Kia Ora whanau,
It is hard to believe that it is the end of week 8 – only 2 more weeks left of Term 2 to go! Today we bid farewell to the two amazing student teachers we have had in our community for the last two weeks. Miss Kingston and Mr Holwood – we wish you all the best for your next semester at the University of Canterbury and we will see you back here in term four. It has been awesome to see how our learners have accepted and respected two new people in our space so well. A massive thank you to the Friends of West Melton for the fantastic job they did running the school discos last week. Our learners looked incredible dressed up to the nines and all glowed up! If they had even half as much fun as Miss Howden did then we’re sure they had a blast. For maths these past couple of weeks we have been working on fractions. We have been learning about numerators and denominators and how these help us to work out how fractions work. We have been very excited to see the students making connections and using their knowledge to find fractions of a set (number). Next week we have some exciting fraction work planned. Hopefully your child will come home and tell you all about it! Keep an eye on our Weebly in the coming week for some ideas to support math learning at home. From student voice and ideas that we collated at the beginning of the term, we have begun student choice writing workshops. They have opted into instructional writing, poetry or fractured fairy tales. This has given us quality and hilarious writing from our learners, such as how to be a spy, why Goldilocks was wrong and some beautiful free form poetry. Next week our learners will choose a different form of writing so they can dabble in each style. We still have a lot of coughs, colds and tummy bugs in our Community. Please keep your child at home if they are sick. We have found that if your child comes back too soon, they tend to need more days off afterwards, due to tiredness and a recurrence of the illness. Take care, stay warm, stay healthy and good luck for any sport this weekend, Jane, Mandy and Natasha.
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Talofa whanau!
As always it has been a busy and fun couple of weeks throughout our community. Firstly, thank you to you all for making time and attending our Student Led conferences. It is always awesome to have an opportunity to touch base with each of you and the feedback has been very positive. Thank you! We have been continuing on with our Inquiry into ‘Can One Person Make a Difference?’ Our learners have been researching things they are gratful for and have made an impact on their lives – their findings have have led to discovering inventors and inventions they use every day! Our science programme with Dr Smalley started up again this week which the children are very excited about! They also spent time with Dr Smalley during school planting for Arbor day – thank you to Hayden Stark for helping us to learn about the different plants and their qualities. The children loved planting and feeling like they are doing something good for the environment! This morning some of our amazing Tī Kōuka students led our Celebration of Learning for the whole school. Although they were nervous they showed determination and grit to present proudly and did an incredible job. Josh, Finn, Sophie and Lily Orange – well done! Also, Charlie Stark, Maddi Smith and Olive Lowe did a fanatsic job presenting during the Celebration of Learning about Arbour day, tau ke! Earlier this term we attanded a Professional Development course for writing. Since then we have aimed to reignite the passion and prupose behind our writing by setting up small prrompts for our learners, then letting them take the ideas wherever the wind blows them! This had led so some hilarious and creative stories and it is amazing to see them looking forward to and loving writing again. As we come to our last four weeks of term, we look forward to continuing and extending our students deeper learning, and hearing their student voice as to what we do in our community in the weeks ahead. Ngā mihi nui, Natasha, Jane and Mandy. Kia Ora Whanau!
It is hard to believe we are at the end of Week 4 of Term 2, yet here we are. Both the teachers and the learners have been excited about the happenings in our community over the past couple of weeks! After some fantastic PD about writing, we have bought some of the ideas back into our writing programme. The students have been writing ‘To Do’ lists for their chosen character, then taking one idea and turning it into a Moment in Time story. This has lead to some whimsical, humorous writing which has had us in fits of laughter at times. It has been great to see the engagement from the students and their joy in producing their piece of writing! For maths, this week we are following on from the Get Wise visit from ASB based on financial literacy. All students have turned into party planners and are currently designing their own party with a budget of $100. There has been lots of discussion around the value of money and how far it can (or cannot) stretch. We have had some questions about wether or not these parties will actually take place – we have assured them these won’t be physically happening, but just a forewarning if your child comes home and tell you they have a party planned! The following link is to a reading about the value of visual aids in maths and explains why the use of fingers remains important for all learners. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/visual-maths-finger-counting-975227-2017-05-04 We are continuing to look at inspirational Kiwis and build our understanding of how character traits and growth mindset helped them to achieve their goals. Our learners will, towards the end of this term, be using this to explore a person in their own lives who has made a difference. This week we have had our first sports rotation with WMI. Each lesson the children will rotate to try a different sport and learn new skills. We are asking that students wear appropriate footwear on Wednesdays and Fridays to accomodate this. We are looking forward to catching up with many of you next week for our goal setting conferences! It will be a fantastic chance for us to celebrate student learning and for them to reflect on the progress they have made. We have noticed a number of our students are coming to school without warm layers. As the days weather this time of year is changeable can you please ensure they are sent to school with the appropriate warm clothing. Lastly, just a reminder that school will be closed on Wednesday the 29th due to teacher industrial action. Thank you for your on-going support around this, it is appreciated! Have a lovely weekend, Mandy, Natasha and Jane. Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to Term 2. It was great to see how refreshed the children (and teachers!) were after their time away. It is amazing how quickly that changes though..! A big thank you to Miss Rennell who has been in our Community over the last 3 days, so our teachers could attend courses. We were so proud of our learners in our school Cross Country on Monday - they showed determination, perseverance and good sportsmanship. As did those students who represented West Melton School at the Futsal tournament. Well done to all of you too. Today, our Year 4 Kapa haka Students had their first performance as part of the Kapa haka group, welcoming teachers to our school - you all looked and sounded confident and loud. Exciting news! We have the opportunity to be movie stars! As part of a video series for CORE Education, our teachers are being interviewed about NPDL, Play and Deeper Learning. The team are hoping to come in and film our learners during ‘Learning through Play’ on Monday afternoon. The children will be part of the background for these educational videos (hopefully!). Please let us know ASAP if you would rather your child was not part of this opportunity. Our year long Inquiry ‘Be the Best that you can be” is driving our learning for this term. Our main question for this term is: Can one person make a difference? We have been looking at a variety of New Zealanders who have made a positive difference in their area in the last 2 weeks. There have been lots of conversations about Sir Edmund Hillary, Kate Sheppard and Steven Adams and others. Please continue these conversations at home - who do they know that has made a difference? These people could be from your family, the Community, the World… We have also started looking at the other side of the question: Can one person make a ‘not so good’ difference? This week we have been reading and writing about the BIg, Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. We will let you decide what type of difference he makes! Our ipads have been in great use this week. We have been scanning QR codes to gain information and creating imovies. Our Year 4’s have been signing in before school and taking ownership for their own devices. We will continue to use these to enhance the learning that is already happening in our class. If you have any questions just come and see us, or email. We are usually pretty good at getting back to you! If you want to know more about our Community and programme, you are of course welcome to come in and visit at anytime. Have a great weekend. We hope you fit in some rest and relaxation. Ngā mihi nui, Jane, Mandy and Natasha Kia Ora Tī Kōuka whanau and friends!
Wowee, how lucky are we to have such incredible learners and families in our community? It has been a couple of exciting weeks in our community! Firstly, we welcome Mrs Pengelly into our space until the end of term, as we say ‘see you soon’ to Mrs O’Connor who is off galavanting around the States! We wish you the best of times Natasha and are not at all jealous. Secondly, how awesome was that Fete?! It was a huge success for both West Melton as a community and as a school. Thank you for your donation of chocolate earlier in the term for our chocolate wheel (which was hugely successful) and for all your support; especially those who offered to help with the running of the event on the day. We appreciate you immensely! As we are coming to the end of term one, we are now looking forward to shaping the learning that will occur in Term 2. Thus far we have decided that our learners Inquiry will be based around the idea: Can One Person Make a Difference? We are excited to begin the learning around this next term and can’t wait to see what ideas our learners come up with! Another learning area we will be starting next term is Wednesday and Friday afternoon sport rotation with WMI! We will be needing parent assistance during these times; if you passionate about a sport and would are keen to share your skills and knowledge with our students please let us know. Our initial rotation will be for 4 weeks. Unfortunately, our Duathlon today has been called off due to poor weather, much to the dismay of our keen year 3s. The postponement date has been confirmed as next Thursday, 11th April! During the upcoming school holidays, there will be a fun filled Futsal Tournament running during the first week. Please see below for the details: DATES: Monday 15th, Tuesday 16th & Thursday 18th April 2019 VENUE: West Melton Community Centre TIME: 9.00am-3.00pm AGE: 7 years to 13 years COST: $35.00 per day or ($90.00 for all 3 days) BANK A/C: 02-0816-0079444-001 On that note, we wish you all a restful school holidays and we look forward to seeing your smiley faces in term two! Jane, Mandy, Natasha and Leonie. Kia ora Amazing Tī Kōuka Families, We are so lucky to have you all as part of our Community. In the last 2 weeks, we have had parents offering support for the fete, Kōwhai Sanctuary trip, classroom activities and camp. Without your help, none of these events would be able to happen, so thank you. We end the week as quite a tired group. Year 4’s had an amazing time on camp, accepting all the challenges and opportunities that came their way. We were very lucky to have such a great group to take on camp and amazing parents too. A big ‘Hip, hip, hooray’ to Marianne Irving, Tracey Hilton, Ben Hayes, Mark Leadbetter and Carl Smith who were brave enough to offer to spend the 3 days on camp with us. You were absolutely awesome and camp would not have run as smoothly without you all. Thank you also to the fantastic parents who came out to help on the Tuesday and Wednesday - without your help, the children would not have been able to complete as many activities. Our Year 3 learners had a great 3 days with Mrs Pengelly. We told her to plan a boring programme but it sounds like she disobeyed our instructions and a lot of fun was had! Mrs Pengelly will be back in our Community for the last part of week 10 and all of week 11 (while Mrs O’Connor heads off on an overseas adventure!) so it will be great to have her back in our Community. It is good to see that our Year 3’s are feeling better and hope that our Year 4’s manage to avoid the bug that has been going around school.
Our trip to the Kowhai Sanctuary would also have not been able to go ahead without our Parents that came along. We were based at ‘The Willows’ were we took part on an orienteering course and planted a heap of small plants, that will grow lots in the next couple of year. This is a new space that Environment Canterbury has created and will be open to the public around April 13th. It is a place to picnic, walk and there is a loop bike track as well. Look out for publicity around this. Last week we had the Science Roadshow visit our School. We were able to try a lot of different activities and had the opportunity to watch some science demonstrations. Mrs Newcombe’s pod and Mrs O’Connor’s pod will be following this up with ‘Science with Dr Smalley in the next couple of weeks. Miss Howden’s pod had Science earlier in the term. Our day based around kindness today was a fantastic way to end what has been an emotional week for many of our community. As I write this notice I am observing some our senior students working alongside some of our little people playing board games. We are lucky to have such an amazing group of students in WMI. Next week, Sunday, March 31st, is our West Melton School fete. Tī Kōuka is running the chocolate wheel. We are looking for volunteers to help support us with this. We are thinking that for each child who can help, we need an adult to support. If you have a loud voice and like a bit of an audience, you might feel the need to offer to help be the wheel spinner and crowd encourager. Please let anyone of the Tī Kōuka teachers know ASAP if you can help on the day. We already have a number of our Tī Kōuka parents helping organise and run the fete, so this is an opportunity for different families to get involved. On that note, have an absolutely lovely (and healthy!) weekend. Natasha, Mandy and Jane n[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Hi Everyone,
It has been an awesome couple of weeks in the Ti Kōuka Community, building on relationships - with the learners, teachers and families. The goal setting meetings were an amazing opportunity to meet parents and have our learners identifying their own goals. We did a PMI (Positives, Minuses and Interesting) thinking organiser yesterday with the children. They were really positive about how they went and all enjoyed the time to talk with you. We were going to send home the goals sheet today but due to staff illness, they will go home on Tuesday. Sorry for the delay. Today was also the last day of swimming - and we didn’t swim. (This would have been a sad face emoji but I couldn’t work out how to insert one!) That means there is no need to send swimming togs along anymore. If you are missing any swimming gear, please check the lost property which lives outside Ti Kōuka. Onto far more exciting things…. Today, the Year 3’s got invited to spend the afternoon with the Manuka Year 3’s. It was awesome for them to catch up and spend the time together. The Year 4 children, did some team building and decision making for camp in Week 8. We had Celebration of Learning today and the big message was friends. Get your child to tell you about a dressed up Ms Jackson and her song about friendship. Looking onwards…. On Monday, the Science Roadshow is visiting our school. We have the 90 minutes over lunch. We will be having a snack at 12 and a snack after the roadshow at 2pm. It would be great if you could put extra food in their lunchboxes, just in case. Kowhai Sanctuary trip is on Thursday. Thank you so much for all the parents who have offered to help. If you haven’t heard from Mr Smalley yet, you are all coming! Look out for an email very soon. Thank you so much to all the wonderful parents who have offered to help during the day on camp. Look out for an email early next week, detailing times and other information. Mrs Newcombe will be on a Restorative Justice Course on Wednesday - Friday next week. Mrs Marie Youngman (who our learners know well) will be in or Community for those 3 days. While the Year 4’s are on camp, Mrs Leonie Pengelly will be taking the Ti Kōuka Year 3 children. Have an amazing weekend, Natasha, Jane and Mandy Wow, what a busy couple of weeks we have had in Tī Kōuka. The students have been developing their understanding of the strategies for addition in maths. It has been fantastic to see them collaborating to solve a problem. Please ask your child how they are using this language in the classroom. Due to the nature of our maths programme we are asking each student to bring to school a scrapbook to complete their independent work.
It has been fantastic to meet lots of you during Goal Setting conferences. It has helped us to make connections and learn more about the students in our care. We are looking forward to seeing more of you next Thursday. Yesterday we were lucky enough to be able to take a trip out to Woodend Christian Camp to view their facilities. We left feeling very excited about our Year 4 camp and we are sure our students will have an amazing time. If you haven't returned your child's camp notice could you please do this ASAP. On the 14th March we have been invited to a plant out day at the Kōwhai Sanctuary. A notice will be coming home today with more information about this trip. We are needing some intrepid explorers to join us for the day. Attached to this KIT notice is a calendar of the 2019 Sporting Events. We look forward to having another couple of amazing weeks with the Tī Kōuka community and sharing our learning with you in a couple of weeks time. Mandy, Natasha and Jane
Wow, what an awesome first week we have had with the fantastic students that make up the Tī Kōuka community in 2019. We have come up a set of road rules that will help us 'Be the Best You Can Be'. We have been thinking about these and making connections to how these can help us with our learning. Coming home today are two notices. Our Responsible Use Agreement for Digital Technologies and a Getting to Know... form. Could you please fill these in with your child/ren as soon as possible and return them to the containers underneath the big whiteboard in our middle space.
The Year 4 Camp planning is well underway and we are looking forward to seeing our students in a different environment. All camp updates will be posted under our Camp Tab on this Weebly so please check in on here regularly. Our swimming days are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. It has been great to see so many students with their togs. We are looking forward to seeing our students challenging themselves as we work on water survival strategies. Next week we will be introducing the students to information report writing as part of the writing programme. We will be integrating our reading and inquiry so students develop the understanding that learning doesn't happen in isolation. Have a great weekend, Mandy, Jane and Natasha |
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