Introduction: Mr. Niks

Kia Ora,

My name is Stephen Nikiforuk & I am the new teacher in Room 12 here at Glen Taylor School. Originally from Toronto, Canada, I decided to move down to New Zealand when I received the opportunity to teach with the year 7/8's as it has always been a dream of mine to teach & travel to develop experiences while being surrounded by different cultures. New Zealand seemed like the perfect destination for beginning my career as a teacher due to the culture, the geography and most importantly, the people.

Before I became a full-time Primary teacher, I have worked within a number of different professions including Sports Facilitator, Basketball Coach, Wilderness Therapist, Music Teacher & a Camp Director to name a few. Some of my favorite things to do include rock climbing, basketball, composing music and drinking lots of coffee. I expect to have many opportunities to explore and learn more about Aotearoa in the coming years!

So far, I've learned a large amount of New Zealand and the surrounding Auckland area. With my class, I learned how to count to four in Maori and I'm hoping to add some more digits to that soon. I learned what a Karakia is and the importance of whanau.

I'm writing this blog post to lead by example for my students. As it has been quite some time since we have posted a blog as a class, I hope we can arrange a blog post a couple times a week to not only focus on our digital skills but to let everyone know what we've been learning in Room 12 this term! I hope to get our Google Sites up and running within the next week so that everyone can see what we've been focused on and what we'll be learning in the coming term.

I hope everyone has a fantastic day!

Haere rā,

Stephen Nikiforuk

Student Led Conferences

Term 3 Week 1.

Shout out to Room 12 for doing such an unreal job on their tri-folds that related to an experiment they conducted in Term 2. Below are some of the finished products that we've worked on in class the past couple of days of Term 3 Week 1.

 
 

Sand and Salt Separation

Our experiment on sand and salt separation. With lots of discussion, we figured out that putting water in the mixture to melt the salt would be good first. After that we heated the salt mixture in a pan and then evaporated the water to get our salt back. Lots of fun!!!

Filling in Manaiakalani Learner Questionnaire

Whole class got involved in with Ms. Collins to fill in the Learner Survey from Manaiakalani.

Mr. Raj's Digital Footprint

ANZAC DAY Art

After reading about ANZAC, students were really into representing their understanding about it using art. They had a clear understanding why ANZAC has a special place in New Zealand calendar.

Launching our Inquiry for Term 2 - Science

Introducing the wow factor on day one. Students got to view the model of our solar system and how planets move around, how big or small they are, the order away from the Sun. They had lots of questions to ask and this hopefully forms their journey to exploring our solar system. Well done Room 12!