Reading Reading Reading!

Reading looks like many different things in LC2.  Below are just some of the ways that children engage in Reading whilst at school.  

Guided Reading

Your child will be participating in Guided Reading sessions with either Reid, Elizabeth or Kerry two, three or four times a week. (Depending on which colour/level they are currently working at).  This session has a particular teaching focus such as chunking words, using meaning clues, phrasing and expression or inferential comprehension etc.  Sometimes it will have a follow up activity that supports the teaching focus.  The children complete this activity independently.  These books come home with your child and it is imperative that they are read at home.

Other Reading Sources
We have been introducing the children to other reading sources over the past few weeks.  One of these is Wonderopolis  

Wonderopolis is a fun-filled destination that provides a fascinating outlet for curious kids of all ages!  Learning, discovery and curiosity are encouraged and the concept of sharing the experience with family members is strongly encouraged.  Highlights include Wonder of the Day, key words and fast facts.

Kiwi Kids News is another site that we have been using during our target reading sessions.  It includes both national and international news articles which are brief, fact filled and can form the basis for great discussion and development of comprehension.

Immersion/Project Based Reading

Occasionally your child will bring home reading that is linked to either the Immersion or Project phase.  It will come home in your child's Shared Text Folder and is a great way for you to keep up with where your child is at with their learning in this area.

Daily Priority Reading Task

Everyday there will be a Reading Priority for your child to plan into their day. This might look like exploring a selection of non fiction books and recording facts to investigating different spelling patterns.

Oxford Owl

oxfordowl.co.uk is a website that your child can plan to use during the week to support their learning in Reading.  This would be a great activity to do at home. Log in details are below -

Other Ways to Support Your Child's Reading

Visit your local library regularly and borrow a range of books.  Your child can read to you, alongside you and be read to by you!  It is also great to read to read to younger siblings.

Happy Reading Everyone!

New Communities and PINs

Introducing our new communities:
On Friday we introduced our students to their new communities. They're designed to introduce more leadership opportunities, mentoring and role modelling for younger students and will also add to the culture of our school. Similar to houses that some schools operate, our communities will in time become a strong feature of HPPS. Our communities include students from all levels as well as staff members and have been named after the beaches at Bethells, Waiake, Piha, Muriwai and Karekare.

Our students have already begun to work on logos, chants and investigating what these beaches might mean or represent. We have also asked the students to tell us what they want the communities to be used for.




PINs

I'm constantly amazed at how well are young learners do when they have the opportunity to lead their workshops! As we observed them at the end of week 7 we saw the amount of thought, reflection and effort going into each of their workshops.

PINs workshops require a lot of planning by the students, staff and families to make these happen each week. Thus far we've been lucky to have hosted several parents who have given their time to run workshops about Sign Language, First Aid, Baking, Budgeting and Mexican Cooking.

To support our students so they continue to develop their workshops and their dispositional growth we've put together two small tools to add value to our PINs systems. The first is a small observation template that identifies their next steps for any future workshops (as shown).  As part of their PINs plans, we do ask them to reflect and think about what they can do better next time. This tool can assist them with this reflection. Leaders reflected on Friday that they'd "run out of things to do and needed more ideas for their workshop", others noticed that "their students wouldn't follow the rules and they had to keep making more rules".  Many of them are very proud of their workshops and also want to celebrate the work others are doing in their workshops.

The second tool is an evaluation form, this allows the participants to comment on the workshops that they attend and will assist us to provide constructive feedback to our workshop leaders. This is something that you can support your children with by helping them to fill out the form if they want to 
comment on a PINs workshop they have attended.

Money, Money, Money!

We have had a wonderful week of new learning in LC2 this week!

We have been exploring how we interact with the economic world this week through a wide range of different learning opportunities.

We were lucky enough to have some ASB "Captain Cashtastic" superheroes come to our school to recruit our children into being Cashtastic superheroes as well. 

We have been delving further into understanding the difference between a need and want as we got into groups to discuss where we may place some basic items. You can encourage your child to reflect on this when you go out shopping by asking them to categorise certain items in your trolley.

We have been talking about saving some of our pocket money each week in order to save up for things that we really want, and have been exploring this concept further by solving some challenging mathematical word problems. 

Our biggest challenge this week has seen our children attempt to plan and budget for a pretend morning tea for our common. This has seen us start to think about ways in which to save our money and make it stretch further. It also opened up a whole load of doors to new learning opportunities for the very near future so watch this space!

Our New Immersion Phase Begins!

We've come to the end of another fantastic week of learning in LC2!  



Immersion
We completed our first round of Immersion, 'Art Attack'.  We are in the process of displaying our end product - A collaborative mural using different media to portray emotions.  It's on the grey wall at the end of our learning common. Please come and have a look when you get the chance.

We have already launched in to our next round of Immersion which is focussed around Interaction and will cover four main contexts - Continuity and Change, Personal Growth and Development, Positive Attitudes and The Economic World.

So far we have thought about what being healthy looks like, sounds like and feels like.  We worked in small groups to create a brainstorm.

We also started to think about the types of food that we could have a lot of, some of and a little of.  

On Thursday we were really fortunate to meet Grace Rasmussen who plays for the Tall Blacks.  We had the opportunity to ask her some questions about being healthy.

This coming Monday and Tuesday we are going to participate in workshops led by the team at ASB.  In preparation for these workshops we have started to explore and play with money!!!  We looked at the different coins and notes we have in New Zealand.  We also started to explore the difference between needs and wants.  Meela explained 'A need is something you absolutely need to survive and a want is something you would like but that you don't need to survive.' We cut out images from different catalogues and brochures to represent our thinking.

                                               

PINs

This week we ran our first full PINs programme.  We had a wide variety of workshops on offer and most had been carefully thought out and well planned. Every Monday we will spend time with the workshop leaders, reflecting on how their workshops went and what improvements/changes could be made for next time.  Workshop participants will also have the opportunity to give feedback and feedforward via a Google Form.  

Painting flowers with Vrinda and Zoe.

Singing with Issa and Meela.

Sewing bunting with Luca and his Mum.

Dancing like Michael Jackson with Alfie and Joshua.

Breakdancing with Finn and Franiu.

First Aid with Elizabeth.

Baking cookies with Neeve and his Mum.

Karate with James and Nathan.

Cricket with Suah, Ashley and Haylynn.

Bug Hunting with Lucas and Nikhil.

                                                

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

The LC2 Team