Welcome to Term 2! I do hope your children have had a lovely holiday and are feeling refreshed and ready for another term. Thank you so much for encouraging your child in their learning last term and also for supporting them in the Swimming Carnival and Cross Country events and with their inquiry work culminating in the Grandparents and Grand-friends day. The children were amazing in the Cross Country run and it was great to see that they all did their best and completed the course. Thank you to those parents who sent along food for the afternoon tea and ensured that your child had an adult to share their work with. We have planned another great range of wonderful learning experiences for the students for this term and I will outline some of these in the following notes. Our next New Entrant class will begin in room 3 this term and until the numbers grow, I will be teaching some of the children from rooms 1 and 5 in numeracy and literacy.
Values
Last term we focused upon the school wide values of respect and kindness. This term we will revise these and will focus on Curiosity and Excellence.
Fitness
All children will continue with a daily fitness programme but this term we will not be doing Jumpjam as the hall is being set up for Gymnastics instead. The Year 2 children will be taking part in fitness circuits and relays while the Year 1 children will be doing music and movement and the PMP programme. PMP stands for Perceptual Motor Programme and involves a range of both large and small motor activities as well as music and movement and language components. The programme helps children with their hand/eye co-ordination, balance, eye tracking, fine motor development etc which in turn helps support their learning in the areas of literacy and numeracy. The equipment will be set up in room 2 until it will be used as a classroom later in the year.
Mathematics
The majority of our Numeracy programme is spent on Number and this term the focus will be on addition and subtraction and also fraction knowledge. Fun Friday problem solving activities will also support this learning. Alongside this, there will be activities involving Time for the first six weeks followed by Geometry focusing upon translation, rotation and reflection for the rest of the term. We also expect the students to use Mathletics to practice different mathematical concepts at home each day as part of their homework. If you have any queries about Mathletics, please do not hesitate to ask your child's teacher.
Literacy
Oral language is a big focus in learning every day. It is important that the students can communicate their ideas clearly in a range of situations. They need to be able to be a good speaker and listener and also know how to ask and answer relevant questions so we will be working on this in greater detail. Reading programmes that cater for all learning modes occur daily. Your child will continue to bring home a reading book every Monday to Thursday and a poem on Fridays. They will continue to work through the Letterland and Smartphonics programmes each day to build their letter sound and blend knowledge that supports their reading, writing and spelling development.
Writing stories continues each day with a focus this term on the structure of a beginning, middle and end to stories along with students editing their work to ensure that they are including capital letters and fullstops in the correct places and transferring the words that they have been learning on their spelling rockets into their every day work. Students in their first two years at school need to learn to hold their pencil correctly and to form all letters accurately so this is a continual focus in daily handwriting lessons.
Inquiry
Term 2 involves lots of Science. We are having a school wide Science week in week 3 as well as our major Inquiry involving 'Our star the sun'. As part of this, the children will be learning about our solar system, sun and shadows, changes to the moon's appearance and Matariki. They will also be going on a visit to the Planetarium as part of this inquiry.
Physical Education
For the first five weeks, the children will be working on improving their large ball skills. They will be learning to throw and catch a large ball accurately. From week 6, they will be taking part in a gymnastics programme. They will need to wear suitable clothing for this. More information will be given closer to the time.
The Arts
The focus for Visual Art this term is Painting. The students will be identifying and mixing primary colours to create secondary and tertiary colours and learning about the colour wheel. They will also create different shades and tints and use a paintbrush to demonstrate a range of techniques. They will be an audience for a visiting performer and will be having performing arts with Ruth Hooke involving dance later in the term.
Reporting to Parents and Caregivers
Near the end of this term, your child will be bringing home a written report and there will also be a 'Celebration of Learning' afternoon/evening where you can come along to your child's classroom and have your child share their learning with you. Further details about this will be given at a later date. Children who start school this term and some that have just started in room 1 will not have a written report at this stage but will have their after 'six weeks at school' conference.
Hooked on Books
This valuable programme to support our students' in Literacy will begin next week. Thank you so much to all those adults who have volunteered their time for this. If you would like to do this, please let me know as I still have a spare time slot on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Reading eggs
If you would like your child to have a reading eggs subscription and have not done so already please send along $22 to the school office for it to be activated. If you have any problems with the programme please do not hesitate to ask.
Parent workshops
There will be a series of evenings for parents and caregivers where I share ideas of how we teach reading, writing and mathematics at school and provide some practical ways of how you can support this learning at home with your child. The workshops are a repeat of those that were run last year and are particularly relevant to parents who's child/ren are either just new to school in Year 1 right through to those in Year 2.
Workshop 1 will be on Wednesday May 6th and the topic will be Reading. The following week on Wednesday May 13th, the topic will be Mathematics and the last workshop will be on writing, spelling and handwriting and will be held on Wednesday May 20th. All the workshops will start at 7 p.m. and take approximately one hour and will be in room 3. If you have any questions about the workshops, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Workshop 1 will be on Wednesday May 6th and the topic will be Reading. The following week on Wednesday May 13th, the topic will be Mathematics and the last workshop will be on writing, spelling and handwriting and will be held on Wednesday May 20th. All the workshops will start at 7 p.m. and take approximately one hour and will be in room 3. If you have any questions about the workshops, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Other items
* Please have a look at the classroom blogs to get a snapshot of what is happening in your child's classroom and around the school. Feel free to write a comment too.
* Last term, some preschool children from East Harbour Kindergarten and Barnados visited and these visits will continue again this term. The Days Bay playcentre children will also be visiting. The usual preschool visits will also occur on Thursday mornings from 8.40 a.m. to 11 a.m. Please notify the school office if you have a preschool child starting school this year and I will contact you regarding their school visits.
* Each child needs to have slippers at school during this term and next. Please name your child's slippers as children often have the same style and size and this avoids any confusion in the corridors.
* There will be Vision and Hearing testing for any New Entrant child who missed their B4 school check or needs to be retested. If this involves your child they will bring home a notice about this.
* There will a 'Starting School at Five' Information Evening for parents of preschoolers in room 3 at 7 p.m. on Wednesday June 3rd. All welcome.
Term dates
April 20 - Term 2 begins
April 27 - School closed as ANZAC day is observed
May 6 - Workshop on reading
May 13 - Workshop on mathematics
May 20 - Workshop on writing, spelling, handwriting
June 1 and 2 - School closed for Queen's birthday and Teacher only day
June 3 - "Starting School at Five' parent information evening
June 26 - Reports go home
July 1 - Learning Celebrations
July 3 - Last day of term 2
If you have any comments or questions about your child's learning or our Junior School please do not hesitate to contact us.
Yours in partnership
Maureen Buckley
Deputy Principal
on behalf of the Junior School team -
Mrs Barbara Ryan, Mrs Liz Sullivan, Mrs Margs Mills, Mrs Janelle McKay, Mrs Sue Steele, Mrs Hilary Beadle, Mrs Pauline Davies, Ms Morag Roberts, Mrs Jo Salisbury, Mrs Carolyn Murphy, Mrs Carolyn Littlefair and Mrs Hannah Watkins.
No comments:
Post a Comment