Kia ora, e ngā whānau,

We do hope that this finds you all at the end of a very happy, warm and 'not-too-wet' holiday.

Welcome back to school for the third term of the year. We are looking forward to a fun term, including lots of further growth and development in all areas of life and learning!

We are very excited to be looking forward to the official opening of our new building, Hangere, on Monday morning. Please remember that if your child is in either of Elizabeth's or Tracey's Home Groups, we would like you to deliver your child to Kōmanawa, where they will be able to take their bags indoors. Once inside, one of the teachers will show the children where they can leave their bags, in the meantime. Children will then be able to settle in and reconnect with teachers and friends in Kōmanawa, before the bell rings at 8:55 a.m. Once the register has been taken, teachers will then bring the children over to Hangere for the official opening.

Have a lovely weekend, koutou, and we look forward to seeing you all again on Monday.

Ngā mihi mahana,

The Koru team - Elizabeth, Nicola, Stacey, Chelsea and Tracey

Kia ora,

Can you believe we have just finished Week 9 of the term and only have one more week until the July winter break starts. I'm sure everyone will be looking forward to some relaxing family time over the break.

This week in the Koru team we have been learning about Matariki. The children have been busy engaging in some Matariki activities and learning about the 9 Matariki stars. It was great to see many of our children and their whanau gathering for our Rōpū Hui on Wednesday night to celebrate Matariki. We hope you enjoyed your night participating in the fun range of activities available.

We have been enjoying hearing about all the practise children are involved in with their Structured Literacy at home. Thank you so much for your support with this, it is making a huge difference to their progress throughout the stages. Just a reminder that children who are just starting their Structured Literacy journey will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. Heart words, these are words that cannot be sounded out, will also start coming home for children to practise. Once they are proficient in segmenting and blending the first 8 sounds together, and know the heart words, they will start bringing home decodable books to read with you at home. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to their success at decoding words, so this stage may take longer for some learners. It is exciting to see their progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practise with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once they are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

In our maths programme over the past week we have been using frogs and ponds to create number sentences. We started with 5 frogs, and increased the numbers during the week, and looked at how many different ways the frogs could be in and out of the pond and recorded our findings.

We loved seeing this team work together to create this construction. 

Well done to those children who participated in the fun run on Friday to support the student council in raising funds for the charity KidsCan. You all put in an incredible amount of energy! Ka pai!

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Jo, Stacey, Chelsea, Tracey and Nicola

 Kia ora, whānau,

We've had a wonderful fortnight, and once again, we've been very busy and our days have been full of fun.

Nicola and Chelsea's Home Groups have 'moved' over to Kōmanawa, where they are starting and finishing each day. Inbetween times, our Structured Literacy and Maths interchanges are still taking place. The children have embraced our new arrangements with typical flexibility and willingness! Teachers have been enormously impressed with the seamless and sensible way the children have moved between spaces, following the lead of one of their teachers whenever they need to transfer. Congratulations, tamariki - we are all very proud of you.

• correct pencil and pen grip
• finger strength and dexterity exercises
• core strength exercises
• tummy lying, with strong arms and straight legs, to help strengthen the shoulder girdle.

Our monkeys, Skip and Bounce, are always on the look out for those children who are putting great effort into their handwriting. Teachers are always thrilled to see children deliberately transferring their handwriting skills into their Structured Literacy lessons. 

Learning Through Play:

We are always delighted to see the different forms of play which the children engage in. Sometimes the children's play might relate to different curriculum areas (for example, Science and Technology) and sometimes the play might take the form of 'role play'. Some of the children have created a game called 'Puppy School'. This game continued throughout last week, and as the days went by, the children realised that they needed more and more resources for their game, including their own karakia and karakia kai, some toys for the puppies (bones and balls), some stickers (!), and a computer for the puppy teacher.

Structured Literacy Parent Meetings:

We hope that those of you who weren't able to attend one of these meetings held earlier in Term 1, either have (last Thursday) or are able to attend on either Tuesday (7:00 - 8:00 p.m.) or Thursday (9:00 - 10:00 a.m.) this week coming. These meetings are being run by Caroline Morritt, our Resource Teacher of Literacy. Caroline is a mine of information and is very happy to answer any questions which you might have. She is also able to refer you to specific youtube clips and websites which will be of enormous value to you, as your children are learning to read and write. Here is the link to the video of a child demonstrating the pure sounds for each of the letters of the alphabet. We have shared this before, but thought it might be of help for those parents of children who are newer to school.

Have a wonderful week to come everyone! 

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Jo, Stacey, Nicola, Chelsea, Tracey and Elizabeth

Kia ora whānau,

We have had another very busy fortnight, with the children engaging in a range of learning experiences. 

We have explored Space during our Learning Through Play, with the children building spacecraft using a variety of equipment including boxes and tubes. We also followed the Space theme in our Maths, as each child worked with a friend to make up groups of ten astronauts. Each time a group of ten astronauts was formed, they were then able to climb aboard the spacecraft, and some children were even able to make up ten groups of ten astronauts, all of whom were then able to leave the spacecraft, and enter the space station. The children practised their skip counting in tens, and also learnt a great deal about place value as they worked out the number of astronauts in their space craft and added on those who were still waiting to enter the space craft.

The children have also been introduced to a new Maths game called 'Move and Prove'. In this game, they are given a statement, which might or might not be true. Children have worked out that they need to:

• think
• decide
• listen
• talk
• be able to say why they think what they think (we have used the words 'justify' and 'justification' when discussing the 'prove' part of the game).

Our big buddies supporting us on a Friday afternoon

Beautiful concentration here!

Having a great time together in the Gallery classroom.

Very happy to be visiting the Art Gallery.

One excited boy with his Dad on the bus!

Love that focus.

Beautiful use of colour.

Showing 'We Care'.

More lovely focus.

We look forward to finishing our art works and displaying them at school.

Great concentration.

This is going to be wonderful when finished.

Gorgeous attention to detail here.

Great work here too.

Carefully taking the tape from the black background paper.

Practising writing our Heart Words.

Providing friends and teachers with a small concert performance.

Viewing and discussing one of Ralph's works, Black Phoenix.

One of Ralph's works on narrow corrugated iron.

Noticing the way the work changes as you move past it.

Listening carefully for sounds in words.

Showing 'We Care' about our learning.

Getting ready to slide the sounds together.

 Kia ora, whānau,

A reminder to you all that Friday is our 'big day' out! We're off to the Art Gallery.

Please ensure that your children have their lunch, drink bottle and a change of clothing in their bags.

Also, please note that it will not be possible to order lunches that day.

We're looking forward with great excitement to our big day out, and thank you so much to those of you who have volunteered to come along and help us on the day.

Please note, that if you have volunteered to accompany us on this outing, your child will be bringing a note home for you, in their school bag tomorrow (Thursday).

Ngā mihi mahana,

Koru team teachers