A warm welcome to 2012 is extended to you and your family. We hope you have all had an enjoyable holiday break. The children have made a great start to their learning and have quickly settled into their new classrooms. They are positive and excited and have been extremely eager to start their 2012 learning programmes. We know that it has been a long break away from the regular school routine for the children and that for a few it can take a couple of days for those initial nerves to disappear. Please support your child by ensuring that they are at school and in their classroom ready for their day’s learning before 8.40 a.m. Make sure that they also have everything with them that they need i.e. book bag, correct stationery items, morning tea, lunch box, drink bottle, swimming gear and sunhat so that they feel prepared and confident. Encourage them to maintain their old friendships from last year and to create new ones by having regular play dates and at home - time ask them to tell you what was the best thing that they did at school that day. Thank you to all those parents and caregivers who came to meet the teacher evening. We enjoyed meeting you and finding out more about your child. We hope you found this valuable as it is important to build a strong home and school partnership. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher.
INTRODUCING THE JUNIOR TEAM
Room 5 – Mrs Rebecca Saker – saker@muritai.school.nz
Mrs Jo Salisbury – salisburyjo@gmail.com
Mrs Carolyn Murphy will be providing teacher aide support in our junior school classrooms - murphy@muritai.school.nz
Mrs Elizabeth Sullivan is doing our classroom release teaching – sullivan@muritai.school.nz
We warmly welcome Mrs Saker to our team who replaces Miss Jones who left at the end of the year and welcome Mrs Cody back who is returning from parental leave. Ms Ingram had a lovely little girl in January and Ms Capper got married over the holiday break.
This term each classroom will be focusing upon creating a supportive and safe learning environment, identifying roles and responsibilities and observing life cycles. The students will be exposed to many interesting and motivating learning experiences through the different curriculum areas. We will continue to use an inquiry approach where the children have the opportunity to explore through questioning and discovery and then reflect on what they have discovered.
FITNESS
All classes in the Junior Team will continue to have daily Fitness from 8.40 a.m. which is when the first bell rings. Please ensure that your child is at school in time, each day ready to take part. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays the children will go into the hall where they will have Jump Jam – an exercise programme to music. Parents are welcome to join in the Jumpjam routines alongside your child. On Thursdays and Fridays students will participate in whole class fitness with a focus this term on large ball skills.
MATHEMATICS
For the first part of the term, we will be focusing on number knowledge and statistical investigations. From week 6 we will teach Geometry where the children will be learning about different two and three dimensional shapes. The students will be exploring number and numeral identification throughout the whole term. We are also introducing a special homework programme called Mathletics this term.
LITERACY
The students will be focusing upon their speaking, questioning and listening skills to improve their oral language. In written language they will be writing recounts of their personal experiences. They will be learning to structure their writing by using a brainstorm to sequence events chronologically. The children will also be learning to add interesting vocabulary to their work and to use full stops and capital letters correctly. All children have spelling programmes in their classrooms and as well as this the Year 2 children will be bringing home a spelling rocket. The words learnt in the classroom and on the rockets are ones that are essential for each child to spell automatically and transfer correctly in their writing. In handwriting, the children will be focusing on using the correct pencil grip, forming letters accurately and keeping them a consistent size and shape. In reading, the children will be learning a range of strategies that will help them to work out unknown words independently. They will be building up their letter sound knowledge and using a range of skills to become confident readers. There will also be a focus on deeper understanding. We will be using Letterland and Smartphonics to complement our literacy programmes.
INQUIRY
Our inquiry this term is entitled "The Circle of Life". The big idea for this is that people have roles and responsibilities as they grow and participate in different groups and these roles change over time. This will lead to identifying our roles and responsibilities at school, in the classroom and playground and the different stages of life cycles. Over the holidays the gardens around our Junior Shade area have been prepared to create a butterfly garden. Special thanks goes to Mrs Ryan and the lovely parents who have worked tirelessly to do this. As part of homework and as an introduction, we would like the children to have a look at where butterflies are found at home and in our local environment. We would appreciate any seeds or cuttings of plants that you might have to spare that butterflies are landing on to be sent along to school.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
The children will be learning new swimming skills during the first part of the term and this year we are very fortunate to have qualified swimming instructors do this with our children. The focus will be on gaining confidence in the water, floating and gliding as well as water safety. As New Zealand is an island nation it is imperative that everyone knows how to be safe in, on and around water. Please send along the correct swimming gear (named) with your child for these important sessions. The timetable changes for each class throughout the term so please check notices in your child’s classroom about which days your child will be going to the pool. We will be having a swimming festival of fun activities before the pool closes and will give you details about this soon. When our Aquatics education programme has been completed, the children will be involved in a range of activities using large balls in which they will be learning how to be part of a team, to develop positive attitudes about physical activity and improve their motor skills.
The Year 1 children will also be taking part in the Perceptual Motor Programme, which is designed to help them improve in the large and fine motor skills, extend their attention span and help them with focus and eye tracking which will support their development of literacy and numeracy skills.
THE ARTS
During this term the students will be exposed to a wide range of media to create visual art in their classrooms with a focus being on drawing. During this time they will be doing a range of sketching and portraits. Each classroom will be doing their own individual music, dance and drama programmes but later in the term rooms 1, 2 and 3 will be working with Mrs Hooke our Performing Arts teacher. All of the Junior School also do singing together with Mrs Heath each Thursday.
TE REO
This term the students will be learning songs including our school song and National Anthem, greetings, feelings, numbers to ten in Te Reo Maori as well as enjoy the legend about Maui.
INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
I.C.T. will be integrated into the daily learning programme to further enrich your child’s learning. All classrooms have access to data projectors and the pod of laptops and the children will be featuring on our classroom blogs.
HOMEWORK
Homework is designed to support your child’s learning that is occurring in the classroom. All children will bring home a reading book to share with you on Mondays to Thursdays. On Fridays they will bring home a poem to enjoy. We want their home reading to be a positive experience for both your child and your family with it taking less than five minutes each day. It is important for adults to read aloud to your child daily as well. Year 2 will bring home a Spelling Rocket. These words are to be learnt at home throughout the week and then will be tested once a week at school. Some children will bring home a Reading Rocket, which will be tested on a daily basis. It is extremely important to support your child’s efforts in learning to read and spell. To move through the rockets the children need to be able to read the word instantly e.g. ‘got’ not by sounding out aloud g – o – t. Spelling is a written skill so your child needs to practice each word by writing it out and ensure that they can then independently reproduce it in their daily story writing in the classroom. All children are currently being retested on their reading, mathematics and spelling levels and due to no daily practice during the past two months may have forgotten some skills and will therefore be repeating some areas of their learning including rocket levels. Mathletics will begin later in the term with more information about this to follow at a later date.
GENERAL
Please make sure all of your child’s belongings are named so that we can return them to the correct child quickly. If your child has misplaced an item the Lost Property bins are under the room 10 stairs in the two-storey block.
This term the children will be seeing a show that is visiting our school. Further details about this will follow. We will not be going to the Capital E National Arts Festival this year.
Junior Jottings is the Junior School newsletter and will be emailed to you each week on a Friday. This newsletter is to keep you informed of what is happening in our junior school in particular. The Bird’s Eye View comes home via email every second week and features what is happening around the rest of the school.
Classroom blogs are a good way for parents to get a glimpse of some of the learning your child is currently involved in. Please visit your child’s class blog often and leave a comment. The children enjoy reading these at school.
Pre school visits have started already and are once again on Thursdays this year. Visits are from 8.40 a.m. until 11 a.m. in room 2. The ‘Starting School at Five’ information evening will be on Wednesday March 21st at 7 p.m. in the school staffroom.
If you have any questions regarding your child or school could you please email your child’s teacher or myself.
Kind regards
Maureen Buckley
Deputy Principal
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