Room 5 News-week 1, Term 2

22/4/2012

Dear Parents,

Hi everyone, welcome back to you all.  I hope you have had a happy, restful holiday.  I’m looking forward to catching up with the children on Monday but thought I’d send this email out to remind the children to bring their book bag and smiles back to school.

Term 2 Overview

Here is an outline of some of the learning and fun we have planned for term 2. 

Rich Theme and Key Competency
For the next 5 weeks we will continue to develop our rich theme “History-what excellence looked like 150 years ago”.  We are looking forward to our trip to Waipawa Settlers Museum and Oruawharo Homestead on Wednesday 2^nd May.

KEY COMPENTENCY- Relating to others     The children will-    Use active listening skills.    Ask learning questions.    Respond appropriately.   Discovery Learning Discovery learning will take place again on Fridays from 11.30-12.30. The rich theme and key competency form the basis of these sessions. If you would like to join in and help with the fun, we’d love to see you! We are collecting collage materials for making and creating - boxes, material, magazines, beads, buttons, lace, lids, wool etc. Writing Our personal writing on a Monday morning is where we encourage the children to write from their experiences and tap into their memories. We need to encourage the children to notice, wonder and question. Talking to your child on a Monday morning about what they are going to write about helps them focus more readily. On other days mini lessons will focus on retelling and sequencing of ideas, hooking the reader into our writing, using interesting descriptive words to paint detailed pictures for the reader and the use of punctuation so the reader can make sense of the writing. We would like to encourage the children to bring photos, tickets or brochures of different adventures they have experienced. We will glue these into their personal diary as a reminder of an experience and at some stage they may like to write about it. You may have collected some items over the holidays that would be suitable to glue into their books. Word Study The children are involved in this fun, interactive phonics programme, Mon-Thurs. A homework sheet glued into the homework book should come home on a Monday so that you can reinforce the learning happening at school. Essential Spelling Lists Well done to the children on their learning last term. Many of the children have made great strides with their spelling knowledge and this is also making a marked difference to their writing. A highlighted list of words to learn will be glued into homework books next week. Oral Congratulations to all the children on last terms oral presentation based on their family tree.We heard many fascinating stories about life long ago and it was interesting meeting the members of your family. This term in weeks 3, 4 and 5 the children will prepare an oral presentation about something old…game, object, piece of clothing, machine, toy or tool. We hope to set up a museum in our classroom of “Olden Day”, things. More information will follow on this. News day is on leader day. We encourage show and tell on these days.  Reading All children have a focus “skills and strategy”, sheet for the colour band they are working on, glued into their homework books. A reminder that our Library day is on Monday. Numeracy For the next two week’s our focus is on fractions. Numeracy learning is on number knowledge, place value and simple addition and subtraction. We will then move into mult/div. Please keep up the great work on the Numeracy Knowledge Ladder and Mathletics. I will be introducing “Live Mathletics” to the children this term. This is a great way for children to quicken their responses to simple basic facts. P.E. We have a fitness focus every day and begin with developing ball skills. Grant Hastings will be back towards the end of the term to develop eye/foot co-ordination and soccer skills.  As you can see the term is action packed! I hope you are enjoying our class blog and wiki. It is a wonderful way for the children to share their learning with you! http://hnpsjarvis.blogspot.co.nz/. http://rimaroom.wikispaces.com/ Child/parent/teacher conferences will take place towards the end of the term. With my support the children will share their learning and next steps with you. If you have any questions do not hesitate to make contact with me. Thank you so much for your wonderful support. We have a lot of learning and fun to look forward to this term. Regards, Sue