Junior Syndicate

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Junior

Jottings

Volume 2 – March 1st 2010 buckley@muritai.school.nz

This week

Tuesday March 2nd Community meeting National Standards and the New Curriculum

6.45 – 8.00pm

Wednesday March 3^rd World Read Aloud Day

Friday March 5^th

Full school assembly

1.30 pm

Please feel free to join us in the hall for assembly.

No Sweat Parenting

‘Become a parent coach’

Join Pio and his mate John for an evening of laughs, fun and choice ideas for raising our kids.

* Lower Hutt Town Hall

* Thursday March 25^th

* 7 – 9 p.m

* Parent Expo

Admission – a can for the Lower Hutt Food bank

Bonjour! It is hard to believe that it is already March and we are nearly half way through the first term.

A warm welcome is extended to eight more children and their families who have recently joined our Muritai Junior School. As the numbers of children in our New Entrant area have grown at a fast pace with another ten due to start this month we have employed another teacher to work alongside Mrs Heath and myself until the end of this term. We warmly welcome Miss Sarah Tweedie back on to our staff. We will be starting our second New Entrant room at the beginning of term 2 in room 1. Mrs Margaret Mills-Smith will be the teacher until Mrs Barbara Ryan returns later in the year.

Community meeting

You are cordially invited to attend a meeting in the school hall this Tuesday evening from 6.45 pm to learn more about the New Curriculum and National Standards. Looking forward to seeing you there.

World Read Aloud Day

March 3^rd 2010 has been set aside worldwide to celebrate and encourage the invaluable practice of reading aloud and to bring attention to the importance of literacy across all countries and for all of humanity. You may ask what kind of difference can reading aloud to a child for between 10 and 30 minutes per day make? The statistics speak for themselves... If daily reading begins in infancy, by the time the child is 5 years old, he or she has been fed roughly 900 hours of brain food! Reduce that experience to just 30 minutes a week and the child's hungry mind loses 770 hours of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories. A pre-school child who has not been read to could enter school with less than 60 hours of literacy nutrition. No teacher, no matter how talented, can make up for those lost hours of mental nourishment. So "feeding a book" to our kids, no matter what age they are or what reading material we choose, is, and will always be, one of the most beneficial ways to develop learning both at home and at school. This article is courtesy of Sarah Richardson, our learning support teacher. Please go to her blog for further information. Please get your favourite story or poem ready so that you can read aloud to someone else on Wednesday.

Maureen Buckley - Deputy Principal

Junior Jottings

2009

Welcome back to another busy school year! We hope that you and your family have had a satisfyingly relaxing break and hope the children had plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy the fantastic weather at the beach or at the park. Looking ahead, the learning programme in Term One will be full of exciting and interesting learning experiences for the children, making the transition from holidays to ‘back-to-school’ as seamless as possible.

Teaching in the two Year 3 classes this year will be Sarah Drinkwater in Room 10 and Vita Collier in Room 8. Vita, new to Muritai School, is a highly skilled, talented and enthusiastic beginning teacher and we feel very lucky to have her as part of our teaching team. Teaching in the two Year 4 classes will be Karen Chao in Room 11, and Richard Dobson in Room 7. Ruth Holmes will also be teaching part-time in Room 7, as well as providing teacher release time to the other Year 3 and 4 teachers throughout the term. Sue Steele, a familiar face to most of you, will also be teaching part-time in Rooms 8 and 10. Sarah Richardson, Muritai School’s learning support teacher, will also be working with our students throughout the year.

The regular homework programme will begin at the beginning of week 4, once initial spelling and basic facts testing is complete. In Year 3 and 4 our homework programme is mainly focused on reading, spelling and mathematical basic facts. On a Monday all children will bring home weekly spelling words and basic facts equations to learn. These will be recorded in their homework diary books and tested on Friday at school. Please support your child by helping them to practise daily. On top of this our expectation is that children will spend at least fifteen minutes a night reading. This book may be one sent home from school or it may be a book that your child has selected independently. Please record the title of the book and pages read in your child’s homework diary each night and sign. Homework books are a useful means of communication between parents and classroom teachers so please ensure that they are returned to school each day. Your support with this is much appreciated. During the second half of the year, the year 4 children will be given further homework tasks focusing on inquiry and research skills.

We begin our swimming programme in week 2. The children in Rooms 8 and 11 will be swimming on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 11.45am. The children in Rooms 7 and 10 will be swimming on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11.45am. Please ensure that your child has in a bag, named togs, towel and goggles, at school on these days. If your child is unable to swim please email advising the classroom teacher of this.

In Term One, there will be two main areas of learning around the theme “Making a Difference”. Firstly, the children will explore ways to ‘make a difference through friendship’. They will learn ways in which to work co-operatively and learn about ‘values’ such as trustworthiness.

The second area of learning later this term will have an applied science focus, and we are planning that the outcome will be small vegetable plots being established around the Junior School courtyard, with the children being responsible for the planting and maintaining of the vegetables being grown.

Our focus for writing this term is recounts. Children will be learning to structure their writing by sequencing events chronologically, linking ideas in a variety of ways and adding an introduction and conclusion. During this topic we will also be focussing on the writing process and encouraging children to plan their ideas in a variety of ways before writing. Children will be learning to edit their own work by proof reading to check for meaning and by using simple dictionaries to correct spelling.

The major part of the term will be spent on numeration, addition and subtraction. Later this term, we look at statistics, and will learn how to collect and collate data and how to graph information for others to use.

Our Art focus this term is drawing. Children will be exploring a variety of drawing techniques and experimenting with different tools including pencils and pastels.

Year 3 and 4 will once again be joining the Year 1 and 2’s for Jump Jam on Monday, Tuesday and Friday each week. Swimming is the main PE focus for the first 6 weeks, followed by large ball skills later in the term.

Children may take a bottle of water into the classroom to drink from during class. Please help reinforce with your child that it is water, not fruit juice or other sugary drinks that can be drunk during class time.

As all children are required to wear sunhats during outdoor activities, please ensure that your child has a named sunhat that is to be kept at school.

Each classroom teacher maintains a classroom blog with regular updates on what is happening in the classroom. These are a wonderful way of keeping in touch with what is happening in your child’s class, so visit the school website (www.muritai.school.nz) to have a look. Please leave comments, as the children love to read these and see what other people are saying about their classroom, and the learning that is occurring!

Teacher Only day on the new curriculum is happening on Friday 27^th March- more details to come closer to the date.

New Zealand Arts Festival trip is on Friday 20^th March- more details to come closer to the date.

Thanks for your support. We are looking forward to a positive and enjoyable first term. Please don’t hesitate to speak to, or email, your classroom teacher or myself if you have any questions regarding this term’s programme.

Richard Dobson (Team Leader), Karen Chao, Sarah Drinkwater, Vita Collier, Ruth Holmes, Sue Steele.

Welcome back to school for the New Year. Hopefully everyone had a very relaxing and enjoyable holiday. Thankfully the weather was kind to us! The teachers have been hard at work preparing for the year and we are all looking forward to getting started.

Ruth Hooke will work in Room 15 on Fridays, teach performing arts on Thursdays this term and release teachers in the team on Wednesdays as part of the classroom teacher release programme.

Lisa Allen will be away on maternity leave for the 1^st two terms of the year and return in Term 3.

Our major focus for the beginning of the year is camp at Forest Lakes. This takes place in week 6 of this term.

There is a cost involved with coming to camp; it will cost $195 per child. This covers every eventuality that may arise. We ask that you pay before going to camp. If there are any problems with this please contact your classroom teacher. It would be appreciated if you completed and returned the form at the end of the newsletter with payment in a named envelope.

It is important that gear is being organised so that we are ready for Tuesday in Week 6. Let us know if you are having any difficulties as we can help you borrow gear. A gear check takes place at school in the morning before boarding the bus and you will be contacted if there are any major items missing. It is important that students are aware of what they have in their bags. Encourage them to take responsibility for checking their gear list and packing. This will be their responsibility while at camp.

If your child requires medicine to be given while on camp please make sure that it comes to school on Tuesday 10^th March in a named plastic bag and is given to the class teacher. All the teachers have current first aid certificates and have dealt with many situations in their time.

We are holding a meeting at 6.30pm on Wednesday 25th February in the library for parents coming to camp for the full week. We will be running over routines and also your responsibilities while at camp. It is important that you attend. We hope it will take only about 30- 45 minutes. If your circumstances have changed please let me know as we have a waiting list for fulltime parents at camp.

Interviews will be held on Thursday 26^th February starting at 2pm-8 pm. It is your chance to share information about your child with the classroom teacher. We have not spent enough time with each student to give you academic information. A form will be sent home prior to this date to get you to start thinking about what you wish to discuss with your child’s teacher during the interview.

Our big idea for the year is ‘Making a Difference’. We will be forming our major units of work to fit round making a difference to ourselves and peers, our community, our country and our world. This is a school wide theme and we are adapting it to best meet the needs of the students in our area of the school.

We will also be focusing on the Key Competency ‘Managing Self’ throughout our camp inquiry unit.

We have decided to wait until after camp to officially start homework so students can enjoy the sunshine and prepare for Camp. However we are starting spelling and reading homework this week. Your child should have between 8-10 spelling words to learn at home during the week. They will then be tested on these words on Friday.

Cross grouping will start week 2. We start the term looking at Measurement, exploring length, and mass. We then move into Number, exploring place value and basic facts.

We are beginning the year with writing ‘Recounts’. Summer holidays and camp will provide rich opportunities for ideas.

Our Inquiry focus is centred around camp. This year we will be looking particularly at safety at camp. Students will be learning about the hazards of activities and precautions that need to be considered before taking part.

Students will be learning about various concepts of drawing and will be building on their drawing skills using a variety of materials. Students will be completing a variety of excerises, exploring tone and contrast. We will all have a go at drawing a nikau palm!

Thank you to the parents who ordered packs from school. Please ensure that stationery is at school as soon as possible if purchasing it elsewhere, so written work can start promptly. If you are covering books with duraseal please ensure that you have put labels on the front for the names, as it is very time consuming finding the owners of unnamed books. Names written in vivid pens are easily rubbed off. Labels are the best option.

Please help your child remember to check they have everything they need each morning and they are at school in time for the first bell at 8.40. Students should see that being organised is part of growing up and an important life skill to be developing.

They will need a water bottle to keep hydrated during the day. It helps with concentration and learning. Ensure that it comes home regularly for a wash.

All students are expected to wear a wide brimmed sunhat during all outside activities. The hat needs to be kept at school for easy access.

Swimming starts this week. Rooms 9 and 15 are swimming Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays. Rooms 12, 13 & 14 are swimming Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays.

Please ensure that your child has their swimming gear ready each day in case there is a chance of an extra swim. The gear should be named and in a suitable bag.

This year the year 5 and 6 students will have many opportunities to be involved in a range of sporting events. These sports range from netball and soccer to cricket and hockey. There will also be zone and inter - zone events such as swimming, cross-country and athletics. Parent support and transport at these events is much appreciated and it is also a wonderful opportunity to come along and see your child in action.

Last year the school had huge success creating blogs for each classroom to show you and the world all the fantastic learning experiences that occur in our classrooms. This will continue this year and will also include content written by the children. These blogs can be accessed through the school website. It is worthwhile visiting regularly and checking out the updates. We encourage you to leave the comments for your children or the class – they really get a buzz out of it!

If you need to contact your child’s classroom teacher please feel free to drop by the classroom before or after school or make an appointment for an interview at the office. The easiest way to touch base with us is email e.g. teacher’s surname@muritai.school.nz