Studio 7 Update

Studio 7 has got off to a superb start. We are enjoying getting to know all the new faces as well as seeing students from last year who have come back looking a lot taller and older! Thank you to those of you who were able to make the Meet the Studio evening on Tuesday this week. It has been lovely for us to get to know our students' whānau and we look forward to working with you in supporting your children this year.

As part of getting to know each other, we have spent some time exploring and sharing important aspects of our identities. One of these activities that has been significant to the children was creating a visual pepeha (an visual interpretation of a Māori introduction). This experience aimed to support our students in learning their pepeha verbally as well as allowing them to share important parts of who they are, where they feel that they belong, and who is special in their lives with us. Some examples of these can be seen below by Ben, Alex and Oscar D.

Our Studio Reading, Writing, Maths and Concept programmes are up and running. Students have settled into these routines well and are enjoying meeting the new expectations of our studio. In Maths, we have been focusing on Algebra as well as addition and subtraction. This has been carried out through collaborative problem solving where students are supported in explaining their thinking, justifying their ideas and exploring mathematical concepts found in the world around them. Here we have looked at Cook Island tivaevae patterns, and have used sequences in these to predict what larger tivaevae patterns could look like. Below are some photos of our students discussing these sequences together. We have also introduced a number of new games, independent tasks, and basic fact (times table) activities. You may want to ask your children to teach you one of these new games to get a feel for the types of activities that they are doing in class. 

In Writing, we have focused on following a writing process independently. Here students are learning to move from planning to writing to editing to conferencing before publishing a thoroughly constructed piece of work at their own pace. It has been lovely getting to see the creative talent of our children in this area.

We are looking forward to our Beach Education trip out to Muriwai next week. Thank you to those parents who have let us know that they are able to help on the trip. As the children will be in the water during part of the programme we do need a lot of parent support in order for the day to run so these offers are really appreciated.

Studio 8 Update

It was great to meet so many of you on Tuesday at “Meet The Studio” evening. We have had an excellent start to the year. Everyone has settled well into our new Studio (including Terry and Peter!) and our learning programme is in full swing.

Students have been working hard exploring a range of mathematical knowledge themed around how high they can jump! Our writing has been motivated by Shrek and students have been developing a fairy-tale character who has a unique feature (Shrek’s special characteristic was being ugly!). Ask your children what they created to write about.

Our Literacy tumble has begun very well, with students taking ownership of their own learning progression and self-management by selecting different activities to work on within Literacy time. This approach is aimed at developing greater student agency and independence. We are looking forward to our trip to Muriwai next week for Beach Ed and we’re very grateful for all your support around this. There are still places available if anyone else is keen to join us for the day.

Nga mihi,

Terry, Peter, Melinda, Stuart and Sarah