It's hard to believe we are at the end of Week 8 already! Students have been incredibly mature in the way they responded to the postponement of Camp and have carried on working hard at school. Here's what we've been working on...

Unit of Inquiry

One of the Learner Profile Attributes we aim to develop is the ability for students to reflect. This is an invaluable skill for them to develop so that they can acknowledge their successes and identify areas where progress can be made. They are currently working on the reflection phase of their first Unit of Inquiry - Who We Are. These reflections will be published as artefacts on their Hero page before the end of term. 

Literacy

Students have been enjoying reading on Epic Reading as part of their silent reading time. During comprehension sessions, students have continued to work on their understanding of what they have read and are learning to support their thinking with evidence from the text. They are learning to summarise what they have read fully by considering who, what, when, where, why and how and then writing sentences covering these main points. Learning about conjunctions and using these to create compound and complex sentences has been a focus during our Structured Literacy time, alongside working on spelling and vocabulary knowledge. 

Numeracy

Our focus on number is continuing with students working on various areas of number knowledge and strategy, depending on their individual needs. Students work on developing their mathematical understanding by attending group workshops, working independently on related follow-up tasks to practice what they've been taught, using Maths Buddy (which includes tutorial videos and practice questions), and through various math games and puzzles.  We have been impressed with the questions students have been asking and the positivity shown by students towards their maths learning.  

Across the Curriculum...

Students are engaging positively in their Spanish lessons. They have covered cognates (words that are similar in Spanish and English), vowel pronunciation and the differences in the Spanish alphabet as compared to English, how to greet people in Spanish and how to introduce themselves. When they are not in Spanish, students are having lessons in Visual Art and Digital Technology. In visual art they have been working on shading techniques and drawing using geometric shapes. They are developing their typing skills in DT and have begun working on Pixel Art. 

With swimming coming to an end, the PE focus turns to developing cardiovascular fitness and stamina with Cross Country coming up early in Term 2. We also will be working on game strategies - moving into space and defensive techniques as we move into our winter team sports. 

Our health focus has been looking at looking after ourselves so that we can be 'just right' for learning (getting good sleep, eating well) and developing strategies for when we are feeling out of sorts (breathing techniques, taking notice of objects or colours around you to bring yourself into the present moment and practising clapping rhythms to regulate the brain). We are also strongly focussing on Empathy. A key message has been that often it is best to listen to people when they share what's going on for them without trying to fix the problem or turning the conversation to being about ourselves. 

Whanau Conferences

These are happening on the following two Wednesdays. If you haven't yet booked a conference or filled in the discussion document for your child, please refer to the recent posts in HERO for instructions of how to do this. We look forward to meeting with you during these conferences.