Year: 2025

We have started the new term just as we want it to continue – happy to be together again after the holidays and focus on our new learning.

We were all very sad to learn of the death of our beloved Pope, Francis and the children responded with feeling and a great deal of knowledge about what he stood for in this uncertain world of ours. They knew he was a kind man who was fair and looked after the poor (they learned a new word too – marginalised!) They wondered why he wasn’t buried in the Vatican where he had lived and marvelled at how many people had attended his funeral. We wait in hope as the conclave starts on the 7 May and pray that our new Pope is as inspirational a leader as Pope Francis was.

On Tuesday we shared a beautiful Liturgy dedicated to Pope Francis and our school leaders shared words that reminded them of this special man.

This week we have also been learning about ANZAC Day, which was during the holidays on 25 April. We discussed why it is important for us to remember the ANZAC men and women who fought for our freedom in many wars around the world. We enjoyed painting our colourful backgrounds and cutting out the black silhouettes for our class display.

Over the next week we will be preparing for our Student Led Conferences which we are looking forward to, so we can share our learning with our whanau.

Welcome back to all our families, especially in Room 6. This year we are 21 children in a Year 3 and 4 class. We were very excited to see our friends again after a long time on holiday. We have been quite tired in the afternoons because it has been very warm and we are not used to thinking so much!

We have been discussing ways we can the best learners possible this year. Our Whakatauki (Class motivational phrase) is “He Waka Eke Noa – We are all in this together.” We like this phrase because we we will work together to achieve success for all of us. We all have different strengths which we can use to help others reach their potential. We will all row in the same direction towards our goal of being proud of our achievements this year and how we have gone about reaching those goals for ourselves and others.

This term we will be focusing on Te Atua God in our Religious Education programme. The main idea is the Trinity – what it is and what it shares with us. We will learn that that we are invited into the loving relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As it is a Mystery, we will look at and create our own symbols that represent the Trinity.

As a class we will be joining other schools from around the country by signing up to Young Ocean Explorers. We will become more aware of the importance of disposing of our plastics and rubbish sensibly as we know these make their way into our waterways and oceans. The effects they have on sea plants and sea creatures can turn our pristine marine reserves into unhealthy environments where habitats are destroyed and animals suffer. We will be collecting rubbish and plastics from around our school for 21 days during March.

Here you can see us beginning to paint our backdrop for our healthy and unhealthy ocean habitat: