The document provides updates from Hill School in New Zealand. It discusses several recent events at the school including a senior production, Matariki celebrations to mark the Māori New Year, a cultural mufti day, and an assembly to commemorate World War 1. It also summarizes classroom highlights from Room 13 and Room 19, including learning about different cultures, writing goals, and success in the Mathex math competition.

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See What Has Been Happening Recently ………
Senior Production: The talents of our senior students and staff were showcased at the end of Term production of “Once Upon a Time
Matariki Celebration: Arohatia te reo
Celebrating Matariki – the Maori New Year – has been a relatively recent promotion in schools. At Hill, Jade Chamberlain and our Enrichment class led an assembly to celebrate Matariki, the kapa haka group performed, and students from the Enrichment class visited classes to present te reo.
A highlight was a Matariki Challenge led by Jade and a group of her students with the whole school working in whanau groups over the day to create a putiputi flower from flax.
A number of classes also undertook their own matariki activities.
In addition, Jade arranged a matariki sleepover for the Enrichment class at the hall which included rising early in the morning to view the matariki stars (Pleiades or the Seven Sisters) and also planting several fruit trees.
Cultural Mufti Day: We celebrated our Culture Concept with a mufti day with a focus on “This is who I am” and asked for a donation towards St John Pukekohe. There was an excellent response from families including over $600 being donated.

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World Vision Concert: Our school choir performed at the Franklin World Vision Kids for Kids Concert with Jackie Clarke. An excellent opportunity for our students to perform on stage with a talented professional entertainer and “make a difference” by raising funds for the work of World Vision. Special thanks to choir trainer Wendy Bates.
Lest We Forget Assembly: On Monday, 4 August we had a significant assembly at the school flagpole. We remembered that this day, 100 years ago in 1914, was the date when New Zealand, declared war against Germany which marked our entry into World War 1. A number of our Ambassador students presented some of this history that shaped our nation including that out of our population of just one million, over 10 000 were killed and 40 000 wounded between 1914-1918. We lowered the flag to half-mast as a sign of respect and observed a minute of silence in memory of all those who served their country.
Mathex Competition: Year 5 – 6 classes arranged their own class practices and teams for Mathex, as well as Malcolm Lawrence taking a number of students for related practice. An exciting and enthusiastically supported school championship was held in the hall and 2 teams were chosen to represent Hill at the Franklin championships. We were very pleased at this year’s results with one team gaining 3rd place and the other 10th place from the 40 school teams entered. This event continues to be a highlight for Franklin schools, and was won this year by a Waiau Pa team. Special thanks to Malcolm Laurence and team who organised Mathex at school.
Mathex teams 2014 gain 3rd and 10th places at Franklin Champs
Virtues Are Us: The first virtue to start the term is “Tolerance”, and the virtue to end the term is “Honesty”. The posters are displayed in classes, and our virtues are also on a virtues display board in the administration foyer. The ideas of each sheet are reinforced in classes, through newsletters and Pipps reports, and at syndicate and school assemblies. Newsletters also encourage discussion about the virtues at home.

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NSW Testing Centre Competition in Computer Studies: This year, 9 senior Year 4 – 6 Hill students sat the Computer Studies competition and achieved pleasing results. Children are usually nominated by class teachers with final selection by Malcolm Laurence, and with consideration of the relevant Gifted and Talented identification document. Malcolm also provides some tutoring for students before the competition test. This year, 3 students received top 25% Credit Certificates, Dezarn Bin Farouk, gained a top 10% Distinction Award, and Jeffery Tolmie won a top 1% High Distinction. Other competitions and results in English, maths, spelling and science are still to be completed.
Pasifika Group: After discussions with Wesley College, we have again been able to start a Pasifika cultural group with over 40 students involved each Wednesday afternoon. It’s intended to invite whanau to a school assembly before the end of term so children can perform for their families and the rest of school.
Lunch with the Principal: At the end of term, 25 students from across the school were invited to “Lunch with the Principal”
This event is to celebrate the academic progress, great attitudes to learning and virtues shown by these students. Following the luncheon, each student also received a special certificate at our school assembly. The delicious lunch was prepared and served by Mrs Smart and her Health Promoting student team.
CLASSROOM HIGHLIGHTS
This month, Classroom Highlights reports come from Room 13 teacher Sara Olsen and Year 6 teacher Rachael Shaw.
Room 13: Kia ora, Bula, Talofa, Gidday and welcome to Room 13.We are an Y1 classroom of 11 boys and 9 girls. Our Classroom is a learning zone. We know we come to school to learn and we are responsible for our own learning. We are enthusiastic learners who are focussed and we consistently try our best. In our learning zone we have rockets. Our rockets take us on our learning journey to the stars. We always try to stay in our learning rockets but sometimes asteroids try to intercept our journey and we can go off course. So we try to avoid those asteroids.

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We are progressing well in our learning and there is always exciting things to see and experience. We loved the change concept as we were able to experiment with many different things. We were so fascinated with the milk and dye experiment. We put some milk on a plate and we put red, green and yellow dye into the corners of the milk. We then put a cotton bud into some washing detergent and slowly put the cotton bud into the middle of the plate. We watched as the dyes started to mix together and they made really amazing patterns.
This term we are learning about our own culture as well as other cultures. It is so interesting learning about other people’s cultures and trying and experiencing new things. We have a cultural rotation with Room 10 and 27. Each week we celebrate a different culture. In our first rotation we celebrated the Maori culture. We heard the legend of the “Fish of Maui” and how Maui caught a big fish that became the North Island of New Zealand. We made Maori headbands and sang waiata’s. We made Maori bread which was yummy. We also learned E Papa with sticks.
This past week we learned all about Kiwiana. New Zealand has so many unique things to celebrate. We have a special bird the “Kiwi”, we did some cool Kiwi artwork and we learned about a drink called ”L & P” which is world famous in New Zealand because it comes from a small place called “ Paeroa”. We made L & P scones, which were yummy. In our next cultural rotation we will be learning about the Indian culture.
We welcome visitors to our classroom, please come and visit anytime. We would like to thank the board for all the support they give our school,
Yours warmly,
Mrs Sara Olsen and the lovely children of Room 13.

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Room 19 Highlights:
Room 19 has 31 students that are in full swing of a busy Term 3. Developing independence and becoming motivated learners has been a major focus within the class. The children have learnt that for them to be effective learners they must be able to ‘own’ the learning process. Therefore we have spent considerable time developing our goal setting and reflection skills.
Children are expected to understand themselves as learners and be able to identify and use the traits of an effective learner. When asked the question, ‘what do great learners do?’ they were able to confidently give a variety of responses.
These were some examples:
Take risks, ask for help when needed, they demonstrate determination, believe in themselves, challenge themselves, accept failure, learn from their mistakes, reflect on their work and go back and improve it, use initiative, never give up, follow the success criteria, use knowledge for good, focus, go the extra mile, co-operate with others, give 100%, make connections with the learning, choose the risky path – not the safe path!, improve their skills, don’t settle for average, use imagination, be creative, they strive to understand, they put themselves on the path to awesomeness!
The Culture concept has provided many exciting learning opportunities and allowed many of the children to share their expertise about their own culture and learn about other cultures around the world. A major skill focus has been to compare different cultures with our own and the children have been fascinated by just how different other people around the world live their lives. We have also been developing our skill of writing open questions for inquiry.
An extension of sharing about our own culture has been our Treasures Exhibition that they are excitedly preparing for the rest of the senior school to view. The children were able to identify a range of family treasures and talk confidently about why they were valuable to them and their families. It was amazing what family history and precious treasures were unearthed as a result of this unit.

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Writing has continued to be a major area of development this year and the class have been benefiting from some excellent professional learning in the area of using Assessment for Learning. We have consolidated our skills of identifying and using a range of success criteria to help them become more successful in their writing. They are also developing the skills to self-assess against them. The ability of the children in Room 19 to talk about their learning and identify next steps has improved greatly. Having the children taking greater control of their own learning has been extremely beneficial. After identifying an overall weakness in our development of ideas through the use of exciting and precise vocabulary, we have been working really hard in class lessons to improve this writing trait.
Mathex has had our heads reeling for the last few weeks as we have tried to get our heads around some pretty curly math problems. In groups of 4 the class have been becoming more proficient in putting much of their algebraic thinking skills into practice as well as transferring their other math knowledge into new and varied contexts. All the hard work paid dividends when one of our R19 teams won the Hill School Mathex competition and another one came 3rd equal. Well done teams. 7 of our class then continued onto the Franklin ASB Mathex Competition where we placed 3rd equal and 10th out of forty teams.
The class have been heading off to Patumahoe School each Tuesday to receive free swimming lessons with Fulton’s Swim School. Increased confidence, endurance and skill across the group has been evident already. We have also been training hard for Cross Country. Children have been calculating the distances they train and have been aiming to run the equivalent of a half of in some cases a full marathon. All this training paid great dividends.
We have already accomplished so much this term; it is hard to believe that we are only half way through!
Rachael Shaw Class Teacher