Tēnā koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te kura o Amesbury. Welcome back to Term 2 at Amesbury School. We extend a hearty welcome to whānau (families) who are joining us for the first time. After a well-earned holiday, our kaimahi (teachers and support staff) are eager to get back into it and to continue supporting ākonga (learners) in the upcoming term.

This article contains some basic admin information for Term 2, along with details about our Module 2 learning and the main events that are coming up this term. It is relevant for all students throughout the school. If you have more than one child at school, you will receive an email for each child. However, you only need to read the following information once!

Whānau Groups

Koru Hub has eight whānau groups and Pōhutukawa Hub has six whānau groups.

The role of your child’s whānau teacher is to act as a learning advocate for your child at school. They are your first port of call if you have any questions, comments or concerns about school or your child. The whānau teacher is not your child’s overall ‘class teacher’, most students will work with multiple teachers throughout the year, but the whānau teacher will have particular oversight of your child.

Our teaching teams for Term 2 2024 are:

Koru Hub new entrant group (Māwhero): Angela Herman-Childs, Wee Ai Teh, Navy Ny (learning support)

Koru Hub main group: Amaria Picard (team leader), Hannah Sadler, Aleesha Majaw Monisse, Lily Patrick-Duncan, Sophia Hughes, Kate Dammer, Lauren Brown, Gerri Ng (learning support)

Pōhutukawa Year 4 whānau groups: Rupert Webb, Sarah King

Pōhutukawa Year 5+6 whānau groups: Emma Murdoch (team leader), Gar Kee Wu, Brydon Gillam, Charlotte Montu, Nic Love (learning support)

Release teachers: Amelia Prendeville (Koru Hub), Rachel Hosnell (Pōhutukawa Hub), Brooke Kent (in both hubs)

English Language Support teacher (working in both hubs): Kirat Singh

Mandarin Language Assistant: Yingfei (Fei) Chen started midway through Term 1 and has been a welcome addition to our team. Fei will continue to deliver Mandarin and extension Mandarin learning across the school.

Communications

We use LINC-ED Hero for all our communication, learning and administration. Here is a link to more information about this platform and how you sign up. Our weekly communications are sent out as a digest each Friday. These are housed on Hero, and you will be sent an email notification when the digest has been published. Any notices that can be public will also be published on our school website.

We have a school planning site, where planning for all teachers is stored and can be accessed by everyone. No personal student information or names will be included in this planning. Any documents or planning including specific names are kept as private documents and cannot be accessed by anyone except Amesbury staff. Here is the link to our planning site.

Module 2 Learning -The Natural World

Last year we collected student voice about what our ākonga were really interested in learning about. We had lots of different ideas, as you can imagine, but by collating the information and pulling out key themes, it was clear that our tamariki are keen to learn how the world works. As such, we planned our four inquiry themes for this year to explore how our world works: Term 1 = How our living world works. Term 2 = How our natural world works. Term 3 = How our physical world works. Term 4 = Beyond our world (space and how the universe works). Each inquiry builds on each other, and we will look to integrate the inquiries so that the learning from the previous term/s is taken into the next inquiry and built upon.

Term 2: Our natural world: What is our earth made of? In this inquiry, ākonga will explore three key ideas:

• Earth has different layers and is made up of land, water and gas

• Our world is always changing and evolving

• An ecosystem is made up of living and non-living things that are dependent on each other

Both hubs will spend some time exploring what Earth is made up of (core, crust, mantle etc). They will then move on to exploring what an ecosystem is, spending a number of weeks looking closely at soil as a fabulous example of an ecosystem. As part of this, we will be setting up composting and work farms at school, and exploring how and why we grow things. This learning all links beautifully with the start of our Garden to Table programme - read more about that in this article. This will build through the term and will link with learning about Matariki (Māori New Year) as a time of planting and harvesting.

Learning Celebration

Our Term 2 learning celebration will be quite different from previous sharing events. In the final week of term we will be holding a day to celebrate and welcome the grandparents in our school community. There will be links to Matariki and to the learning we have been doing around growing and cultivating. More details about how the learning celebration will be coming out soon.

Term 2 Health Module

This term, the focus in health is on identity, gender and keeping yourself safe.

• Year 1 and 2 students will be learning about their own needs and wants, what makes them unique, how they are similar and different to others, and how families are similar and different to others. They will also begin to explore gender roles (the idea that roles are not tied to gender).

• In Year 3 and 4 they will spend much of the term focusing on keeping themselves safe online - safe passwords, digital footprints, information that you do to give out online, and keeping yourself safe in terms of posting information and selfies, and your identity online. This then moves into a focus on gender identity, gender stereotypes and gender roles.

• In year 5 and 6, again students focus on keeping themselves safe online - their private information and their identity online. This moves into looking at media influences on identity, and then moves to gender stereotypes and identity.

Our full planning for Health for Term 2 can be found here.

*Please note:

• Because these topics are sensitive and the content needs to be age appropriate, we will teach them in year levels (years 0-2, years 3-4 & years 5-6) rather than hubs.

• If you would prefer that your child did not learn particular aspects of this information at school, please let your child’s whānau teacher know which sessions you would prefer they were not involved in as soon as possible.

Whole School Cross Country

Our annual school Cross Country event will take place on Tuesday 7th May. We ask all tamariki to have suitable footwear and a change of clothes for this day in case they get wet and muddy. The change for this year is that the full cross country race is optional, with the alternative being our school fun run (date to be confrimed) which all students will take part in. Cross country runners can do both events.

The first race is expected to start at 11:10am. The Cross Country event will still go ahead even if it's wet. If the health and safety of our tamariki is in doubt due to extreme weather conditions the postponement date for Pōhutukawa Hub is Thursday 9th May. Koru Hub postponement date will be on Tuesday 14th May.

We welcome supporters and whānau to come on site and support our budding athletes. If you would like to help and be a marshal on the track please email rupert@amesbury.school.nz.

Please see Rupert’s article for more information.

Term 2 Swimming Lessons - Koru Hub

Todd and his trusted team at EasySwim will deliver our swimming programme again this year.

Koru will complete their lessons over 8 weeks beginning on Thursday the 9th of May (Week 2) and ending on Thursday the 4th of July (Week 10). They will use the teaching pool at Rewa Rewa School. Students need to bring togs, a towel and a swim cap, all in a named swimming bag. Goggles are also very useful, but not compulsory. It is recommended, if possible, that students come to school wearing their togs under their uniform so they are able to quickly change at the pool.

Swimming lessons for Pōhutukawa tamariki will take place in Term 3.

Mihi Whakatau

Our Term 2 mihi whakatau to welcome new students will be held on Monday 29th April (first day of term). Whānau are welcome to attend. This will begin at 2.15pm in the hall.

New Families Information Session

We will hold our New Families Information Session on Monday 29th April from 4pm-4:30pm. This is an opportunity for parents and children to come along and meet some of the teachers in your child’s team. The two hubs will split off and talk about how the hub works - where to find information, how the day/week is structured, and some key information about what is happening this term. It is a good chance for you to ask questions about how the hub operates.

Reporting to parents

This year our reporting structure will look a little different.

• Term 1: Student conferences - parents and whānau have a 20 minute in-person conference with their child’s whānau teacher.

• Term 3: Written report for each child will be available on their Hero learning profile

• Ongoing throughout the year: As we go through each term, kaiako (teachers) and older students will upload learning posts to student Hero profiles. These will be examples or explanations of learning that your child has done. As students achieve learning goals and progress in their learning, their goals will be updated as achieved, and new goals will be set. There will be a statement in each key learning area (reading, writing maths) that states where your child is currently working. At any time you can go on to their learning profile (the page with the large green dials) and see your child’s current learning levels and goals. This document gives you more detail about how to access information on your child’s learning profile.

Amesbury’s Got Talent

We will be running Amesbury's Got Talent this term! This is open for all students in the school to enter with any talent they want to share. We will be holding the heats in Weeks 6 & 7 (5th - 14th of June) during lunch times in front of an audience and judges. The finals will be the following week, on Friday 21st of June. Specific dates for each item will be shared with children once the schedule has been finalised. More details will come out soon.

Stationery

Your child will be issued with everything they need for the year, including books, pencils and felts/colouring pencils. There will be a cost of $45 for the year for this. This cost is charged to school accounts at the start of the year. Students joining the school from term 3 onwards will be charged a proportional amount for the remainder of the year.

If students have their own personal stationery that they would also like to use, they are very welcome to bring it in and keep it in their tote tray or bag. All students in Years 5-6 will be issued with a Chromebook and all Years 3-4 will have access to their Chromebook when necessary at school. Younger students will have access to a range of devices. If you would like to purchase a Chromebook so that your child can use it at home and at school, please contact Gar Kee Wu (garkee@amesbury.school.nz).

Clothing and lost property

Named items will be handed directly back to your child. There will be a small lost property box in the main school office for any unnamed items, but no items with clear names in them will be held here.

In order for all items to be returned to their owners quickly and easily, please ensure that all uniform items are very clearly named with your child’s name before the first day of school. Please be aware that children will often be the people reading the names on clothing, so ensuring that names on all items are clear and easy to read is important. Thanks for your help with this. We recommend purchasing fabric label pens, name stamps or iron-on name tags to make ownership of items very clear. We have teamed up with Precious Labels who offer a small commission to the school for every order placed (orders should be placed through Kindo)

Toys/Belongings at school

While we do not recommend that students bring toys to school, we do not have a ban on this. If your child chooses to bring a toy or another item of interest to school, it will need to be put away in their bag during learning time and we cannot take responsibility for lost, traded or broken toys/items. Therefore, we do recommend that your child leaves any treasured possessions at home.

Phones at school: Students must not use their phones during the school day. If a child needs to have their phone with them to use after school, the phone must stay in their bag until they leave school. Please see this article for more information about use of phones at school.

Absences

Schools are legally required to account for the safe whereabouts of each child every day, so notification to the school office should be before 9am if students will be more than 15 minutes late or not be attending school.

Please provide a reason for a late arrival/absence as schools are required to record this information. Absence notifications can be made by:

• Absence form on the Hero app

• Email – office@amesbury.school.nz

• Telephone – 04 477 3423

• Text – 021 86 55 28

If your child arrives at school any time from 9:00am, they must sign in at the office, not in the class/hub. All absences are to be advised to the office, with extended leave requests copied to the Principal.

Term 2 Hub Admin
School begins for the term on Monday 29th April at 9:00am. Please read and follow the information below to ensure your child has a great start to their new school term.

Koru:

Our Hub will be open from 8.30am. We ask that ākonga take their shoes off before coming into the learning space, put their bags in their bag spaces and sign in. Kaiako will be available at this time to support students. There will be activities set up for ākonga to engage with throughout the morning.

At the end of the day, ākonga in Angela and Wee Ai’s whānau can be picked up from Māwhero by parents, guardians or older siblings. The rest of Koru Hub will continue to be picked up outside on the basketball court. A kaiako will take a group of ākonga to drop off zone, please let your child’s whānau teacher, if you haven’t already, that this is your preference.

Pōhutukawa:

Our Hub is open from 8.30am. We ask that ākonga take their shoes off before coming into the learning space, put their bags in their bag spaces and sign in. Kaiako will be available at this time to support students.

Every morning we will have a ‘What’s On?’ projected in the hub telling ākonga what to expect throughout the day as well as any other notices they may need to know. At the end of the day, ākonga are released at 3pm from the hub.

*Hubs are open for ākonga from 8:30 am onwards. We ask that ākonga do not arrive at school before 8:30am, as they are not supervised by kaiako at this time. Kelly Club operates a care programme before school for ākonga who need to be at school before 8:30am. Please see the Kelly Club information page on our website for more details. We encourage all ākonga to be at school by 8:45am as this allows them time to settle in, put their bags away, read the timetable for the day and then say ‘hello’ to friends and kaiako before the bell goes.

Term 2 Dates 2024 

As always, our school events are all added to our school calendar as soon as we become aware of them. Please follow this link to our school calendar, housed on our school website. Some events may be added to our calendar as we go through the term, so please keep an eye on the weeks coming up on the calendar. Here are the main school events to date:

• Mon 29 Apr First day of Term 2 2024

• Mon 29 Apr Mihi Whakatau / New Families Information Session

• Tue 7 May School Cross Country

• Wed 8 May BoT meeting

• Thu 9 May Koru Swimming lessons begin

• Thu 9 May Pōhutukawa School Cross Country Postponement date

• Tue 14 May Koru School Cross Country Postponement date

• Tue 14 May Northern Zone Cross Country

• Tue 14 May Year 4 Parent Focus Group Session

• Thu 16 May Northern Zone Cross Country Postponement date

• Mon 20 May Playhouse Theatre Show: The Reluctant Dragon

• Tue 21 May Junior Tough Guy & Gal Challenge

• Thu 23 May Junior Invitational Cross Country

• Thu 28 May Junior Invitational Cross Country Postponement date

• Mon 3 June King’s Birthday - School Closed

• Tue 4 June Staff Only Day - school closed

• Thu 6 June Year 5 Parent Focus Group Session

• Tue 11 June School Photos

• Thu 13 June School Photos

• Fri 21 June Amesbury’s Got Talent Final

• Fri 21 June School discos

• Tue 25 June Northern Zone Hockey

• Wed 26 June BoT meeting

• Frid 28 June Matariki - School Closed

• Thu 4 Jul Year 6 Parent Focus Group Session

• Fri 5 Jul Last day of Term 2

Enjoy the last few days of the school break and we look forward to seeing you all next week.

Warm regards,

The Amesbury Team