Author Archives: Anne Batchelor

Pōhutukawa News Term 2 Week 12

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Kia ora whānau,

What a busy term we have had! 

Winter Sport
We've been very unlucky with the weather this term for winter sport. Thanks to all of you who put your names forward to help with winter sport development and competitive teams. We are continuing next term on Thursdays - if you are unavailable to help next term please let us know, otherwise we look forward to working alongside you again in term three. 


Learning Conferences
Thanks so much for booking in for the learning conferences. We are looking forward to supporting all our learners to share their learning with you.  The weeks since returning to school after the Rāhui have flown by. Below is some information on what we have been up to.

In recent weeks, our focus  at writing time has been on identifying, understanding the grammatical structure of and creating simple, compound and complex sentences. The children have been  self assessing their writing skills in this context and will share more with you about this at the learning conferences this week.

A large amount of time and focus has been directed at the area of place value in mathematics. Place value is an area of the mathematics curriculum that will be covered every academic year through primary and secondary school, with a view to building upon previous knowledge. An understanding of place value forms the basis of many areas of mathematical understanding. Initially the focus might be on place value columns and reading numbers accurately, then it develops to being able to quickly identify the number of tens, hundreds, thousands and so on in numbers, in conjunction with using place value knowledge and understanding to manipulate numbers in addition and subtraction calculations, for example.

Another area of focus in mathematics this term has been tracking both reasoning and recall ability in relation to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. The children have done a great job of assessing their abilities in this area, and setting some goals for future focus. They will be sharing this with you at their learning conferences, and we will have some work that you can continue at home to support our learners in achieving these goals. Rob has created a brief video below to help you to understand the tracker system that we are using. The children are experts at this, so they will also be able to help!


Also, in error, the wee video that Anne, Steve, Kerilea and Kate made was left out by mistake, so here it is!



Just a few important reminders for next week - your child will need a named drink bottle full of water at school each day. If your child arrives at school without a water bottle we will be phoning you and asking you to drop one in as there are no operational water fountains at school in Level 2. Drink bottles and lunch boxes will be kept in the cubbies with bags.

If your child has borrowed a school device for the lockdown period, please bring it back to school on Monday and take it straight to the verandah outside the library where you can sign it back in.  If your child uses a skateboard to travel to and from school, these will now be stored in the locked bike stand area on Sandwich Rd - they need to be there by 9am at the latest, which is when the area is locked. They will be stored there at your own risk.

If your child has any skin sensitivities or allergies and you are concerned about the use of hand sanitiser and / or school soap, please feel free to send your child to school with their own products to use. If you have any concerns, please don't hesitate to contact your child's home group teacher.

Here is a video outlining the drop off and pick up procedures at school for the time that we are operating in Level 2.  We appreciate your support with this.


Have a great weekend everyone!