Pōhutukawa News Term 2 Week 12

Kia ora whānau,

What a busy term we have had! 

Winter Sport
We've been very unlucky with the weather this term for winter sport. Thanks to all of you who put your names forward to help with winter sport development and competitive teams. We are continuing next term on Thursdays - if you are unavailable to help next term please let us know, otherwise we look forward to working alongside you again in term three. 

Learning Conferences
Thanks so much for booking in for the learning conferences. We are looking forward to supporting all our learners to share their learning with you.  The weeks since returning to school after the Rāhui have flown by. Below is some information on what we have been up to.

In recent weeks, our focus  at writing time has been on identifying, understanding the grammatical structure of and creating simple, compound and complex sentences. The children have been  self assessing their writing skills in this context and will share more with you about this at the learning conferences this week.

A large amount of time and focus has been directed at the area of place value in mathematics. Place value is an area of the mathematics curriculum that will be covered every academic year through primary and secondary school, with a view to building upon previous knowledge. An understanding of place value forms the basis of many areas of mathematical understanding. Initially the focus might be on place value columns and reading numbers accurately, then it develops to being able to quickly identify the number of tens, hundreds, thousands and so on in numbers, in conjunction with using place value knowledge and understanding to manipulate numbers in addition and subtraction calculations, for example.

Another area of focus in mathematics this term has been tracking both reasoning and recall ability in relation to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. The children have done a great job of assessing their abilities in this area, and setting some goals for future focus. They will be sharing this with you at their learning conferences, and we will have some work that you can continue at home to support our learners in achieving these goals. Rob has created a brief video below to help you to understand the tracker system that we are using. The children are experts at this, so they will also be able to help!

At reading time we have been working on a variety of activities in order to support our learners to accurately decode what they are reading, comprehend the author's meaning, and analyse the text to develop their understanding. The children are becoming more confident in discussing what they have read with others too.

Term 3

Our focus for term 3 and beyond is to support the children to become more "assessment capable" as learners.  This involves unpacking assessments of their learning in reading, writing and mathematics to look at strengths and next steps, and supporting each learner to develop confidence in assessing themselves against goals that they have agreed upon with their teacher. This will ensure that each child is being extended, whatever their level.

Hand washing

We are in the season for colds and flu at the moment, and we have had many children away sick recently. We continue to encourage the children to wash their hands before they eat, and hand sanitiser is available at school for those who wish to use it.  We are aware of the environmental impact of very regular had washing - if you would like to send your child to school with their own personal hand towel in their bag for use at hand washing time, we will support them to use it.

We hope you have a fun filled and restful holiday, and look forward to seeing everyone relaxed and refreshed next term.