Kia Ora, Kamusta, Kia Orana, Hello, Bonjour!
We are a class of 31 students at Poroutawhao School. We have got Year 4, 5, 6 and 7 students in our class. Our class is made up of 18 girls and 13 boys. Our teacher is Miss Salton. Poroutawhao is a rural school half way between Levin and Foxton, at the bottom of the North Island.
Our School has values which we call the 4 C’s – Communication, Creativity, Consideration and Collaboration. If we display these values we get a click on our cards, when we get 10 clicks we go in the draw for a prize. At the end of each term, we have a 4C’s celebration day where things range from wheels day, movies day or water day!
In our class, we also get dojo points which Miss Salton uses to give us clicks and we have our own class draw at the end of the week.
Our Student Leaders also give out an environment award weekly, if you are the tidiest class outside. We won this most times in Term 1 and ended up with a pizza lunch!
At our school, we have skateboards available for us to use every Friday during our break times. We had some skateboarding lessons at the beginning of the year to help us build confidence.
We are able to do a range of activities at school too like: Mau Rākau, Rippa Rugby, Boxing, Swimming (we have our own pool, and also go to the town pool for some expert lessons), Hockey (we have our own turf!) and Epic Music Lessons.
In class, we do most of our learning on chromebooks and use hāpara for most of our work as well as lots of other learning apps like: prodigy, dreamscape, epic, spellie, studyladder, steps, mathsframe and typing club.
This year, we have started Structured Literacy for our spelling, reading and writing. Our inquiry topic this term is ‘You’re History’ where we have been allowed to choose anything from history to learn about. We have things such as: Dinosaurs, Titanic, Historical Figures and History of Sports.
Later in the year, we will have our annual Ag Day, where some of us will bring in lambs, calves, chickens or our pets!
Thank you for coming to read our page, please feel free to ask us anything and we’ll try our best to answer!
Wow Poutama – what an awesome blog post! There’s so much information here that helps me to know about your class. It sounds like you really know how to harness the affordances of digital technology to help you in your learning. Can you explain what happens at Ag Day?
Hi Mrs Murphy,
At Ag Day some of us bring in lambs, calves or chickens that we have been raising and looking after for about 2 months. We have judges come in and we get judged on (for lambs and calves): leading our animal, calling and following, best brushed and best looked after. Those with chickens get judged on how well we have looked after them.
We can win ribbons and cups and then the following week we have finals for all the schools in the area who have had an Ag Day (but this is only for lambs and calves).
We also have people who bring in their pets for judging, but you’re not allowed dogs due to people being scared of them and also it allows us to keep the other animals safe. One year, a student brought a pig (Miss Salton LOVED that!).
The day before Ag Day, we do country crafts – where we create things from flowers, or junk or sand. We also have a baking competition. These are also judged!
Some people also make gardens in containers and bring these in for judging!
This year, ours is on Saturday 12th November – you should come and check it out!
That sounds so interesting! I am putting the 12th November in my calendar right now. Can’t wait to see it!
Hi we are from St Mary’s and we are in Foxton. Our teacher thinks we’re the closest school to you, but maybe it’s Koputaroa?
We loved the photo of you in the sandpit! We have a sandpit too, just like you. Today we made a spa in the sandpit and a BIG mess! We want to put a tarpaulin in the sandpit and fill it with water; our teacher thinks this is not the best idea she’s ever heard. Would you like to make a spa in your sandpit?
Your class has 10 more students than our whole school. How many students do you have in your whole school?
Kia ora St Mary’s!
That’s really cool that you thought to make a spa pool in your sandpit. Most of us would not like to do that here at our school because the water and the sand would make a mudpit and we don’t want to get that dirty at school. Plus we have a school pool so we can just get wet in there. Do you have a pool at your school?
Koputaroa is 7.9km from us, and Foxton is 8.9km from us. So you are not our closest school.
At our school we have 103 students.
We don’t really understand what it means to be Catholic. Can you please give us a little bit of information about this?
Hello Poutama class!
Sadly we don’t have a pool at our school. We think you’re lucky to have one. How did you get a pool at your school?
There are three main things about being Catholic:
1. Encounter – this is about sensing God and Jesus around us.
2. Knowledge – around God and our church.
3. Witness – is our actions, like going to church and doing social justice actions.
You don’t have to be Catholic to come to St Mary’s School but you have to be prepared to take on our extra faith curriculum. Most children are asked for a Catholic connection in their family.
What are your school values?
Hi St Mary’s,
Our School Values are the 4 C’s – Communication, Creativity, Consideration and Collaboration. We only introduced the fourth C this year (prior to this we only had 3 C’s – and didn’t have communication).
Thank you for sharing with us about Catholicism.
We are unsure how we got the pool as it was here before ALL of us started here, but we love it during summer!