We have had a busy and exciting start to 2021 at Ashley Rakahuri School with a wide range of wonderful opportunities designed to foster positive relationships , connectedness ( Whanaungatanga) and support learning.

Whānau Houses

This year we have introduced a whānau house system to bring our students from across the school together to support our vision of developing a strong sense of belonging and instil our REACH values further. It also provides more opportunities for our senior students to grow leadership skills through their roles as house captains. The names of our 4 houses were chosen to represent the natural elements... TĀNE MAHUTA (earth- forest and birds) , TANGAROA (water), TĀWHIRIMĀTEA (Air) and RŪAUMOKO (Fire). Our first opportunity to work with our house groups was Top Team.  All the games provided allowed for all age groups to participate and so it definitely provided a true opportunity for team building. The senior students really impressed us with their leadership skills and kindness towards others and everyone got involved and had a go.  It was a wonderful way to kick-start this initiative and it  has  been super to see the momentum growing as house groups are now taking opportunities to come together to eat lunch, play games during break times and they are currently designing banners and chants to represent their houses. We are looking forward to another games afternoon planned by house captains and teachers to end our first term back at school.

Poutama Tamariki - THE CHILD’S VOYAGE

We have also begun an exciting new leadership programme called Poutama Tamariki - THE CHILD’S VOYAGE for our Year 8 students that is a year long adventure of growth and development. It too is designed to further develop our school’s REACH values, while also increasing levels of commitment, resilience, initiative and hauora (wellbeing).

The programme provides a range of interesting and varied tasks and activities which will be done at home and school, and include:

• Giving to others

• Service in school

• Academic excellence

• Artistic creativity

• Physical activity and the outdoors.

The intention is for students to be prepared for the future as their self-worth and self-esteem grow, and their physical and mental wellbeing improves. They also develop a sense of purpose by thinking beyond themselves and giving back to others. For students, the positive outcomes are countless, including working in the local community.

In Tī Kōuka, our Year 7 class, the students have been learning to play golf croquet with the support of Howard Pettigrew. This is a fun version of croquet that allows all children to participate in a sport. It is a highly interactive sport that requires lots of thinking and working hard as a team to stay in the game. It has been wonderful to see children going from knowing nothing about this game to playing in a tournament against Loburn school who have also been learning. The children even feel confident enough that they could teach others at our school.

Kōwhai, our Year 6 class, were  fortunate  to have the opportunity to be involved in the North Canterbury Sports and Recreation Trust’s Cycle Sense programme. This is a two day programme in which students work with the Cycle Safety team to learn all the rules and safety aspects about cycling. Day one was spent at school learning skills and rules, and the second day was based at Te Matauru School so that the students could get used to busy roads and how to navigate roundabouts.

Kōtukutuku, our Year 5 class, have enjoyed learning to use Seesaw in many new ways to support their learning this year with the arrival of our new teacher, Sonia Hallmark who is a Seesaw Ambassador. They have been using this to not only celebrate and share their learning with whānau, but also using engaging activities within it to support their literacy and numeracy learning as well as exploring how they can use this tool to help them set goals and reflect on their learning.

In Harakeke Year 3 and 4 the students have been enthused about the many opportunities created by “Discovery Time”. Discovery is an activity based programme. It provides opportunities for teachers to meet the diverse needs of students through well planned, fun, challenging and ‘hands on’ experiences in a wide variety of contexts . The programme covers a wide range of activities and experiences from the arts to the sciences. For example...

Outdoors- woodwork, use of sports equipment (including perceptual motor), building with the large blocks, water play, sandpit, adventure playground etc.

Indoors- craft ideas, painting, sewing, digital learning,  children’s own ideas from home (this is actively encouraged), dressing up/ drama/ puppet theatre, baking, STEAM challenges ( Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) science experiments and other topic related activities.

This programme provides opportunities for students to direct their own learning, lead activities, participate in new experiences, encounter new challenges, extend existing skills, work cooperatively, collaborate, interact socially, and problem solve creatively. It also includes opportunities for developing their oral language skills, ability to follow instructions, fine and gross motor skills and to build their self esteem . The key competencies of Participating and Contributing, Managing Self, Thinking, Relating to Others, Using Language, Symbols and Texts become the focus.

In Mānuka the Tēina and Tuakana Year 1- 3 students have been enjoying coming together each week for buddy writing. Tamariki from each class are paired together as ako buddies where they work together on the same writing prompt to produce a piece of writing. It is fantastic to hear the conversations between pairs and to witness the Tuakana students showing leadership and acknowledge they can also be teachers. At the end of the session they always come back together and have an opportunity to share and celebrate the work that has been done . Recently science experiments were used as a very motivating and engaging prompt to promote writing where children engaged in discussion with their buddies and supported each other to write their predictions about what might happen in the experiment . Such enthusiasm, excitement and motivation shown by all through this teaching and learning approach!

Many of our teachers have also begun exploring how structured literacy approaches and the zones of regulation can support the learning and wellbeing of our students. We are now very much looking forward to looking at how we will implement these further over the coming year.

After what has been a busy and fun start to the year, we are now getting excited about Terms 2 and 3 where we will be exploring Tūrangawaewae ( our local area ) and Kaitiakitanga (sustainability) as school wide concepts.