Learning Conferences
Thank you for making the time to attend your child's learning conference. We loved meeting with you and sharing our students' successes. We value your feedback feedback to assist us with our ongoing evaluation and to help us to continuously improvement. 
Please share your thoughts here



Thank you 
...to parent helpers in reading (9-10.30am) and those who put away books. If you would like to assist with our reading and discovery time, or helping to organise resources, please see one of the Koru teachers.




Readathon 
Children are enjoying our Reading Challenge. Congratulations to Robin Reid for reading 10 chapter books!

The whole school Read-a-thon is also happening NOW. Your child will have a green card in their reading folder for collecting sponsors. Please see a teacher if you have any questions.


New Library Days 
Please bring library folders on Wednesday and Thursday from next week. 
Thank-you.
Website with spoken books for children: https://www.uniteforliteracy.com
Healthy Kids Website, with healthy movement and eating ideas, and a downloadable reward chart 

Here are some happy snaps from our first fortnight back together: 

We Make A Difference 
Collecting rubbish on our own initiative, at lunchtime.
  



  

 











We Get There Together & We Love Challenge
The Cross County run
   



 

Collaborating

Tricky puzzles with friends

Creativity

Celebrating and sharing

Making new friends

We get there together!

News from the Koru New Entrant hub (Pūkaki)

Maths problem Solving:

Our problem was: Mother Bear has 5 bear cubs. She makes a new jacket for each bear cub, and each jacket will need 3 buttons. How many buttons will Mother Bear need altogether?

We work together to solve our Maths problems. We need to listen to each other, share the pen and the whiteboard, take turns, and make sure we both understand. This problem was: At a birthday party 4 children were each given 2 little prizes. How many prizes were there altogether?

Teaching Mrs Bear to count to 100.

Sharing the pen!

Working with a buddy to join sets together.

Here, we are working on solving the bears and buttons problem.

Counting acorns: 8 + 5 = 13

REALLY sharing the pen!

Starting to think about the concept of subtraction.

Buddy Time:
We love Friday mornings, when our big Year 7 and 8 buddies come over to spend time with us. We work on our poetry together, and they help us reread familiar poems from our poetry books, as well as read and illustrate the new poem for each week. We also see our big buddies out in the playground, as well as in whole school assemblies. We love seeing our big buddies when they go up on to the stage in assembly!
















At the End of the Day:
Sometimes at the end of the day, we like to get into a circle and give our friends a massage. We pretend that our fingers are like the different parts of a storm: raindrops, hail, lightning, thunder... it feels baeutiful on our backs! At the end, we all gently lie backwards and close our eyes.











Discovery Stations (learning through play):

Teaching the bears how to sing the alphabet song.

Playing schools.

Guess who?!

Building with the little blocks and animals.

Some clever balancing happening here...

Love that rabbit!!

We are all so careful and caring towards Peter Rabbit.

What a complex set up - well done, boys.

More careful balancing.

Playing the Count the Ducks game.

Colouring at the writing table.

Using a 'home made' pointer to play schools with the teddies.

Playing with one of our new little visitors on his school visit day.

Colouring, cutting and writing together.

Teaching Bounce and Skip how to write.

Clever building with the dominoes and animal counters.

Kings and Queens day:
In our hub, we like to have a Discovery Stations theme each week. On the Friday of Kings and Queens week, we all dressed up as characters related to kings, queens and castles.












Here are some handy links which you might like to check out with your children. The children are very familiar with these songs:

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Practising our counting forwards and backwards
• Phonics song for Kiwi kids
• Jolly phonics song
• National Anthem with sign language

As mentioned in an earlier school newsletter, teachers are using a problem-based approach to Maths this year. This model requires children to work in pairs or small groups to solve Maths problems based on the key Mathematical ideas in the NZ Curriculum.
Working together allows the students to develop their mathematical reasoning, their mathematical language and to explain their thinking and strategies to others. The teacher facilitates and ensures that students have the skills they need to develop deeper understandings of  the key mathematical ideas at hand



For example, a recent launch problem was: 
'There were 6 ducks in the pond and 4 more came along. How many ducks are there in the pond now?'
Key Mathematical Ideas 
* Abstract units that can be partitioned and recombined (level 2) * Numbers can be re-arranged and added to reach the same idea (commutative property) * Subtraction is the inverse of addition * Numbers can be counted by one or counted all (Level 1) * Compensation from known facts: For example, to solve 7 + 6; 6 + 6 = 12, so 7 + 6 = 13. (level 2)

Specialist coaching at Olympia Gym 
The children  had a fabulous fun filled time at Olympia Gym. They were divided up into stations which included  beam, trampoline, rebounder, mat work and  swinging rings. 
Our children were proud of their achievements and the coaches mentioned how well behaved they were. Everyone showed our school value of "We love challenge" and "We get there together".  A huge thank you to Charlotte Verity who spent many hours organising this trip and to our lovely parent helpers.
















Hub 10 had an action packed measurement  lessons outside last week.  We all drew our own fish and measured how many footsteps long they were. The children made comparisons about the length of their fish.  e.g. Who had the shortest fish? Who had the longest fish? How many footsteps long is your fish? There was a buzz of excitement and laughter as they worked collaboratively.

Statistics and Probability
Hubs 1 to 4 have been looking at statistics and probability.  We began our term with a special challenge from Sandy.  We were asked to Conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle: - posing and answering questions - gathering, sorting and counting, and displaying category data and discussing the results.  Have a look at our statistics slide show which shares the path of our learning.  
Statistics Slide Show

Our probability unit ended with a probability extravaganza.  The children were involved in playing games which explored probability and then making games of their own to share with others where they used everyday language to talk about chance and classify events as certain, possible, or impossible.


Sunhats
A friendly reminder that the children will be required to wear a named school sunhat in term four. It is really helpful to name the hats in an obvious place where the children can easily see their name. We do have sunscreen at school and the children are encouraged to put this on before play and lunch.


Gardening
There has been a lot of planting, growing and watching to see the changes as they come about.  Thanks to the many donations of 'Little Gardens.'  Tamariki have loved the thrill of seeing their efforts result in green shoots popping through the soil or cotton balls.  Gail's new entrants enjoyed trying out some science experiments with growing seeds in light, dark, with and without water.
Discovery times have also included many natural reources.  Chopping, cleaning and eating fresh carrots, making lavender bags and playing with lavender scented playdough.  Next term we look forward to more gardening.




We really enjoyed eating the Micro-greens that we grew from seeds!










Discovery
There has been so much learning and deep thinking involved across our discovery times, some children built bridges with boxes, or towers out of plastic cups.  As the images show, 'a picture speaks a thousand words!'

















Term 4
We are all looking forward to having the whole school back at the Beckenham site next term, having opportunities for tuakana -teina.  The tuakana - teina relationship,  provides a model for buddy systems. An older or more expert tuakana helps and guides a younger or less expert teina. In a learning environment the tuakana–teina roles may be reversed at any time. For example, the student who yesterday was the expert may need to learn from her classmate today.  We are also looking forward to having our mediators, sports monitors and older friends to play with in the playground.