Tamaki Int. - Week Two, Term Three

This week, we're as busy as always at Tamaki Intermediate School.

Tuesday: the Girls Rugby Final for Auckland (which were running) is supposed to finally go ahead, unfortunately those of us in New Zealand have had massive storm this weekend (it was described as a one in fifteen year event!) and the fields are currently flooded. The weather forecast for Tuesday isn't an improvement so whether it goes ahead will depend closer to the time but the outlook isn't very good.

All this week we have School Musical Productions for "the Quest" Musical. As you know, we've got four students in major roles Sabrina, Moli, Sosaia and Josh! They're practising every day next week as well as having the first dress rehearsal on Friday. We'll be there of course filming and interview and should be posting online. The productions has two night time performances next week (on Thursday and Friday) and there is going to be a matinee performance for local schools. Of course we've got exclusive footage of the event and behind the scenes information.

Finally there's two other things I would recommend that you check out if you are not familiar with them already. The first is tutpup.com we found about this from our friends in Coventry, mainly MisterP (see our blogroll). We got hooked on it at end of last term and this term its proving just as popular. I've just registered the class online so we'll start keeping official class records from next week.

If you haven't tried out this site we really recommend that you should. In a nutshell it allows you to compete against another person (hopefully a student!) from elsewhere in the world in either a mathematical based problem or as a spelling test. One of the great things is that it has levels of difficult from basic times tables and addition problems right up to problems that in New Zealand would fit roughly at the level of advanced additive/advanced multiplicative levels of numeracy. By introducing the competitive element it forces students to think on their feet and our students just love it. Likewise we've found the same with the spelling activities, I really think our students will improve their spelling and mathematical problem solving skills from using this site!

The second is a reminder that the NPC (National Provincial Championships start this Thursday). The mighty Waikato begins their campaign this Thursday against the Northland Taniwha.