Back to Normality

As we reflect on the first half of the term and our successful opening day we head into a settled and focused second half of the term.


What we have achieved so far in Term 2:
* Completed inquiries looking at "Beauty" and "Joy" - linking to our school whakatauki "Joy for learning, joyful living"
* Progress in reading, writing and maths within our inquiry and workshops
* Learning beginner glockenspiels, ukulele, recorder
* Polished our powhiri and haka
* Continued our language learning in Te Reo and Mandarin
* School Cross Country
* Student Led Conferences
* Art Unveiling
* School concert and disco
* Welcomed seven new children to our hub


Events for the Rest of Term 2:
Star Lab Trip                        Wednesday 30 May      Learn about Matariki!
Junior Cross Country            Friday 1 June                We welcome other schools who will race with us! Queens Birthday                   Monday 4 June             Have a day off!
School Community Evening  Wednesday 6 June         Join us for "Banana or the Bag"


Learning Programmes for the rest of Term:


 * Inquiries around the history of Amesbury School, how we got to be here, what things are and how they work, the designs, the decisions and the stories! This will involve interviews, research and identifying relevant information that answers our wonderings. Curriculum areas that fall out of these inquiries include, literacy, maths, science, social sciences, and technology.


* iTime and Workshops. Children work through their personal learning contract which covers learning activities that meet their goals. These include 'must do' and 'can do' tasks. Workshops focus on information literacy, reading, writing, maths, ICT, social/group skills as they are identified as a next step from our inquiries and from the assessment matrices. Some workshops are ability based and some are mixed ability with the choice to sign into them if this is a learning goal they need to explore.


* World Cafe Maths. Every Tuesday children are organised in mixed ability groups. Working on a maths problem children will begin by individually working it out. They take turns to share their strategy and answer. When all children in the group have explained their strategy, the group must decide which strategy is the most effective and why. World Cafe Maths give children the opportunity to see a variety of strategies, to clearly articulate their learning, to learn from their peers in an authentic context, to develop their group skills, to come to an agreed consensus and to use strategies that might be new to them. On Wednesday and Thursday children work in ability groups. They explore problem solving to develop their strategies and participate in ability based workshops that focus on their maths knowledge as identified from the maths matrix.

* Music. Monday with Judy will cover a lesson for every year level. A tuned percussion group is on offer to those who wish to sign up, with the intention to develop a school orchestra. Artsplash is compulsory for all year 3-6 children.

* Te Reo and Kapa Haka. Crisanna is at Amesbury on Monday and Friday. She will continue to take every year level for a Te Reo lesson. Haka and powhiri protocols continue to be practiced. Poi will be starting soon for the girls and a new haka for the boys. Street Dance continues and is on offer to everyone.


* Mandarin with Lulu is on every Friday. A lesson for every year level and also extension lessons for children who have prior knowledge of Mandarin.


Remember if you would like to see what we are doing each day, have a look on our planning site. Look under Term 2 and then the calendar page. All our planning is available for viewing. Chat to your child to see whose workshops they have been attending and look under that teachers page for the current week.


Thank you to all the parents who are transporting us to Newlands for the Star Lab Matariki visit and for swimming next term! Your assistance helps us to keep our groupings flexible, the cost is heaps cheaper which means we can have more trips.


Ka Kite Ano!

Koru hub reflecting on what they have enjoyed so far this year and what they are proud of.

Dress Ups

If you have any children's dress ups or costumes that you don't need, we would love to take them off your hands and put them in our developmental area.  Send any along to school to any koru hub teacher.


Thank you!

Bug Club

                                   

  Welcome to Bug Club

We have Bug Club up and running at Amesbury School.  http://home.bugclub.com.au//MyPasses/login

This is an online reading resource that is similar to Mathletics.  Every student has their own personal bug club page with books at their level , interest or books that link to inquiries.

Teachers load reading books that are suitable for individuals onto their personal bug club page.

Students log in, choose a book from their library and can read it.  Click on the picture of the bug to practise comprehension.

Earn awards with the more reading and comprehension you do.

Teachers can monitor progress and areas of achievement and need.

Children can work on this during school and also at home.  Anytime, anywhere!

Teachers will send home or email children's log in and password shortly.

Happy reading!

Hooray 4 Holidays Homework

Home learning

Need something to do in the holidays? Check out Harakeke's Hooray 4 Holidays Homework wiki for ideas! Click on the "Home learning" words above to go straight to the wiki.

Be safe and joyful over this holiday break!

Timetables, Personal Contracts and Workshops

You may have looked at our timetable on our touchscreens in the mornings and wondered what it all means.

At Amesbury School we often learn through inquiries. Out of these inquiries come writing, reading and maths tasks that children need to do in order to answer their inquiry question or to explore and understand an essential understanding. At the moment our timetable has inquiries taking place at 9:30am. During this time children are working through the "Amesbury Learning Cycle" around their chosen inquiry. Children are learning in an integral way that involves a variety of curriculum areas to achieve understanding, a personal response and practical wisdom.

Our current inquiries include "Joy" and "Beauty". We are inquiring into what "joy for learning. joyful living" means and exploring what is beautiful. During these inquiries and the written tasks that take place we identify particular skills that children need to learn. We hold specific writing, reading and maths workshops that cover the skills needed. On our touchscreen timetable it will say "inquiry work" which covers all these things.

After morning tea the timetable says "Workshops and personal contract". For children who are still 'learning to read' guided reading workshops take place, as well as any other specific writing workshops that are needed according to the needs of the children and the inquiry. Personal contract time means that the children then work independently from their individual timetable. This includes tasks that are compulsory and some 'you choose' tasks that all evolve around individual learning goals. There are always teachers prompting, challenging and supporting the children during this time. The afternoon involves different maths workshops.

As children are all doing different workshops, inquiries and tasks on their contracts, it is difficult to show on one timetable what is happening during the day for each child. However they all have their own personal contract - which is an individual timetable, that they plan in the morning with visual pictures. As they complete different tasks and workshops they reflect on them and move the visual picture to the other side of the contract. This also helps them know where they are up to in their day and contributes to self management and having ownership over their learning.

Visits to Early Childhood Centres

As part of our transition to school programme Koru hub teachers have been visiting pre-enrolled children at their Early Childhood Centre. We get a chance to build relationships with the new children, to talk to their teachers and to have them show us their portfolio.

We have taken the opportunity to take Amesbury children back to their Early Childhood Centre to visit their previous teachers and friends.

Sara, Vivian and Jack got to see their teachers and friends at Churton Park Kindergarten, and Echelon who will be starting at Amesbury this year also got to know us all better. And above is Mike visiting Ha-Yeon at her childcare centre. She made him a beautiful crown!

Peer Teaching in Maths Problem Solving

Problem Solving in an integrated context: A group of children in a maths workshop were presented with a written maths problem around survival. This proved to be a challenge to the children as they were stumpted as to what they needed to do. After a discussion around what 'altogether' means, the children were able to recognise that they needed to add numbers together to find a total amount. A number of strategies emerged that showed a wide range of thinking. These included:

• Drawing all the objects and counting them from one (takes a very long time when the numbers are large)
• Adding all the tens together, then the ones together, then adding both of those sets together
• Starting with the biggest number and counting on from that

Children explained their strategy to each other and they were recorded (whiteboard and window). Seeing children model strategies is much more powerful than listening to a teacher demonstrate and explain from the front of a room.

Another problem was posed with the following strategies being used:

• Counting all the objects from one
• Counting on from the biggest number
• Rounding up to the nearest ten, adding the second number, then subtracting the amount that was rounded up (adding with ten is an easy and quick strategy)

During a follow up maths workshop children were given another written maths problem. Without any prompting children were able to analyse what the problem was asking them to do and they started using different strategies they hadn't used before, from being exposed to them from the explanations given by the children.

The power of peers learning off one another was very evident here. Child led learning in a minimally invasive way proved successful. A new strategy was not 'taught' but explored and practiced without teacher direction. Also the need to base maths problems in real life contexts was evident. The world asks us to first figure out how to solve a problem before actually solving it. Being faced with numeric equations limits our ability to problem solve in the real world.

Fluency boxes

There are fluency boxes (for reading) in the hub now. These boxes contain a variety of books at different levels (marked on the box) and are available for you to take one or two home to read with your child.


Please return the books before taking a new one!


Along with the books, there are a range of different ways you can support or read with your child. Below are some prompts that can focus the way you read at home. You can choose what type of reading, or your child may be sent home with a card and a particular book so you know how you can support their reading with this text.


Ask a teacher if you're not sure which box to get the books from.

HOME READING

Purpose of this book:  Fluency and expression

This book should be easy to read.  I will try to:

• ·       Make my voice sound like talking
• ·       Read smoothly – not too fast, not too slow
• ·       Stop at the full stops
• ·       Read with expression – make my voice go up and down, loud and soft
• ·       Make it sound interesting

    Purpose of this book:  To practise using my reading strategies to work out new words This book should be instructional for me (at my reading level).   When I get stuck at a word I will:

• ·       Go back to the start of the sentence
• ·       Look in the picture for clues
• ·       Think of what will make sense and sound right
• ·       Stretch the sounds out across a word
• ·       Look for parts of the word I already know
• ·       Reread and check if it makes sense, and also check that it sounds right and looks right

    

     Purpose of this book:  Comprehension

      This book could be easy, instructional (at my reading level) or a book that an adult reads to me.  At the end of the book I will try to:

• ·       Retell the story
• ·       Answer some recall questions (who, what, when, where, why, how)
• ·       Answer some inferential questions (why, what if… how do we know… could…)
• ·       Talk about my own experiences that relate to the story

    Purpose of this book:  Increase knowledge about a topic

    This book is hard so I need an adult to read it to me.  Together we can:

• ·       Talk about what I already know about this topic
• ·       Discuss the pictures, labels and diagrams
• ·       Talk about the facts
• ·       Ask and answer questions about the topic
• ·       Talk about how it relates to my own experiences

How Storms Form