It's week 4 already! Here's what we have been up to...

Our trip to the Rotorua Museum.

Japanese Calligraphy with Mr Watanabe.

How wonderful that a P2 student was the first person to be presented with our brand new 

school Values' trophy.  

Students who win this award must have been nominated by a staff member and then all the staff vote on the winner each  month.  

Term 3 in P2

It is going to be a super term in P2!  

We ended the last term on a huge high.  Our class is working really well together and as a team we are all achieving great things in our learning adventure.  

High fives all round!

This term we will be focusing on the following:

Speeches

Algebra

War and Conflict

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages

Spelling

Sentence Structure

Vocab

We did it!

Well done to everyone in P2 for their hard work and commitment towards their Science Fair projects.  It has been a mammoth task this term.  We started with very little knowledge of how to conduct a fair science experiment and over the term have evolved into a class of mini scientists.  The words hypothesis, conclusion, results and variables have become normal words in our classroom over the past 11 weeks.  

P2 you should feel very proud of yourselves - actually I know you already do!

 Here we are taking proudly taking our science boards down to the hall for judging.

 We made it!!!

 The science projects look very impressive all set up in the hall.

Time to have fun, it's the end of the term.  

Learning a new game with Matua Hori.

Phew!

The last four weeks have been crazy busy in P2!  So busy, I haven't even updated our Blog.  So here is an overview of what we have been up to.

Our focus over the next few weeks is on our values and expectations.  As it is the middle of the year, some of us are starting to forget how important these things are, so we are just having a little reminder :)  As part of that we are learning to work cooperatively together.  Here are some photos of our Marshmallow Tower Challenge, where teams had to work together to build the highest tower using only marshmallows and toothpicks.  There were great discussions about strong foundations and some really interesting ideas being tested.

P2 has started learning Chinese this term.  We are absolutely loving it!  Students in P2 are especially loving the games that they play to learn the words.  In the game below, students are learning their colours.

Science and Maths are all about the Science Fair this term.   We are learning statistics in Maths; how to collect data, present data and analyse results.  Each student has come up with a scientific question which they are working on at home and school for our school science fair at the end of the term.

Below is a picture of the beginning of one of our students experiments.  This student knows that white carnations absorb colour when it is put in the flowers water but she is wanting to find out if it works well with other types of white flowers too, like Lillies and Daises.

Another major focus for maths is multiplication - above is a photo of Miss Avery from P3 teaching the class a strategy for multiplication that her year 8 students are really enjoying at the moment.

P2 Superstars 1

I love it when Students share their achievements with me from outside of school.

On Tuesday Lilly and Mikaela shared their winning ribbons from their horse riding event over Anzac weekend.  Well done, girls!

You can find out more information on their event on their own blogs.

I felt so honoured today to be able to hold in my hand, 3 war medals that Hayden's great grandfather received in World War 1.  Thank you for sharing these with me Hayden. How special it must be to look after these for your family.  My grandfather had medals too, but he gave them away to a young boy none of us knew and so I have never been able to see them.  I think you are so lucky.

For more information on what these medals were for, see Hayden's blog.

Communication and Listening Skills

Our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) focus this term in P2 is Communication and Listening Skills.

Yesterday we discovered the difference between talking to a focused listener and talking to someone who isn't interested at all!  There was a huge difference for the speaker as they felt valued and respected by their friend when the friend was listening but felt very frustrated and hurt when their friend didn't listen.  The listener when focused, was able to retell the speakers information in detail, and even asked additional questions, but when not focused was barely able to say what the other person was talking about.  This was a great lesson and hopefully P2 students will start using these skills at home and school more often :)

As part of our values we have also discussed the importance of thinking before we speak.  Our aim in P2 is to make people feel good by the things we have to say to them, and not to upset people by saying things that really shouldn't be said at all.

Paper Airplanes

Our first scientific investigation is to find the best paper airplane design for distance.  In groups of 4 or 5, students are making 5 different airplane designs and are going to test them following our investigation format.  We will be learning how to write an investigation, record results, present our results on a graph and how to conclude our findings.