The Busy Start to Term 4

We are now back at school after a two week holiday. This term has had a busy start, with maths, reading and spelling tests to see how much we have improved since the start of the year.

To test our public speaking abilities, we will be doing speeches in week 3. The speeches need to be persuasive and around 3 minutes long. In Kea 1, our topic is 'Planet Earth'. Some people have been writing theirs on recycling, deforestation, animal cruelty and pollution. We have had some experience in persuasive writing already; we wrote on whether schools should have uniforms or not. We had to write our speeches as homework for the first and second week of the term. Our speeches are due this Friday, when Mrs Whitehead will read our drafts. To practice reading in front of the class, everyone chose a passage to read from their novel that they are using for novel study. We had to read for about two minutes and be fluent and clear.

As part of our literacy, we are doing a novel study about a novel of our choice. After reading it, we need to answer comprehension questions and do some research about the author. This will help us understand the plot and characters better.

We have also started our calendar art. Our artwork has to incorporate korus and we are using pastels to colour them. We are blending the colours together to create a better effect and our artwork is also outlined in black vivid to make the design stand out more. Our finished artwork will be made into calendars, greeting cards and diaries for our parents to buy if they wish.

The term ahead will be full of even more hard work and excitement as the year concludes.