It was awesome to see so many families at our structured literacy information sessions with Caroline Morritt (Resource Teacher for Literacy). If you were unable to attend, we hope to have a recording of the session available soon. Caroline reinforced the importance of comprehension, during these parent meetings, with reference to 'Scarborough’s Rope'
“Use a variety of words to talk about the pictures
This means stay away from nouns (naming objects) and talk about words that describe (rough), action words (jump), locations (under) and words about time (later)
Highlight important words
Stress the important words or new vocabulary by changing your voice (make your pitch go up or down, change the rate of your speech by talking faster or slower)
Build on your child’s understanding
A great way to help your child understand is to relate it to a similar experience in his or her life. This will help them build a better connection between the book and something that has happened to him or her in the past.
Think outside the book
Encourage your child to think beyond the pages of the book to expand his or her thinking. You can help your child predict what might happen next, compare and contrast an object from the story to real life, make an inference and draw a conclusion, identify a problem and solution and sequence the events of the story by retelling what happened. These discussions will help your child to think, solve problems and imagine.”
Here are some photos from our literacy lessons and our library time:
Team Hui
Each week, we have a team hui. It is a special time, where we come together, connect and celebrate. As part of our hui, we say our karakia and waiata. We have noticed a number of our learners confidently reciting these off by heart, ka pai! We have attached these below, in case your child would like to practice at home.
Building Connections
This week we have been focusing on getting to know more about our peers. We have been connecting with a variety of people and finding out about our shared interests as well as our differences. It has been great to find out new things about each other and to practice our active listening skills.
Learning Conferences
Week 11 - Monday 12th April and Wednesday 14th April
School will close at 2pm on both days, to allow Learning Conferences to begin at 2:15pm.
Please go onto the School Interviews website and use the code kk64k to book your learning conference. The Learning Conferences are for 15mins each, except for Year 7/8 where you need to book a 15-minute slot, but allow 30 mins (it works!)
The focus of these Learning Conferences will be to update you on how your child has settled into the school year and the areas of focus they are working on in numeracy and literacy.
Have a fabulous Easter break, and we look forward to seeing you back at school on Wednesday 7th April.
Team Kahikatea
(Lisa, Katie, Amber, Charlotte, Michelle, Kate and Paul)
I have learned to be careful what to ask for! This time last week I was pushing for more cheese roll orders, so that we could have at least 300 dozen to make. When orders closed on Sunday, we reached 730 dozen! We would love to have another few parent helpers to work along-side our enthusiastic student team next Thursday. We are also in need of a couple of electric knives and some more jam-sized pots. We hope to get all the orders made on Thursday, but may need to keep going on Friday. Please complete this form if you can help.
Learning Conferences
Thanks to those who have already booked learning conferences in the final week of term. If you have yet to do so please go onto the School Interviews website and use the code kk64k to book your learning conference. Remember to allow 30 minutes for your conference in Year 7 & 8.
House Games on Thursday
We are looking forward to seeing our Year 7 & 8s stepping up as leaders in the first House Games for the year this Thursday. Children are encouraged to wear their house top on Thursday.
We are still looking for parents or family members to help us with our Urban Eel/ Tuna Tāone activity day on Friday April 9 from 9am - 2:30pm. The activities will be based around measuring water flow and quality, riparian zone habitats, macro-invertebrates and will include an 'eel encounter' with longfin eel/tuna from our Opāwaho/Heathcote River. No previous experience or prior knowledge is needed. In fact, we expect to learn as much as the students from these activities and gain a much better appreciation of our local environment.
We will spend the day down at the Heathcote River beside our Ponds, learning about stormwater pollution and habitat destruction of the native longfin eel, and teaching students about the need to take action now to care for our unique ‘Tuna Tāone', or 'Urban Eels'.
If you are able to help us, please get in touch with your child's homegroup teacher by email as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you!
We have been kindly gifted 100 tickets from the Crusaders, in partnership with John Jones Steel.
As a part of this initiative, John Jones Steel and the Crusaders have partnered with the Child Cancer Foundation to help raise their awareness and funds. We would love for you to consider donating to Child Cancer in exchange for a ticket. The blue donation bucket is held in the Office.
Parents and caregivers workshop - understanding how our children learn to read: The structured literacy approach.
Join us in the staffroom at 3.15 - 4:15pm or 7:00 - 8:00pm tomorrow,
Tuesday 30th March 2021.
Caroline Morritt, our Resource Teacher of Literacy will explain our new approach to teaching reading and writing. Based on the science of reading, Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto uses an explicit, systematic structured literacy approach to build a strong literacy foundation.
Come along and learn about the programme and see the decodable books we are using to support targeted classroom teaching of phonological awareness and blending and segmenting skills for accurate, automatic reading and spelling.
