Kia Ora Whanau,
Well here we are, the last KIT notice for 2019! We hope you are all enjoying the warm yet windy weather and lighter days. We surveyed our learners asking what their highlights have been of the whole year – this is what we came up with: · Year 4 camp · Being challenged through learning! · The rugby fun day and futsal tournament · Science with Dr Smalley · Athletics Day · Play Based Learning · BYOD · Boot camp challenges · Cross country · The Kōwhai Sanctuary trip · The school duathlon We also asked them what they are most looking forward to in 2020 and their responses were: · Year 5 camp · New learning spaces · Meeting and getting to knoe new teachers · Being reunited with old friends · Year 4 camp · The opportunity to attend zones through sports · Using the Moa playground · New adventures · Attending the Tough Kid challenge · Making new friends. Congratulations to our Year 3’s who have survived their first overnight stay, followed by a big day of the junior duathlon! They were awesome and have shown amazing self regulation during a tiring time of year (the teachers included). A huge thank you to Miss Howden for staying overnight to support our group of learners. Week 9 is 2020 transition week throughout the school. This is an opportunity for the learners and teachers to meet each other in their new space. It will be an exciting time for all of us. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support throughout the year. It is going to be hard saying goodbye to this fantastic bunch who we have had the pleasure of teaching this year. To our students moving on to other places we wish you all the best in 2020. To our students staying at West Melton we look forward to hearing all about your successes as you continue on your learning journey. We wish you a fun, safe and happy holidays and look forward to seeing you in 2020 throughout the school. Ngā mihi nui, Jane, Natasha and Mandy
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Hi All,
As we write this KIT Notice we are looking around the room at some rather tired students. We had a very successful Athletics Day and are incredibly proud of the way our teams participated and supported each other as the competed. Hopefully you will hear all about it this evening. We have just finished our Science Rotation with Dr Smalley where we have been learning about force and Newtons. Please ask your child about this learning. Highlights from the term so far have been: Athletics Fitness - boot camp and running Leveraging Digital to deepen learning Maths FAB 5 Science Play Based Learning Reading Collaborating Socialising and growing friendship groups. We are in the final stages of confirming our 2020 camps and costs: Year 4 Living Springs- $200 Approx Year 5 Blue Skies - $230 Approx More detail will be sent out about these camps in the coming weeks. As a teaching team we have just finished writing our snapshot reports. We can honestly say it has been amazing to look back on our year with our team and see how far our learners have come both individually and as a team. Have an amazing weekend, Mandy, Jane and Natasha Wow, here we are at Week 4 already. There has been lots happening in Tī Kōuka over last 2 weeks. In Maths we have been exploring the strategies we can use to solve multiplication problems like 18 x 7. Please ask your child about this.
Writing has seen us having to make decisions about the side we are taking. We have had lots of discussion around our Would You Rather questions - ask me about whether I would rather be invisible or fly? We have also been learning to write an exposition on a chosen subject. We have been learning that this type of writing follows a set formula of:
In Reading we have been working on:
It with a sense of sadness that we farewell Miss Kingston and Mr Holwood today. They have become part of the Tī Kōuka team and will be missed as the return to College to continue their teaching and learning journey. We know they will be an asset to the teaching profession when they finish their training. Our Year 3's will be busy preparing for their Year 3 Overnight Stay on the 5th of December and the Duathlon on the 6th. A notice has come home today in regard to this. Week 6 - November 22 is the Year 1-4 Athletics Day. Beginning at 10.30am and concluding at 12.30pm. We don't require any parental support for the running of this event. You are welcome to join us on the day to watch your child take part. Kind Regards: Mandy, Natasha, Jane, Mark and Elizabeth. Enjoy the beautiful weather over the weekend. Kia Ora whanau,
It is hard to believe we have reached term four already! Our learners have come back to school ready to roll and we have heard some awesome stories about their holidays. A big part of our focus for this term is preparing our learners to transition into year 4/5 next year as we continue to Be the Best that We Can Be. We have launched back into our normal routine of reading, writing and maths. During our afternoons this term, we are aiming to mix up play based learning with athletics practice (weather permitting) on Wednesdays and Fridays. This is to build the confidence of our learners as our junior athletics fun day approaches (date to be confirmed). We also have the Year 3 overnight school stay coming up this term. The year 3s really enjoyed this event last year and it is an awesome way for our learners to grow confidence when looking forward to next years year 4 camp. The overnight stay will take place on Thursday, 5th of December and the junior duathlon will take place the following day on Friday the 6th. There will be more information to come for both events. On Friday we had our second and last disco for the year. It is so cool to see our learners getting involved, having fun and a boogie! Thank you to everyone who bought tickets and came along – another fun and successful event run by our lovely FoWM teams. Congratulations also to all our learners who entered the West Melton’s got talent competition. We loved watching their performances in class and wish them all luck! Have a safe and sunny long weekend, and GO THE ALL BLACKS! Mandy, Natasha and Jane Kia Ora whānau,
Well here we are, at the end of Term 3 with Term 4 rapidly approaching! It is awesome to see the deeper learning we’ve been working on all year become more visible with our learners as we have approached the end of term. This morning, we have had our Book Character Day parade - and wow! How awesome it is to see so many of our learners involved, excited and enthused about reading. It has been a fun day to end an equally as fun term, and we loved to seeing our learners heading into the holidays with big grins on their faces. This week the Tī Kōuka teachers have been forward planning for next term and doing some big picture thinking around this. As we highly value student voice in our learning space, we started our planning process with a survey of our learners by asking them: What do we learn here? What is important? What are our boredom busters? And, What else would you like to learn? As much as some people would apparently like to drop maths and reading, we have reassured them that that will not be happening!! As we wrap up the term, please keep in mind the upcoming Disco; the first Friday in Week one, the 18th of October. We trust that you’ll have a fun and relaxing couple of weeks, whether it be on an adventure or hibernating with the family. We look forward to seeing all their beautiful faces back and ready to go for the fun of term four! Ngā mihi nui, Mandy, Natasha and Jane Kia Ora Whānau, With the the end of term first approaching we thought we would be great to get some highlights from the students in Tī Kōuka about their learning this term. Our highlights include:
In other news we have some important events coming up: Monday 16 September sees the final evening of Goal Setting Conferences. We have loved catching up with the students and their families on Tuesday and Thursday and look forward to seeing some more of you on Monday. Tuesday 17 September - 7.00 - 8.30 is a chance to connect and be a part of the process of helping to build a future direction for West Melton School (See Attached ) Friday 18th October. School Disco - Years 0-3 - 5:00pm-6:15pm, Years 4-8 - 6:45pm-8:00pm A huge thank you to Dr Melanie England who came and spent some time in Tī Kōuka explaining how she has made a difference made a difference to others in her role as a medical doctor. If you would like to come and share with Tī Kōuka how you make a difference in your occupation, we would love to hear from you. We hope you have a safe and relaxing weekend Ngā mihi nui Natasha, Jane and Mandy
Kia Ora whānau!
What a busy two weeks it has been in Tī Kōuka, filled with science, school photos and tennis coaching. Our learners have done well do manage themselves and cope with he crazy changes of their daily routine. A huge welcome to Miss Northe, who will be in our community until the end of term from the University of Canterbury. Our learners have been warm and welcoming towards her and we look forward to having an extra pair of hands in the class! Over the past two weeks we have had science lessons again with Dr Smalley. Needless to say it has been an exciting time for all, including conducting experiments, making predictions and writing hypothesis. It is evident we have some keen future scientists in the making. This week we were fortunate enough to have Gareth form the West melton Tennis club in school to practice our tennis skills. This was great for improving motor skills - you may have some kids coming home to see if they can play tennis over summer now. At the beginning of the week were our class photos – something learners are always excited for! Thank you for bringing them in looking smart and with their gorgeous smiles, ready to go for the camera. As usual, we are continuing with our reading, writing and maths programmes and carrying on with our inquiry topic – Can one person make a difference? We have been discussing how one person can create positive change in the world, our country, our community and lastly, in our classroom. This had led to some in-depth discussions about how small, kind acts can create big change. Coming up we have our next goal setting conferences with you and child. Thank you to everyone who has already booked in a time to see their pod teacher and discuss their learning successes. Have a lovely Spring weekend, Natasha, Mandy and Jane Kia Ora, Talofa, Bula from Tiī Kōuka, This term continues to fly along and we find our selves at the end of week 4. We have had lots of fun in Tī Kōuka this week as we have worked through the Maths Week questions and solved the riddle. This culminated with us finding the treasure that had been left in a secret location around the school. Below are a couple of challenges that you might like to complete with your child. We have also been having fun with writing based around the book 'The Day the Crayons Quit'. There has been some interesting choices of household objects to quit and we look forward to sharing these pieces of writing with you later in the term.
Reading continues to involve us delving deeper into texts through questioning, retelling and inference. We are looking at exploring vocabulary and this was the focus of our Week 3 Inquiry Friday with the statement 'All English words contain a vowel' - students were asked to research this statement and decide if it was true or false and defend their thinking. We have a new shared novel that we are beginning next week - we are excited to be sharing 'Dragon Rider' by Cornelia Funke. A huge THANK YOU to all those who have donated goods for Uganda. Miss Howden has today taken these to be packed up and sent to those in need. In Week 6 we are excited to be welcoming Alicia Northe from UC. She will be working alongside us and the students in Tī Kouka until the end of Term 3. Good luck to the students from our space who are competing in the skiing competition at Mt Cheeseman on Sunday. We look forward to hearing about your challenges and successes on Monday. We wish you all a safe and relaxing weekend. Mandy, Natasha and Jane Kia Ora and Welcome back to Term 3. It is hard to believe that we are already in Week 2. After a long stint of warm weather we are now experiencing a wet, cold snap. Due to the muddy conditions we are asking that students who play on the field or in the sandpit bring a change of clothes with them. We have also told out Tī Kōuka team that they are welcome to bring slippers to wear in the classroom.
One of our focuses for the start of this term has been around strengthening collaborative practices for our team. With this in mind we introduced the "Gingerbread Challenge" and asked students to work in pairs or fours to design the ultimate trap for a Gingerbread Man. There was some amazing discussion as the designs progressed. This design culminated with the building of the traps on Friday which identified some flaws for which solutions needed to be found. Wow, where have the last 10 weeks gone. It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming our learners back from holiday. This term has been a busy one and the students in Tī Kōuka have once again shown perseverance and tenacity to stick at their learning even when it is challenging. We will be carrying our Inquiry topic of 'Can One Person Make a Difference' through to next term and would like to our learners to choose a person who they believe has made a difference. This person can be someone famous or may be someone a little closer to home such as a family friend or member. Our focus will be around teaching the skills required to research and wonder. Our reading programme will be the tool we use to support this learning so students are able to apply these skills to other learning areas. Some of the learning taking place will be identifying information we can understand, summarising and making connections. This ties into NPDL and connects to our Communication and Character Rubrics. This week in Maths we have been asking the students to make connections to what they know about fractions and apply this to problem solving tasks. This has challenged many of the Tī Kōuka team and they have had to deepen their thinking to solve the problems they have faced. A big pat on the back for the resilience they have shown. If you are looking for ideas to support maths learning at home over the holidays you can play board games and maths dice games such as Rocket, Greedy Pig, 100 0r Bust. Use a pack of cards to add/multiply two numbers together. Baking/Cooking supports fraction knowledge and also measurement. We have looked at financial literacy so encouraging your child to work out the cost of items at the supermarket or the amount of change they will get reinforces the learning they have done. If you are planning on an excursion, you could plan this together working out travel times, costs etc. We have had lots of fun this term with our two shared novels. We think Roald Dahl novels are a crowd favourite in Tī Kōuka. The students have loved following along with the text as we read. Our first novel back next term is; The Dark Blue 100 Ride Bus Ticket by Margaret Mahy. We are excited to be sharing a novel by a New Zealand author with the team.
We have been thrilled by the writing the students in Tī Kouka are doing. Over the last 3 weeks students have been engaged in writing fractured fairytales, instructions and poetry. It has been an absolute joy seeing our students find a genre that engages and excites them. We are looking forward to publishing one of these pieces next term and sharing these with you. Thank you being being part of the team that makes Tī Kōuka Community such a fun, exciting place to be. We wish Jane safe travels as she embarks on her holiday adventure to Vietnam. We hope you all stay well, relax and laugh lots and we look forward to seeing you in two weeks time. Mandy, Natasha and Jane |
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