stronger and watch them flower. What will the flowers look like?! You could take a photo and email it to Miss McKenna to show her when yours flowers. I wonder how long it will take?

These are some of the picture books we read which helped us learn  about

Matariki. You can find more at your public library!

Term 2 Disco MOVIE by Melianna

Some Of The Royal Family Visit CTK!

Last week we had some special visitors come and visit our school. Iliyas (Room One) and Vincent's (Room Six) eldest sister, Azaria, came with her dance group to perform for all of us.

Azaria's dance group is really good and they are going to perform at the World Hip Hop Dance Championships later this year. We watched them dance and then they invited some children and teachers to come up and have a go!

At the end of their performance we took a photo with all the dancers and their coach. We used our hands to create crowns like they do. When we went back to our classroom we were talking so much about the dancing. We were so excited after seeing the performance and decided to write about our experience to tell you all about it.

Here are our stories:  

This morning we went to the hall to watch the people dancing. I saw Itu and I saw Isi when we got out of the hall when the people were dancing. By Aden

Today Azaria's Royal Family came to Christ the King Catholic School. I like the girl who was wiggling fast. By Ashleigh

Today we had a surprise. The man did a flip. By Valentino

I like the dancing. By Elena

The girl is dancing because they practise. By Aubrey

The girl is dancing faster. By Helina

Today we saw people dancing in the hall. It was cool. By Deevon

I like the dancing. by Ken

Today at school we went to watch a dance group and there were cool dance moves. By Rosina

I like my mum and my baby. My mum take a picture. By Ceazah-Blue

Azaria was dancing with her friends. By Tevita

Ashleigh and Ken worked hard on their stories and remembered their learning goals. Ashleigh spent time making sure her story made sense and used interesting punctuation in it (capital letters, full stops...and an apostrophe!). Ken carefully worked on his story - finding words on the word card and putting finger spaces between words. Well done Ashleigh and Ken!

As the best writing of the day, Miss McKenna chose Ashleigh and Ken to share their work with Mrs Kopua. They read their stories to Mrs Kopua and she wanted to give them a Principal's Award but didn't have any stickers left - so she gave them seven stars for Matariki instead. Cool!

Thank you to the parents who stayed to watch the show. I bet you enjoyed it just as much as we did?!

And The Principal's Award Goes To...

Congratulations to Rosina and Trelia who received Principal's Awards yesterday for their great stories about everyday heroes in their lives.

Keep up the good work girls!

Celebrating Vaiaso O Le Gagana Samoa

This week is Samoan Language Week so in class we have been doing lots of Samoan-themed activities. Each morning we have been calling the roll in Samoan and we have been learning to say the Sign of the Cross in Samoan too.

(Can you see which teacher photobombed our picture?!)

On Monday we made Masi Samoa (Samoan Coconut Biscuits) with Miss Chan and on Wednesday, for our P.E. lesson, we got together with Miss Goodier and Room Five to play kilikiti (Samoan cricket). It was fun to wear lavalava while we played and the Room Five girls were so great at helping us to have a go at batting and fielding.

  Click the triangle play button to watch a slideshow Miss McKenna created of our week!

We also had some fun beginning to learn some Samoan songs and dance moves. Thank you Christina for sharing your expertise with us!