Little Sister Issue 4 - 2021

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Meet our editorial team Editor: Louise May Designer: Janice O'Kane Year 8 Big Sister Writing Team Maddie Milne Ines Grayston Photography Louise May BW Media

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our stretch programme 05 q&a with felecia tomich 09 playground angels 11 music 13 physical education 17 learning in the classroom 21

What’s inside

welcome from Kerry oldman 03

word search and COLOURING fun 37

Where's Gilbert?

Gilbert is our By Love Serve dog who visits our Junior School each Tuesday. He visits our Years 0–6 students in the library, at playtimes, and sometimes drops into classrooms to join the learning fun. Gilbert is hidden on each page; can you find him?

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Welcome om r f Kerry Oldman

Can a robot be human? What is fairness?

What does it mean to be a person? Why do we treat animals differently to humans?

What is culture? Where do your thoughts come from?

One of the wonders of working with primary aged children, is their intrigue and honesty is answering the ‘Big Questions’. It’s exciting to engage the minds of our Junior School girls in philosophical thought and encourage them to develop their perspective on what is important in life.

A huge highlight of my week is meeting with the Junior School Council; not only to discuss the feelings and vision of the student body, but to also enhance higher order thinking skills to deepen the knowledge and the learning of our school leaders.

This edition of our Little Sister magazine showcases the incredible curiosity our girls have and the sensational learning that happens across all areas of the curriculum.

I am proud to lead a team who continually ask the girls to be ‘daring thinkers’, which allows them to demonstrate how imaginative and creative they can be, when given the opportunity to express what they think without the fear of ‘getting it wrong’.

This is what truly makes St Cuthbert’s Junior School unique – our exceptional team of educators that are continually challenging their students to answer the ‘Big Questions’ – with boundless curiosity and confidence.

Ngā mihi Kerry Oldman

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s r e k n i h e c n e d i f daring t con

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Our Junior School

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The Stretch program allows our teachers to take students deeper into the Arts and S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) sections of the curriculum and, as a result, our girls receive a handson and super-engaging, increased depth of knowledge.

Each Wednesday our teachers and students alike look forward to the newness each Stretch session brings. Students are taught in year level groups, mixing across classes, which encourages collaboration and the chance to get to know even more future friends. For example, the Year 2 classes

had great fun coming together to discover structures and learning about basic engineering principles. The girls worked together in small groups and the resulting cardboard buildings are still something they talk about together.

This year the girls across Years 1– 6 will all experience Engineering, Dance and Drama, Coding and Robotics, Te Ao Māori as well as Art. These are led with speciaists from the Senior School in rotation across terms so their worlds are truly opening up and their brains are prepped for whatever futures their lives will bring, truly STREEEETTTTTCHHHED.

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St Cuthbert’s Junior School is unique in running a dedicated weekly innovative skills development programme, and our girls just love it!

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Just one example of Stretch in action in our Junior School this year was when Year 5 were introduced to Biomechanics

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Our Stretch Programme comes together across the whole of the Junior School

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Their last lesson explored the movements they make, for example, when throwing a basketball they discussed momentum, and the required muscles, motor unit and motor nerves. Girls jumped and mapped the preparation for such movement following it through to action and the finishing-off of this move. They had great fun presenting this to the class!

During the second lesson Year 5 learnt about their muscles and how they work with the joints. They used a tetra pack carton to consider how their muscles were extending and flexing as they lifted it up and down. Girls made models of their arms with balloons and rolled-up paper to show the humerus, radius, ulna and the surrounding muscles so they

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could grasp how these move when they bend their arms at the elbow.

and socket joints with polystyrene balls, and they used popsicle sticks for the hinge joints.

Last term Year 5 were very fortunate to be visited by Dr Andy Roosen, a Biomechanic specialist, for three consecutive Stretch lessons so that the girls could learn about and explore biomechanics in Stretch. The first lesson started with the basics, learning about how ball and socket and hinge joints work, brought to life by holding cans of spaghetti in different poses and seeing how joints worked against gravity. The girls went onto make a model of ball

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Q&A with Felecia Tomich from the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre

Two budding writers, Ines Grayston and Maddie Milne, from Year 8 joined us to interview Ms Tomich. Read on below to enjoy their questions.

You are now called the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre, can you tell us what that means for you and the girls who come here?

We thought the new name, Pōhutukawa Learning Centre, was a really special link to make between what we do and the beautiful symbol of that majestic tree. It really reflects what we are aiming to do with girls in terms of nurturing and nourishing their own growth and belief in their ability to grow and blossom as individuals. We love the way that everything we do is anchored in the school’s philosophy of ‘By Love Serve’ and of always striving to be the best that each of us can be.

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So, the symbol of the Pōhutukawa tree has become very special for all of us who teach and learn here.

What is it like to be the head of the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre for Years 0–9?

This is the best job in the world because I get to do what I love every day, all day, which is very unusual as normally teachers who are passionate about diverse learners don’t get to be with them for all of their day. I have the most outstanding team of teachers that I work with, and I learn from them every day. I also have the most beautiful girls who come to the PLC every day and I learn from them as they bring so much to our classes.

What is the craziest job you’ve ever had?

The craziest job I’ve ever had was scooping ice creams at the Historic Village in Tauranga on a summer's day when they were having a fair. The line was queued all the way from the ice cream stand back through all of the pathways out of the backdoor and I was a little bit stressed up to my elbows in ice cream. When I went home, I swore I would never eat ice cream again….but of course I did!

How much do you think St Cuthbert’s has improved since the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre started?

I think that what has improved is the way that we operate and work with each other, we are one cog in a very beautiful machine that is St Cuthbert’s and we continue to work together to be the best we can be so that we can support teachers and students in their learning. We will all keep trying.

This is the wonderful thing about being a teacher, you never stop learning!

Do you enjoy meeting the different types of girls who come to the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre?

Yes definitely, I love getting to know new students and I meet new students every week. For example, a group of students have just been with me working on a programme that helps build spelling skills.

You’re also a parent of a child in the Junior School, what do you like about it?

I love that every day I get in the car and that my daughter and I get to chat about

what our days are going to be like. I feel so blessed that she gets to be part of this wonderful school and that we are both able to experience all the wonderful things that St Cuthbert’s has to offer. I’m very fortunate that I sometimes get to see and wave to her out in the playground and it's just a lovely feeling knowing that your child is a part of a place that I also feel very proud to be a part of. St Cuthbert’s is a family school and I feel very lucky to have the most precious part of my own family here with me.

Do you feel it’s an achievement when a girl graduates from the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre?

Absolutely, I think that we all have to celebrate our successes in life, that’s one of the most important things we can do.

Everyone is on a learning journey, we don’t celebrate milestones enough, be they little goals or big ones. The wonderful thing about learning is that we can celebrate growing!

Is there anything that you’ve learnt from the girls you’ve taught?

I wouldn’t be able to count how many things I’ve been able to learn as there are more things than there are stars in the sky!

I’ve been teaching a long time. I started as a student teacher at St Cuthbert’s and from classroom teaching to what I do now I learnt everyday. Everyone brings their own wisdom to what they do and this is one of the best gifts about being a teacher.

You learn every day from the students you teach.

ABOVE: Our Year 8 interviewers Ines and Maddie with Ms Tomich

Do you enjoy teaching and encouraging the girls in the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre?

I do! I think when you are positive then you receive positivity back from others. I really believe that what you put out in life you will get back, and I’m very lucky that I’m in a situation where it's important that we all grow in confidence and self-efficacy.

That’s one of our main aims here — to help encourage girls to believe in their ability to achieve. We do that by acknowledging how far they’ve already come, setting goals and tracking against them.

At the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre we have girls coming from Year 1 through to Year 13. We support students all the way through. We don’t support every student in the same way as each girl has very unique needs, and that’s why it’s called Diverse Learning Needs. There is no silver bullet or cookie cutter, some students need small group targeted support whereas others need one-on-one time to hone a skill. We support students with reading, spelling, maths, their memory, their organisation – there are so many different ways we help our girls with that little bit of “extra”. For each girl who attends the Pōhutukawa Learning Centre as a team we work really hard with the student to ascertain what each girl’s specific learning need or barriers are and we make it a lot of fun for them!

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Playground Angels We are so lucky that each break time some very caring girls take to play spaces to look after the needs of others, we call them our Playground Angels.

The Year 6 girls in this committee take it in turns to walk around the playgrounds in pairs each break wearing bright pink vests so that they are easy to spot. In their own words they say they are generally checking that everyone is being a ‘By Love Serve’ girl.

Claudia Milne and Sophie Webster are the two leaders of the Playground Angels and they said “Sometimes girls can have disagreements between friends and so our job is to listen to any problems and help the girls to find a solution. We encourage girls

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to do the right thing and to always listen to others. If there’s a problem we can’t fix we go directly to the duty teacher”.

The girls were recognised for their great work at an assembly recently and said “If you see us around, don’t be afraid to come up and talk to us. We know that sometimes you might lose your friends while playing games but if that happens to you don’t worry, we’ll help you find them. If you ever feel sad or lonely, remember we give great cuddles too”.

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Music

in the Junior School Junior School girls have been having a great time in Music classes this semester. There is always so much to learn!

Year 1 girls have been honing their singing voices to become wonderful little treble singers… they have also been learning much more than just the basics of beat and pitch.

The girls have been learning to read and write melody and rhythm on the stave and have even been using their bodies to show pitch placement on our amazing stave mat in Music. Games, musical challenges, story books, instruments, rhythm cards, dance and song are all just some of the many learning activities we do in Music at this level. Every music lesson is jam packed full of a variety of learning activities.

Year 2’s have been having a wonderful time preparing themselves for recorder learning by improving their understanding of right

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and left hands and by starting to build the finger flexibility and awareness that learning an instrument requires. Meanwhile, Year 3’s and Year 4’s have been busy refining their recorder playing, piano-keyboard skills, choral singing, and have been extending their practical understanding of music to include new musical elements.

Girls in Year 5 and Year 6 have been loving their band instrument classes and have all made excellent gains on their instrument playing this term. In Year 5 and 6 we have girls playing drums, clarinet, saxophone, flute, trumpet and trombone. Girls in the Junior School are wonderfully privileged to each be able to learn one of these instruments as part of classroom Music for two whole years

before they graduate from the Junior School.

The girls get a great buzz from the progress they make and also being able to perform their band songs with their class and year groups. We are looking forward to rolling out some performances in Terms 3 and 4!

It is also wonderful to see so many Junior School girls involved in the amazing co-curricular Music programme at the College. We have Suzuki instrument groups, Junior Black Watch Orchestra, as well as three amazing choirs in the Junior School: Junior Song Squad, Junior Black Watch Singers and Junior Saints. There is something for everyone and it is great to see so many girls involved this year.

— Mr Stewart

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Mihi Whakatau At the start of Term 2 we held a mihi whakatau to welcome our new teachers and students to St Cuthbert’s. This also allowed us to celebrate being back together for a new term of learning adventures. It was a particularly special time as we welcomed in each of the new Year 0 girls who had started in Term 2, along with their parents; a wonderful broadening of our St Cuthbert’s family.

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A mihi whakatau is a Māori welcome ceremony which is similar to, but less formal than, a traditional pōwhiri. The two key values that underpin both mihi whakatau and pōwhiri are: • Manaakitanga – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others • Whakawhanaungatanga – the process of establishing relationships

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Physical Education in the Junior School

What a fantastic Term in PE. The Junior Students absolutely love it! They literally bounce to class. This Term we have been looking forward to the Olympics and were lucky enough to have Olympic Ambassador Luuka Jones come to school and share her Olympic journey with us. We have also completed our school cross county with many great performances by our girls. They showed terrific attitudes towards participating and goal setting to be ‘Fit for life.’

Our little Year 0 and 1’s have been focussing on their fundamental movement skills in Physical Education. These are the foundation building blocks that more complex movements are built upon like skipping, running, jumping, dodging, throwing, catching and striking. Making friends, fair play and having fun are also an important part of the Junior PE programme. In our aquatics programme our smallest students have been developing their water confidence through a range of games and activities. It is important students are participating in swimming lessons in their own time to improve their stroke development as swimming is such an important life skill.

Students in Year 2 and 3 have been participating in a range of throwing and catching games to enhance their skills. During the aquatics programme, students have been developing floating and kicking skills to enhance their mobility and safety in the water.

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Year 4– 6 Students have been improving their basketball skills with basketball, basketball and more basketball. We have been lucky enough to have Stuart McEwen from Youth Basketball NZ coming in to coach the Year 4– 6 students. He has been fantastic sharing his knowledge, expertise and basketball skill in a really fun way. There has also been a focus on team work and the understanding of rules. During the aquatics unit, there has been an emphasis on water safety. The students have focussed on treading water, sculling techniques and survival strokes.

We have managed to fit in some gymnastics too which is always a favourite for the students. They love it and it helps develop brilliant body control, balance and many transferable physical skills that are beneficial in a range of sports.

— Des Knight

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Luuka Jones In May our girls from Years 3 – 6 were very lucky to meet a NZ Olympian, moments before she left New Zealand to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics.

Luuka Jones competed in the Canoe / Kayak Slalom discipline at the Olympics and, thanks to our Junior School PE teachers, she came to speak to our girls about her passion for the sport.

Luuka told how she started kayaking because she lived down the road from a kayak adventure park in Tauranga. She was very taken with the sport, to the point where the park’s manager offered her lessons in exchange for helping out at the park. Luuka skills continue to build until at the age of 14 she took part in her first competition, the NZ Secondary Schools Canoe Slalom Nationals where she achieved 3rd place. From there it’s been onwards and upwards and we look forward to supporting Luuka at the Olympics.

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flourishing at four and five For both child and parent, the transition to school is a monumental milestone. At St Cuthbert’s we work especially hard on making this transition a positive and happy experience as this helps to shape the girls attitude to school far beyond their first day. If our girls are excited to come to school and confident in their own abilities from the start, this flows on in the years ahead and makes a difference in their learning journey.

From the very beginning we start to build a connection to our school and their new community. Girls start to learn about what it means to be a St Cuthbert’s girl, identifying with their uniform and about our school motto ‘By Love Serve’. We encourage our girls to have a go at all the new learning situations that they are faced with and to not worry about making mistakes, as these naturally become new learning opportunities. In these early years at school we want our girls to build a love and passion towards learning, build caring relationships and have loads of fun.

And because the brain in these early years is still very ‘plastic’, we endeavour to support this natural process by providing lots of opportunities, experiences and provocations for girls to be curious, to discover and wonder and to ask questions about their world.

Our transition programme builds on a platform of a ‘little and often’ approach where the girls will read, write and work with mathematical equipment everyday with their teacher. Each teaching session will build on from the last and you will see rapid development in this first year at school.

With all this learning going on, your child is often very tired after a day at school and we

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recommend having no other activities other than swimming for the first few months until they have built up some school stamina.

As their first teachers we want to develop trust in our girls that we are there to help them in all aspects of their learning whether it be organising themselves in the morning with all their morning jobs. These are aprons on, book bags away, diaries into boxes and drink bottles in the water station to helping them with their tricky lunch boxes, holding pencils correctly and sounding out new words in their writing. We believe that when you build positive connections with our learners, we show them we are invested in their education and, in turn, they become invested too.

When your child starts school you also become part of our school community. This is a great time to get involved in school activities and start meeting other families whose children will move through school with your child. Our class co-ordinators will invite you to coffee catch ups, picnics and other social gatherings to help welcome you into your new community.

— Nikki Boyens, Deputy Head of Junior School

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Year 1

explore sustainability From Year 1 upwards our girls look at their role in their communities and our world through P.E.A.C.E. classes through inquiry-led activities.

P.E.A.C.E. stands for Philosophy, Ethics, Attributes, Citizenship and Exploration and is an early introduction to Social Sciences.

Year 1’s P.E.A.C.E. topic in Term 2 was 'what's in our lunch box? which came under the umbrella topic of Sustainability. Their exploration started by taking a look into what litter was left at the end of their lunch, and the girls carefully categorised it on a mat together as a Year Group. The girls were so amazed by what they found that, together with their teachers, they looked at solutions for the rubbish and learned how they could compost the remains.

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They then learned further about how the rubbish from their own homes is processed during their visit to the recycling centre, asking lots of questions of the Auckland Council representatives who guided the tour.

Our Year 1 teachers have observed that girls are now much more aware now of what they are bringing in and often present their sustainability-minded lunchboxes to them, proud of their new knowledge and the action they’ve brought about.

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Year 2

Discovering Structures through Engineering Our Year 2 classes came together to learn about structures. The teachers led them through discussions with open questions provoking some great answers around ‘what does an engineer do?’ and ‘what do you need to think about when you’re constructing a building?

The girls started by making sketches of their dream building and were asked to think about the structure from all sides, not just the front side which was very new to the girls. They then made paper bridges together and collaborated across the two classes to create a masterpiece. Some girls chose robots, others choose buildings, but all had to work from a plan and work together to make decisions on their shared projects.

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Sofia “I worked with five girls to make our city. Our city has apartments and we made it to look like the big Farmers shop on Queen Street. I worked on it with some girls from the other class. I used to be in a class with them last year in Year 1 so I liked being back with them again and I could see what they’d been doing. My favourite thing about the city is that Emma came and helped us, Emma had a broken arm so I was happy she was with us”.

Carla “I liked making a spa for our hotel.

If I was in a hotel I would swim there”.

Samaira “We decided to huild a robot and we found boxes that were just the right size for each other. We used them to make a face and I made the eyes and eyelashes and the hat. We started with the bottom box and worked up to make sure the bottom was strong and to stop it falling over. This made it easier to put the head on at the end. The thing I liked the most was working with the other class”.

Monica “My favourite part of our robot was when we made the hat, I liked making the eyelashes too”.

Jiayi “I wanted to put a bed in the hotel.

I imagined sleeping with my feet on the pillow and my head at the wrong end”.

Sisi “I made a house and I’m very proud of it because it has an elevator. I liked it when I worked with the other team when we connected our two buildings”.

Valerie “I liked sketching the drawing before we made it from the boxes the best. I liked the way that our buildings ended up looking like our sketches”.

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Year 3

What floats a boat?

Following on from Term 1’s America’s Cup fever, Year 3 wanted to learn more about boats and so their teachers guided a challenge to learn about what makes a structure float or sink.

Miss Inglis and Miss Stevens brought together all of the Year 3 girls for a float or sink challenge, in timed conditions so the girls could quickly learn with the below brief. They tested out their constructions discussing what worked and why. The girls equally learnt as much by exploring the boats which didn’t float and then went back and adapted them. The Year 3 shipmates want to continue learning about this subject and so are visiting the Maritime Museum soon and will take a trip on the (buoyancy pre-tested) Ted Ashby, the Museum's ketch-rigged scow.

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Year 4

Electrifying In Term 2 as part of their Knowledge Rich studies, Year 4 focused on electricity, in particular what it is and how simple circuits can be constructed.

Vector Energy came to visit our students and gave a talk on how to be safe around electricity which they all learned a lot from and enjoyed.

This was followed up by a trip to the Senior School to see Electricity in action with their Year 10 Big Sisters who were studying the concept of Electricity in more detail. They joined the Senior students for practical activities involving static electricity and had great experiences together using a Van de Graaff generator which is an electrostatic generator producing high voltage at low current levels.

Hair-raising stuff!

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Year 5

My place in the world The three classes of Year 5 have been working together to learn more about who they are, where they are from and where they belong.

Each Year 5 girl explored and created her very own pepeha. A pepeha is a way of introducing ourselves. It follows a structure to identify who we are, where we're from and where we belong. It was wonderful to see the girls exploring how each of them was

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linked to their ancestors, and what their very own story of belonging was as no two are the same. They brought their pepeha to life through these wonderful circular artworks which were proudly displayed across the classrooms.

As part of learning more about where they are growing up they visited Maungawhau, the maunga closest to St Cuthbert’s. Maungawhau means mountain of the whau tree, and Maungawhau is considered a Tūpuna Maunga, an ancestral mountain. The girls had a tour of the maunga learning about how people used to live there, where they sourced their water from and where they used to store their food.

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Year 6

Pottery as an expression of ocean protection As part of their stretch sessions in Term 2, Year 6 explored the oceans closest to New Zealand.

The girls were challenged to research an ocean creature and bring their new-found knowledge to life through pottery. Ellie Jones, a Visual Arts teacher from the Senior School, joined the classes to give the girls expert tuition in each skill needed along the way.

To start the research the Year 6 girls were asked by their teachers “What do you want to protect in our Pacific Ocean, the Tasman Sea, and the Hauraki Gulf?”. From their research they found creatures and plants they considered important to save and from this list looked deeper at the textures each one had.

Girls were introduced to artist Heather Knight and her beautiful approach to pottery.

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They also researched moana art from other sources, such as coral vases and sea urchin sculptures. Seeing the target outcome of their pottery style students first had to sketch the whole object, then draw an enlarged section where they focussed on the detail and pattern of the texture.

Students loved the process, and their artworks are a stunning reminder of all they have learned about caring for our moana.

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Read to reel

Book week The 2021 Book Week was a huge success and loved by all. Each day had a different dress-up theme all tied into the theme of ‘Read to Reel’ which helped girls appreciate the books behind the movies they may have seen. They heard from visiting authors, created dust jackets for books bringing alive the narrative, had ingenious costumes and read, and read, and read!

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On the Monday we wore our favourite hats, On the Tuesday we had a silly hair day, On the Wednesday we wore odd socks, On the Thursday we wore our pyjamas, And on the last day, Friday we dressed as our favourite ‘Read to Reel’ characters for our book parade.

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Colour in this page and return it to our Junior School reception by the end of Term 4, week 1.

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Until next time...