Wow, it is hard to believe that we are
already half way through the school year.
Term 2 proved to be a very busy term, filled with many accomplishments
for us. Term 3’s calendar is already
filling up with many exciting learning opportunities for the team.
We will be continuing our focus on
developing all students as independent and responsible learners. Our flexible learning spaces have proven to
be very successful and it has been pleasing to see the children grow in their
abilities to manage themselves and take ownership for their learning within the
learning spaces.
Last term, we asked the children what they
would like to learn about in Term 3 and many requested a focus on animals, so
we are going to kick off the term inquiring into native New Zealand animals
through the conservation lens of the LEARNZ project, “restoring bird life to Kepler”. This will provide an opportunity for the
children to practice their researching skills more. Later in the term we will become scientists
and embark on a process of investigative researching into scientific phenomenon
through carrying out experiments, graphing results and making statements about
trends and patterns we discover.
Swimming will consume our afternoon
programme for the next two weeks and once this is over, we will be using the knowledge
we gained from visiting Te Rau Aroha Marae to investigate Maori art.
Mathematics: Numeracy will focus on the domains of
multiplication, division as applied to whole numbers, decimals, fractions and
percentages. Our Maths programme for the
first couple of weeks will focus on learning about 2D and 3D Geometric
shapes. Later in the term we will be
integrating statistics into our Science Inquiry. Please support your children to continue to
learn their basic facts because these are crucial to children’s success with
multiplication and division.
Literacy: We are continuing to focus on literacy across
the curriculum, so wherever possible our reading and writing will be integrated
and linked to our Inquiry. Our reading
programme will focus on developing students’ vocabulary and reading
comprehension skills, while also providing opportunities to practice Sounds
Alive skills.
Our spelling focus is to reinforce the
Sounds Alive tooling strategies to enable students to develop their
understanding of spelling patterns and rules they can apply to words they are
not sure how to spell. Learning of lists without understanding of the spelling
patterns and sounds does not help students to apply known spelling rules to
unknown words. We have also realised that
as the children become capable spellers, they do come across words in their
spelling lists that they do not understand the meaning of. Building students’ vocabulary is vital for
developing as a reader and writer. We
would really appreciate if you could spend time with your child as they learn
their spelling words to unpack the meaning of any unknown words.
Nga mihi,
Kate Webster and Elaine MacPherson
Dates
to Remember
29th July – 8th
August Swimming at Splash
Palace
1st August Chess Power in
the Hall
SGHS
Open Day
2nd August School Assembly
7th August Aurora Open Day
9th August Year 6 Zones
Netball Tournament
15th August Year 5 Zones
Netball Tournament
16th August School Assembly
19th August Miss Carter
begins her posting
20th – 23rd August Polyfest
23rd August Living Legends
planting at Sandy Point
26th August Dreamweaver visit
30th August School Assembly
13th September School Ski Trip
School
Assembly
15th September Gym Festival
16th September Sing Out at the Civic Theatre
20th September Miss Carter’s posting ends
School
hangi (Yum!)
27th September Term 3 ends
School
Assembly
No comments:
Post a Comment