Kaurihohore School Week Seven, Term One News
Manaaki te katoa - be kind to all.
Respect - Empathy - Kindness Kia ora koutou
As we work our way through week seven the staff and I have been reflecting on a common problem arising in our classes to varying degrees.
We have been struggling with the lack of respect some of our tamariki show for their belongings, themselves and each other. We are seeing things broken deliberately, belongings left lying around, rubbish on the ground and in some cases a total lack of empathy for each other's needs. In fact some children don’t even seem to care that they have left their belongings lying around and do not even recognise that they belong to them .As you can imagine, we are becoming very disheartened seeing the ill treatment of items like the school bikes (with the bike shed only just being able to be opened again after several tyres popped on the first day of opening) and the breaking of school wide classroom equipment and other items purchased with staff money. It was only this morning that I arrived at school to see bike helmets lying outside in the lost property, abandoned by their owners...these are helmets provided by the school. There seems to be a total disregard from some children for how much items cost and how lucky they are to have them.
As a staff we have been reflecting on the currently very effective approaches we use as part of our wellbeing strategy...promoting kindness and upstanding through KiVa, helping children to understand and name their emotions and the emotions of others through Zones of Regulation and assisting them to own, fix and learn from their mistakes through Restorative practice.
We have a huge focus on respect, empathy and kindness, but at the moment while it is working for many, this is not working for everyone. We urge you to continue to help us by encouraging independence, respect for others and accountability for actions. Emotional intelligence and the ability to show respect, kindness and empathy for others are such vital skills for the future. If your children are struggling to look after their basic belongings perhaps making them keep scooters, bikes, nerf guns etc at home until they can look after items reliably would be a good first step approach.
We urge you to ask “what if everyone did that?”
Attendance
Please advise us straight away if your child is going to be away from school for any reason. You can use kauriabsences@gmail.com, the school loop app, or phone the school office and leave a message. Please ensure you give us the reason for absence as we are required to have this for our records. If you tell the teacher about absence, please also tell the office, sometimes we get busy and forget to pass the message on and you will then get a phone call.
Remember when children have frequent days off, it hurts their academic progress, but more importantly, hinders them socially it is hard to make and maintain friendships when a child is frequently away.
Community Defibrillator
Part of taking action in our community has been our work this year towards getting a community defibrillator. After investigating locations of the nearest defibrillator we were concerned to find out that access was limited and would take a ten minute drive at least to obtain one from Kamo Mcdonalds. This concerned us, accidents can happen anywhere at any time and a defibrillator can save a life quite literally. With the hall and church nearby we thought that it would be a great initiative to obtain one as a school that was available to anyone in the area 24 hours a day.
So I set out to make a givealittle page which raised just over $500 of the needed $4000 (for the defibrillator and ongoing maintenance.)
I am very very happy to announce that yesterday I was contacted by St John who have today donated a defibrillator to our community and are also happy to run community training at a later date.
This means we will have the defibrillator on site and available from this week onwards. It will soon be mounted at the end of the office, facing the staff car park. The money raised through givealittle is enough to maintain the defibrillator for five years and this is a task the school, as an active part of our community, are happy to take responsibility for.
Reading
As we have shared before, the way we teach reading and spelling has changed over the last few years. We are now basing how we teach reading using the copious amounts of research which tells us how every brain learns to read. This year is the first year the whole school is employing a structured literacy approach. This means we are teaching according to a scope and sequence (scope being what is taught, and sequence being the order it is taught in.) In this approach there is no more guessing, children are given a solid grasp of the alphabetic code, that gradually builds over time and allows them to decode and encode (read and spell) using effective strategies by mapping the sounds in words.
Parents of new entrant children will also notice that a big part of early reading and spelling is phonological awareness...this is the ability to manipulate and identify sounds out loud. This awareness follows a sequence from hearing words in a sentence, hearing and generating rhyme, blending and deleting syllables right through to early phonemic awareness directly related to the alphabetic code (first and last sound and blending sounds to hear words.) These skills are all necessary to be an effective reader and speller later on and are now explicitly taught in classrooms.
There is obviously a huge amount of learning that goes into becoming a reader and speller and some children take longer than others to get there, which is ok. While some children seem to master reading and spelling easily, others need continued work on building strong foundations and truly embedding skills explicitly. This is also ok.
However this does mean that by using decodable books we will no longer be able to give you are level or age related to the books your child is reading, if your child is reading decodable books this means the are working within level one of the curriculum for reading and this will be indicated by a stage on their cumulative report. Working within level one means they are still developing mastery over our tricky alphabetic code. Teachers will however be able to tell you what stage they are up to and what spelling features they are working on mastering so you can help at home.
Real Time Reporting
Towards the end of this term you will receive via seesaw the first installment of your child’s cumulative report. This will include some starting levels according to the curriculum and a comment based on the dispositions your child is developing as a learner. If you need a copy of this in another form, please talk to your child’s teacher.
Over this year you will also receive updates on reading, maths and writing twice a year via seesaw, with your child’s progress and their next steps. Teachers will complete these when they have checked in with your child.
If you have any questions or concerns relating to your child, please send a message via seesaw, email or phone and set up a time to talk to your child’s teacher. Don’t put this off, it is easier to deal with questions or problems when they arrive and before they have gotten bigger than they need to be.
EOTC
As you will be aware we try to provide children with education outside of the classroom where and when we can, below is the expectations we have as a school, so you can see what you can expect each year. We were incredibly happy to be able to provide children recently with camping experiences in Level 2 and thank the teachers and the fantastic parents/family members for making this happen.
EOTC Expectations By Class
Below are some known dates so far:
Good Friday - 2nd April
Easter Monday - 5th April
Easter Tuesday - 6th April
Room 1-3-4-5 - Extended EOTC Day (note coming home soon)
Term one Ends - 16th April
Please note Easter Tuesday is a day off mandated for Schools.
Hats
Please remember children need a hat with a brim or a hat with a flap at the back at school, no hat, no sun. There are no caps allowed in Term 1 or 4, please do not allow children to bring these along to school as they just create problems. Please name your child’s hat.
Sports and Activities
We frequently get emails and notices about sports and activities open to families and children. These are shared on facebook or via email, so please keep an eye out for anything shared by our community or the school.
Moosies and Juicies
The junior classes are selling these to cut back on costs for the upcoming junior day out. You can purchase these for $2, please have orders in by the Wednesday each week. You can arrange payment into our bank account, or via cash to the office, just please let us know.
Our Environment - Our Community
Over the next few years we will be having a big focus on Kaitiakitanga, we are wanting children to identify problems in our environment or community and work on generating solutions to these problems. Starting locally leads to thinking globally. We also want to work on renewing and reinvigorating areas of our school to make it a better place to be. We would love your help with part of this, by eliminating rubbish from your child’s lunch box and working on alternatives to things that come in plastic wrapping. There are loads of ideas online if you are not sure how to do this.
Easter Raffle
Please drop in an item for the raffle if you have not already done so. We still have quite a number of tickets outstanding, so please get these back to the office. Tickets need to be sold and into the school office by the 25th of March and this will be drawn before the short Easter break.
Check out this fabulous donation for the Easter Raffle, from Gemma Hart of Rock Pool Resin, who wouldn’t want to win that! Thank you so much!
Rūma Piwakawka, Kahu, Pukeko, Kōtare - Extended EOTC Event (1, 3, 4, 5)
We will be holding this on the 15th of April. On this day we are hoping to get out and about to a couple of local venues, have dinner and a late night at school. This will be a fun day and we will update relevant families as soon as we have confirmed details. A note will come home very soon with these classes, but keep the day free if you think you may be able to provide transport.
Need to do now…
1)Collect and bring in an item for the Easter raffle if you have not already
2)Bring in sold raffle tickets by the 25th of March
3)Remember that the 6th of April is a holiday for schools
4)Junior school please be on the lookout for permission and transport forms for our extended day out on the 15th of April, coming home soon.
Noho ora mai - stay well, look after yourself and look out for others!
Leslee Allen
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