WAIKOUAITI PRIMARY SCHOOL NEWSLETTER 11 February 2015 Term 1 Week 2 Dates to Remember - Term 1 2015 13 Feb. 16 Feb. 20 Feb. 23 Feb. 27 Feb 2 March 3 March 5 March 9-13 March School Picnic 5-7pm Board Meeting Assembly - Rimu Camp Meeting 6-7pm School Triathlon Cricket Yr 5-6 11-12.30pm Cluster swimming - seniors Cricket - Festival Day School Camp Yr 4,5,6. Ngā mihi nui kia koutou / Greetings to you all I am so pleased to say we have our working areas all back to normal! The breakout rooms look fantastic. For those who have not seen our new work spaces please come along on Friday to our school picnic and you will get a grand tour. We will start our picnic at 5 – 5.30pm having a look around all the classrooms including the new library. At 5.30pm we will all come together outside the main office area for introductions of all staff. Mrs Ritchie will also be introducing you to the new PMP gear and then have a few games while the adults get their picnic dinner prepared for eating about 6.15pm. Everyone home at 7pm. There will be a sausage sizzle available if you would like to have a sausage. There is a workshop for parents being held in Dunedin for SUPPORTING YOUR RELUCTANT LEARNER on the 31st of March. “ Everyone wants to learn. If there is reluctance, there is a reason. Our mission is to bring back the joy into learning – for both child and parent. “This workshop will take you on a journey of how learning blocks become established, and give many practical solutions for unlocking your child’s learning and creating positive, effective learning strategies.” See Trudy if you are interested or email [email protected] . There is the opportunity to get a group discount as well. Cost $245 9am till 4pm. After School Club is going well. A message to parents and caregivers from Lauree Brown who runs this programme. If you can pay on the day and ring Lauree 021 1196689 the night before or earlier she will be happy to take children after school on the Monday, Thursday and Friday. If there is a demand we will look at increasing to daily. There will be paperwork to fill out so please allow for this. Don’t forget to look at the Parent and Teacher School Calendar App for activity dates happening in term 1. School holiday dates are also on the app for your phone. You can download this for free. There is a special Board of Trustees Meeting on Monday the 16th Feb at 6.30 in Room 3, Rimu. Cleave Hay from the New Zealand School Trustees Association will be there to talk to us about becoming a board member, what is expected of board members and how we can govern our school the best we can to achieve our goals and increase student achievement. We have a by election coming up and need 3 parent representatives to join the board of trustees. Ngā Mihi Trudy Pankhurst PIKO PIKO Kia ora from Piko Piko What a great start we have had to the new school year! The children are all working hard at thinking about making ‘strong’ decisions opposed to ‘weak’ decisions and asking themselves if they made the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decision. The children have easily taken to using this language in both the class and school environment. We have found using this language is a great tool to get children to take responsibility for their decision making and to actually do the thinking for themselves. This is a school wide programme and is called ‘Play is the Way’. This week the children have begun to take home reading books. Please remember reading at home should be a fun activity with no pressure. The children have worked on these books in class and they should be able to tell you what they are learning to do e.g. “I am learning to point to each word” or “ I am thinking if what I am reading sounds right and looks right.” All children will usually look to you as parents to tell them what a word is if they get stuck. If this happens you could ask questions rather than telling them outright e.g. “What can you see happening in the picture? So what would make sense?” or “How can you figure out what the word might be?” I am only too happy to help with more strategies for homework, just pop in to see me. It is great to see the variety of fruit and vegetables coming in for the children’s morning tea snack to share. It looks like some people have very healthy vegetable patches at home. For those who are new to school we ask that you provide one packet of crackers (rice crackers are the healthiest) plus 5 pieces of fruit or vegetables for the week. This is a lovely sharing time for the children where they sit together and eat together. As always I am here for both you and your children, so any questions or comments are always welcome. Kind regards Louise Ritchie HARAKEKE Howdy! Yea-ha it’s the beginning of a New Year and Harakeke class is filled with lovely, smiley faces and lots of enthusiasm. We have been busily creating self-portraits and thinking about how special we are, starting to fill our beautiful new walls up and make the classroom ours. We began our daily reading this week and it’s great to see children practising every night. We have been looking at collecting data and displaying this on Picto and Bar graphs. What a lovely time we had sitting on the bank in the sun collecting tally marks on the different coloured cars beetling past! We will be creating bar charts from these to see which colour is the most and least. We have welcomed Mungo the Monarch caterpillar to our room – he is quite well-behaved and is constantly eating! We watch eagerly to see his developments. The Cricket World Cup is approaching and we are beginning to learn new skills so that we too can play and understand the ‘lingo’ involved. Go the Black Caps! Thank you for all the work you have put in to getting your children settled into school, it’s always hard after a lovely long break and I appreciate your efforts! Until next time! Cheers! Lisa RATA Kiaora from Rata Class What a great start to the year the children in Rata class have had! It was great to ease ourselves back into school life and begin to settle back into classroom routines. The children sound like they all had a lovely holiday and enjoyed the great weather we have had. We are enjoying our new and improved classrooms and the children and teachers are looking forward to using the new learning area this week between the senior classes. Last week a majority of the time spent in class has been on establishing routines, setting goals and expectations for the classroom which ties in nicely with this terms topic on “Ourselves and our Environment.” The children will be doing a range of activities within the school as well as learning about some our local environment and later on in the term the 175 years celebration of Waikouaiti. Last week I sent home a letter with information on some of the things the children are doing in class. Please do not hesitate to come and ask if you have any questions or queries in particular with homework. I realise people have commitments outside of school time and sometimes homework cannot be completed. I have also put the information on our class blogpage which is http://kidblog.org/ Rata-2/ If you have any problems accessing the site let me know. Lastly, all of the children in Rata class will be swimming each Monday and Wednesday and the 8 year old children will be participating in the senior cluster swimming sports this term. It was great to see the children in action yesterday and displaying some excellent skills. Thank you to all the parents who have provided fruit and crackers for morning tea. If you have anything that you would like to discuss regarding your child please do not hesitate to come and ask. I may look like I’m running, getting organised most of the time, but I can arrange a time to chat! Enjoy the rest of your week. Mrs Hurst RIMU Kia ora koutou Well done to all the students in Rimu for responding well to new routines and procedures. We have been really impressed with their attitude towards the new school term, and the maturity they have shown towards working together as a new, large, group. Discipline and behaviour has been excellent, and we are reminding them that this has a huge impact on their learning. So keep it up Rimu! Homework has gone out, and we are keeping it fairly straight forward as we get them into the swing of things! It will get more challenging for some as the weeks progress, but never unachievable. In the process of getting to know one another, we've been focusing on some of the key competencies of the national curriculum. We've been discussing how they should treat others, how they feel when they have made a weak decision and how they deal with situations when they need to persevere or be brave. With the help of Angel, we've also been brushing up on our sign language. Ask your child if they can remember their sign name. It was great to see most students in the pool this week so don't forget togs on a Monday and Wednesday. And more tin cans for the Rimu bank please. And finally, we welcome Morgan, Jamaica and Briston to Rimu class and the Waikouaiti school community. Hei kona mai I roto I nga mihi, Goodbye for now and thanks. Kate and Rebecca Waikouaiti School Board of Trustees By - Election 2015 Nominations are invited for the election of three parent representatives to the board of trustees. A nomination form and a notice calling for nominations will be posted to all eligible voters. Additional nomination forms can be obtained from the school office. Nominations close at noon on February 26 2015 and may be accompanied by a signed candidate’s statement. The voting roll is open for inspection at the school and can be viewed during normal school hours. There will also be a list of candidates’ names, as they come to hand, for inspection at the school. Voting closes at noon 12 March 2015 Jill Brocket Returning Officer FUNDRAISING - CYSTIC FIBROSIS On Sunday 22nd February a local team of 3 women are competing in the Challenge Wanaka 2015.They will be doing the half ironman team race and are raising funds for Cystic Fibrosis. They will be doing this race for one special little girl. Her name is Sophie and she is only 5 years old living with CF every day of her life. Sophie attends Waikouaiti School. If you would like to donate towards the fundraising for Cystic Fibrosis please follow the link below. http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/KatrinaMcAra/ EAST OTAGO GYMNASTIC CLASSES Event Centre - Waikouaiti Sundays during school term $80 per term Kiwi Gyn Fun (4-8)Year olds) 1-2pm Sunday Sport Gym ( 7yrs +) 2-3pm Sunday Register online www.dunedingymastics.co.nz TICKETS FOR ICC CRICKET WORLD We have been given 20 free tickets to the: Afghanistan v. Scotland game to be held at the University Oval on THURSDAY 26th FEBRUARY 2015 11am start. If you would like tickets please phone Jill 4657 225.
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