Kia ora, e te whanau,

What a lovely first week back at school following the holidays, this despite some very inclement weather! The children have loved reconnecting with teachers and friends. We warmly welcome our new children and their whānau: Kura, Theo, Ciaran, Arlo, Jessica and Mia Rose. It's wonderful to have you all at school with us, and well done to all for settling so beautifully into school life. 

A very warm welcome also to our new children, and their whanau, who joined us towards the end of last term - Julia, Amani, Beau, Sailor, and Harriet. It is so lovely to have these children in the hub with us as well. They too have all settled in beautifully and our 'golden oldies' have been wonderful in making everyone feel very welcome.

It became apparent, and you will have read this in a recent Hero message from Sandy, that we have experienced a glitch in Hero which has meant that some of our communications have failed to reach you. We are therefore resending this Blog post, as it contains many gorgeous photos and lots of news about what the children were up to towards the end of last term.

Elizabeth and Nicola's home groups were lucky to be able to rebook their Junior Park Explorers outing to the ponds, after their initial trip was postponed. This visit took place in the second half of Term 2. Our educator, Pete, did a fabulous job of being both captivating and informative with our group. We learnt lots about our native birds, the role trees play in our ecosystem, and where bugs like to live.

We had to be really quiet on our bird search. When we spotted a bird we used this signal to point it out.
In this activity, we lay down, breathed in and scrunched our toes, then breathed out and relaxed our toes.

We are aware that in the Koru team we have a student with an all-nut allergy. Therefore we are asking that if nuts/nut-based products aren't necessary for your child's lunchbox, please consider not including them.

The team is also aware that some children have other dietary requirements and that their diet may need to be nut-based, so will need nut products to be included in their lunch box.

The teachers will continue to remind the children that at school we eat our own food rather than share with others, along with reminders about handwashing and putting food wrappings in lunch boxes to take home. These reminders will also include asking children to wash their hands after eating nuts, in order to remove any potential residue. 

Kia ora e te whanau,

We hope you are all happy and healthy, and that everything is going well for you all on the home front. We have officially reached the end of our first term here at school! It has been an incredibly busy term, and we are very proud of the resilience and perseverance our tamariki have shown, along with their ability to incorporate all aspects of our school values into their daily lives. Very well done, koutou!

Here is the Learning At Home page link for those of you who might be wanting to access this throughout the school holidays. You will see that there are enormous possibilities here on our Koru team page, from a range of extra Maths activities, a wide variety of Literacy activities, through to many picture books which have been read by the teachers and uploaded so that the wee ones can enjoy a quiet moment listening to a good story.

As we said, it has been a very busy term full of exciting activities and impressive progress throughout, including:

• having the wonderful Kate in to teach our tamariki about different aspects of Digitech, 
• having the lovely Sue in to help with some baking on Fridays, 
• children making wonderful progress in their Structured Literacy groups, and
• tamariki learning lots of new concepts, knowledge and strategies in the Maths area.

Unplugged programming, using individual paper mazes, and weaving play-based learning into Digitech, by choosing a character to act as a robot programmer and using kinetic sand as barriers and obstacles.

Vocalising the code, using the simple code blocks of 'forward', 'turn' and 'backwards'.

Guiding Bingo through the maze, by giving him a 'superpower' and adding 'jump' to the code blocks.

Unplugged coding refers to learning coding skills, without the use of technology!

Incorporating our Sustainability theme into Digitech.

The tamariki talked about the impact of pollution and rubbish on underwater life.

They then 'taught' AI (the iPad app they were using) to tell the difference between a fish and rubbish, then, using the iPad to control a bluebot, children then set about cleaning up the ocean so that the sea creatures could be safe, happy and thrive!

Structured Literacy: 

Although your children haven't brought their literacy folders home over the holidays, this doesn't mean that their Literacy learning and practice must stop for the time being. You will find, in our Koru Learning at Home Literacy area, links to the letter sound cards (you could make your own copies for home, if you have a printer), their heart words, and several other aspects of phonemic awareness. In the phonics section, there is a link through to YouTube which gives lots of opportunities for the children to practise a variety of phonemic awareness activities. 

Maths: 

The children have been working hard to increase their knowledge of bigger numbers and the concepts like place value which are involved in this learning. They have been:

• using tens frames to show the make up of 'teen' numbers (10 + ? = the particular teen number)
• learning about how the teen numbers are represented by words in te Reo Māori
• counting forwards to 20, and then on to 100
• counting backwards from 10, and then backwards from 20
• learning to read numbers to 20, 100 and beyond (up to any 3-digit number), and working towards understanding the concept of place value required when, for example, zero is a place holder, as in 702
• solving fun Maths problems using a variety of strategies 
• learning new maths games (like Traffic Light, Move and Prove and various versions of Memory which involve matching a number, for example, 14, with its matching tens frame pattern) 
• making patterns and pictures, using the shape equipment

We love these Maths activities which require the children to justify their thinking, and which also allow for a wide variety of 'answers'.

Again, impressive thinking here, and a growing ability in tamariki to justify their thinking.

Excellent explanations and problem-solving here!

Learning about 'teen' numbers.

Learning that 'teen' means ten.

The children's drawings are representations of what they actually did, using popsicle sticks and hair ties, to form bundles of ten with some 'ones' left over (please note, the line through the ten 'sticks' is the hair tie!)

And aren't the tamariki amazing to be learning how to write equations in this way?

• socio-dramatic role play where they began by building a bridge, then found all sorts of animals to represent the three billy goats and another animal (often a wild cat, such a s a tiger) to play the part of the troll, before retelling the story using those characters
• creating a small world, where they used the skills of recalling what happens in the story to retell it to their peers using characters they had made 
• a whole class bridge building competition, using such equipment as Duplo, wooden building blocks, Lego, boxes, small bricks, and a variety of classroom furniture. 

Two trolls (one large and pink; the other a small grey elephant) up to mischief in this retelling!

Watch out, little goats...

Oh, no - what is going to happen next?

... a bad day for one of the trolls.

...and a very bad day for the other!

More creative use of a variety of animals (including dinosaurs) in this retelling.

Another troll about to get his comeuppance!

And a creative variation on the Three Billy Goats Gruff theme, incorporating the use of the train set, some Lego and some shells!

Kete Certificates: 

Congratulations to Neasa, Kit, Jos Luke, and Nellie, for showing our school kete values and recently receiving certificates in the areas of:

• We Care
• We Love Learning and
• We Make a Difference

Ka pai, tamariki!

We trust that you all have a wonderfully safe and happy Easter break and school holiday to follow. 

Thank you so much for the support which you have all provided for us here at school throughout this term. It is always greatly appreciated. Your children have shown wonderful levels of participation and contribution throughout this first term and will all, no doubt, be very tired. We trust you all have the chance to relax and recharge ready for an exciting Term 2 ahead.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Georgia, Stacey and Amy

Kia ora e te whanau,

We hope everything's going well for you all on the home front. We have reached the end of Week 7, and it has been a fun-filled and epic fortnight here in the Koru hub.

Here is the Learning At Home page link for those of you who might be needing it. We are adding and updating our content every so often, however you will see that there are enormous possibilities here on our Koru page. If your child completes some Learning Through Play, some Literacy activities and some Maths activities each day, then that is terrific. If, on some days, this isn't achievable for any reason, then that is absolutely fine too. You will see that in class, we start each day with our karakia, followed by the National Anthem, and this might be a good thing to do at home as well.

Today you will see that the children have brought home, in their bags, their unique Home Learning codes which will give you access to Seesaw. We will be using Seesaw for those of you who are engaging in Learning From Home.

Structured Literacy: Across the school and within our Koru hub, we use the Structured Literacy approach to teaching reading. This approach focuses on speech sounds first, then leads on to the writing and reading of these sounds in words. As our tamariki learn different sounds, they then learn to blend and segment these sounds to read and write words. We also follow another specific approach for our handwriting which is called 'Kinetic Letters', and these handwriting skills are also practised during Literacy lessons.

Scope and Sequence: There are 7 different stages within the Structured Literacy approach. Each stage has new sounds for the children to learn and requires different skill sets. As children move through the stages, new skills are learnt and these build upon previous skills that the children have learnt.

 Kia ora e te whanau,

We hope everything's going well for you all on the home front. Here we are at the end of Week 5 and we've had another very busy, fun and creative fortnight in the Koru team. 

Here's the link through to our Learning At Home page for those of you who might be needing it.

This week, we're going to have a focus on Digitech in our Blog post! So... first of all, what is Digitech? 

Digitech: is a way of expressing problems and formulating solutions in ways that a computer would, and can be integrated into many areas of the curriculum, including Literacy and Maths (for example, to support the learning of heart words, story telling and sequencing, number recognition and counting, etc.).

Introducing Kate...!

Kate is one of the Ōtautahi Outreach facilitators and is working with us in this area of our learning. Kate was born and raised in Ōtautahi locally, and is actually a Beckenham School old girl (the year of '99!). Her background is in ECE teaching, before she 'fell somewhat head first' into Digital Technologies. She spent 2018-2020 on Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko, the Digital Readiness Programme, and now focuses on creating fun and authentic learning experiences in classrooms. We feel incredibly lucky to have Kate working with the Koru team (both teachers and children). Kate is coming to us once a week on Thursday mornings throughout the first two terms of this year.

What does Digitech look like at the New Entrant level?

Digitech can be:

• easily interwoven throughout play-based learning 
• integrated throughout such curriculum areas as Literacy, numeracy, Science and Te Ao Māori
• used to introduce the children to simple elements and concepts of programming, thereby  demystifying the language and terminology which children will encounter later in their learning

• SO much fun! Believe it or not, it can include opportunities to explore messy play and can also be used outside in the natural environment 

• used incredibly successfully to support the social competencies of collaboration, communication, well-being, Turangawaewae and problem solving 

What are some of our areas we have focused on in the first 3 weeks of our Digitech learning in the Koru team?

• Week 3 (Kidbots): We started by introducing the grid and the characters of the 'robot' and the 'programmer' to the tamariki. You can also add a 'tester' but we played the role of the 'tester' collaboratively on this introductory day. Writing a computer program with Kidbots involved: planning what we wanted to do; coding the instructions; testing our code/programme; and debugging our code/programme.

• Week 4 (Bluebots and Greedy Cat): This week, the focus was on writing a computer programme, with Greedy Cat as a character. The children had to: plan what they were going to do; revisit the story and go over the sequence of kai that Greedy Cat gobbles up; code the instructions, using simple 'forward' 'backwards' and 'turn' blocks to represent their code blocks; test their code/program (tamariki were encouraged to 'test' the program frequently along the way to ensure there were no 'bugs' - when each programme was tested, children were encouraged to 'read' the programme out loud together); debug their code/program (when obstacles were encountered or the code wasn't correct during testing, children 'debugged' their code and then retested). Computers only output exactly what humans input!

• Week 5: Bluebots and Scratch Jr: This week, we introduced programming using software and bluetooth connectivity. Tamariki were encouraged to programme through the iPad app to a shape and then test and debug their code. (Scratch Jr is block based code for animations and uses visual code and colours as opposed to text, and only works on an iPad.)

Below are some images of your wee ones, hard at work programming and problem solving, using Bluebots and the Scratch Jr. app on the iPads:

 Kia ora, e te whanau,

We have had an amazingly busy and productive fortnight - it's been SO much fun, and in amongst all of the fun, the children have very quickly shown fantastic gains in their independence and their confidence.

We have:

• made ice cream
• started visiting the library
• started exploring simple 'programming' with the help of Kate, from Code Club (Kate's coming in each Thursday morning to introduce us to Digitech (or Digital Technology); this link will take you to the area in the New Zealnd Curriulum which relates to e-learning and will explain more about this aspect of Technology
• been exploring the Maths equipment, and in particular, the shape equipment
• been practising our phonological awareness skills (rhyming, hearing and saying the initial sound in words, hearing and saying the final sounds in words, hearing the two parts in compound words and joining them together); you'll find more about this area of the children's learning on the Koru page of Learning At Home on our school website; just click on this link to get there quickly
• been finding out about interoception (which is to do with understanding and feeling what's going on inside our bodies, and being conscious of and learning to describe these feelings) and engaging in interoception activities
• practised our core strength exercises and our finger strength and dexterity exercises, in preparation for the start of handwriting, with Bounce and Skip, our two soft toy monkeys
• and... we have been making new friends, and talking about showing our school value, We Care, and what this looks like and sounds like