We have had an amazing first two weeks back at school. The weather has been perfect, the children have been enthusiastic and the teachers have enjoyed getting to know the students in Kōwhai hub. As always, there is a lot happening, and a lot to look forward to during the first term.




Problem Solving in Maths
We have begun teaching our problem style approach in maths this week.  This has required the children to work in co-operative whānau groups with 3-4 children. We have had an emphasis on what effective group work looks and sounds like and it has been exciting to see the children participate in rich mathematical discussions as they share or question the ideas that are shared when solving the problem. 
Here are examples of some of the group thinking.














Life Education / Inquiry Learning
Next week, it is our turn to visit the Life Education van. Each class will have two lessons with the focus being on friendship, showing empathy and how we communicate with others. These are all important concepts to explore, especially at the beginning of a new year at school and supports our current class teaching around feelings and emotions.



Buddies
We began buddies last week with some of the children in Kauri Whanau. Most of the big buddies had 2-3 children. The focus of our sessions has been to get to know each other with the creation of fortune tellers and buddy posters. 



Literacy
This week we began our writing programme and we have been highly impressed with the quality of writing being produced by the children in our team. This often occurs when parents read books regularly to children as this exposes them to wonderful language.  It also enables them to hear how reading should sound as well as promoting a love of reading. Keep up the great work! 
The focus next week is on establishing our reading programme across the team. We will be developing the necessary routines for reading where the children will read in a variety of ways: reading by themselves, reading to a buddy, listening to reading, playing reading/literacy games and even visiting our new school library! FYI-Home Learning will begin in week 4 with books being sent home then. 


Learning Conferences
We would like to say a huge thank you to all the families who were able to attend a learning conference at the start of this term. As a teaching team this has enabled us to learn more about your child and how we can meet their needs this year. We really enjoyed meeting you all and are looking forward to the year ahead with your whānau.  We are always available through email and are very happy to meet  to discuss anything that arises. If you haven't done so yet, please take the time to fill in the google form which was sent out in the last newsletter via this link.  This feedback is really valuable for us as a school.

Discovery Learning

Each day we begin with Discovery Time. This time provides the children with the opportunity to work together and to learn through play and exploration. It has been great to see the children problem solving, exercising their creativity, working together and developing their communication skills. We have learnt many things about the children through our conversations and observations which will be reflected in our teaching approaches with them. Here are some photos of the children in action.

Add caption

Today we had our first buddy session with the children in Kauri Whanau. Most big buddies had 2-3 children each. The aim of today's session was to learn more about each other. We created fortune tellers showing special things about us. To demonstrate the school value, We Care and We Get There Together, we made sure we looked at our buddy, listened carefully, used our manners and we put in our best effort into our learning! We opened the doors up so we could work right across the building too.

Creating our fortune tellers.

Listening to our buddy as they explained what to do.

Working across the Hubs.

We have had a great start to the week with the children demonstrating strong self management during our Discovery Learning.