Happy Diwali

Don't they look great!!!

How to help your children at home

Hi everyone, I found this website - Education.govt.nz
They have great ideas for parents. The link is below: Also I copied the year 3 and 4 information.

Parent Information


Year 3

Reading at home

Make reading fun

• Have fun singing along to karaoke songs or playing board games together
• Read to your child every day. You can use your first language
• Have a pile of reading materials available – library books (non-fiction and fiction), kids’ cookery books, simple timetables, newspapers and magazines, catalogues and any other reading that supports your child’s current interest
• Encourage your child to retell favourite stories or parts of stories in their own words. Play card games (you can make the cards yourself) and board games together.

Here are some tips -

When they are reading, your child will be working at solving unfamiliar words by themself. If they need help you could ask them to work their way across the word looking for things they know that might help. At this level, reading involves bringing everything they know together to solve problems and build understanding. If they can’t work it out – tell them and carry on with reading.

If you or your child starts to feel stressed by what they’re reading, take a break and read the rest of the story aloud yourself – keep it fun.

Make it real

• Reading makes more sense if your child can relate it to their own life. Help them to make connections between what they are reading and their own lives and experiences. For example, "that’s a funny story about a grandad – what does your grandad do that makes you laugh?", "We saw a big mountain in that book, what is our mountain called, and where did the name come from?"
• Look for opportunities for your child to read wherever you are – signs, advertising billboards, junk mail, recipes
• Show your child that reading is fun and important to you by letting them see you reading magazines, books, newspapers.

Find out together

• Visit the library often and help your child to choose books about topics that interest them
• Talk with older people or kaumātua in your family about interesting stories and people from your child’s past that you could find out more about together
• Ask your child questions (and support them to find the answers) to widen their reading experiences. For example, "What’s the quickest biscuit recipe?", "What time is the next bus to town?"
• Help your child with any words that they don’t understand – look them up together in the dictionary if you need to.

Writing at home

Writing for fun

• Talk about interesting words with your child, especially ones that are fun to say, like "hippopotamus" or "ringaringa". Short and simple games could involve finding how many little words can be found using the letters in the word ‘elephant’
• Work together on the small word games found in the children’s section (or word section) of the newspaper
• Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara (legend) or traditional tale and act it out with costumes and music, write down the names of the characters or tïpuna (ancestors)
• Make up a play with your child. You could help your child to write the play down. Use puppets they design and make themselves to give a performance to the family

Here's a tip - keep writing fun and use any excuse to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

Writing for a reason

• Writing for a real purpose can help your child want to write.For example, writing invitations, typing emails or writing and posting small notes
• Personalising notes by cutting, decorating, sticking or stamping are great skills for coordinating fingers and being creative. Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too
• Encourage your child to write what they need to pack for a holiday, dictate your shopping list to them, or get them to write a list of jobs that need doing.

Here's a tip - talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what your child’s picture or story is about, ask them to explain.

Supporting your child's writing

• Talk to your child about what you are writing – let them see you making lists, writing emails, filling in forms
• Keep envelopes, banking slips, forms you don’t need so that your child can do their own ‘grown up’ writing
• Display your child’s writing where others can admire and read it
• Play with words. Find and discuss interesting new words – this can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet or talk to family and whānau members to learn the whakapapa (origins) of the words.

Here's a tip - be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood
• name the number that is 10 more or 10 less than before or after a number up to 100
• make patterns when counting in groups (skip counting) forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (eg 13, 23, 33, 43…, …43, 33, 23, 13)
• try making different types of patterns by drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing or drawing patterns that repeat
• find out the ages of family or whānau members
• do addition and subtraction problems in their heads using facts to 20 eg 10 + 4, 15 – 7
• use groups of 10 that add to 100 eg 50 + 50, 30 + 70.

Here's a tip - being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• telling the time – o’clock, ½ past, ¼ to
• learning their 2, 5 and 10 times tables
• repeating and remembering telephone numbers they use a lot
• reading and sharing a book. Ask them questions about numbers in the story – use the number of pages as a way to practise number facts, too
• doing a shape and number search when you are reading a book or looking at art (like carvings and sculpture)
• helping at the supermarket – ask your child to get specific items (medium-sized tin of red beans, 2 litres of milk, 250g of mince).

Here's a tip - talk a lot to your child while you are doing things together.  Use the language that works best for you and your child.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play games – board games, card games and do jigsaw puzzles
• make your own advertising pamphlet – cut out and sort images to go on it, make pretend money to spend
• grow seeds or sprouts – measure the growth each week
• fold and cut out paper dolls and other repeating shapes
• trace over repeating patterns (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns)
• go on a treasure hunt – make a map with clues and see who can get to the treasure first
• dance to music and sing/clap to favourite songs – make up a dance sequence each – can you copy each other?
• both take turns closing your eyes and describing how to get from the front gate to the kitchen, from the kitchen to their bedroom, from home to school
• do timed activities. You hold the watch and they count how many times they can bounce a ball in a minute
• play guess and check games (use different shaped jars) – how many beans, buttons, pegs in the container?

Here's a tip - the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

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Year 4

Reading at home

Read and talk together

• Get your child to tell you about what they are reading. Who is their favourite character and why? Is there anyone like that in your family? What do they think is going to happen? What have they learnt from their reading? Does it remind them of any of their own experiences?
• Help your child with any words they don’t understand – look them up together in the dictionary if you need to
• Read recipes, instructions, manuals, maps, diagrams, signs and emails. It will help your child to understand that words can be organised in different ways on a page, depending on what it’s for
• Read junk mail – your child could compare costs, make their own ‘advertisements’ by cutting up junk mail or come up with clever sentences for a product they like.

Here's a tip - talk a lot to your child while you are doing things together. Use the language that works best for you and your child.

Read with others

• If your child has chosen something to read that is too hard at the moment, take turns and read it together
• Reading to younger brothers or sisters, whānau or grandparents will give your child an opportunity to practise reading out loud
• Encourage other family members to read to and with your child – Aunty, Grandma, Koro
• Playing board games and card games is important, too
• Choose games that everyone wants to play – make them challenging, not too easy.

Here's some tips -

Keep the magic of listening to a good story alive by reading either made up, retold or read-aloud stories to your child – with lots of excitement through the use of your voice!

When they are reading, the most common difficulty your child is likely to have is working out the meaning of new words, phrases and expressions. To do this your child will use their knowledge of words and word patterns (eg prefixes, suffixes and root words) to help build meaning. You may need to remind your child to read back and forward for clues to help their understanding of what they are reading. Talk with your child about the meaning.

Take your child to the library

• Help your child to choose a variety of books they want to read
• Help them look for books about topics they’re learning about at school
• Get your child to choose a book that you can read to them (listening to you read helps them with their reading)
• Encourage your child to retell favourite stories or parts of stories in their own words.

Here's a tip - help your child link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

Writing at home

Write for fun

• Writing about their heroes, sports events, tīpuna (ancestors), hobbies and interests helps your child to stay interested in what they are writing about
• Help your child to leave messages in sand on the beach, send a message in a bottle, do code crackers, word puzzles, crosswords, word finds – these are all fun to do together
• Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara (legend) and act it out with costumes and music. Write down the names of the characters or tīpuna (ancestors)
• If you or someone in your family has a computer, encourage your child to use it to write, email and publish or print for pleasure (emails, birthday cards, poems, jokes, letters, pictures with captions). Or you could use a computer at the library.

Here's a tip - keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

Talk about your child's writing

• Get your child to talk about their writing and share it
• Cut out words and letters to make stories, codes, poems, puzzles and more…
• Play word games together
• Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet or talk with family/whānau to find out more about where the words come from.

Here's a tip - talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what their story is about, ask them to tell you more about it. Use questions they will want to answer.

Write for a reason

• Get your child to help write the shopping list, invitation lists for family events, menus for special dinners, thank-you cards when someone does something nice
• Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too. Have a special place to keep your child’s writing at home (notice board, fridge, folder). You might frame a piece of writing and hang it up, too.

Here's a tip - be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. Write to them sometimes, too. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood – phone numbers, clocks, letterboxes, road signs, signs showing distance
• count forwards and backwards (starting with numbers like 998, 999, 1,000, 1,001, 1,002 then back again)
• make patterns when counting – forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (73, 83, 93, 103… or 118, 108, 98, 88…)
• explore patterns through drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing find out the ages and birth dates of family and whānau see patterns in the numbers in their times tables.

Here's a tip - being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• making lunch or a meal for a party or a hui – make sandwiches in different shapes. Can they cut their sandwich in half? Can they cut the other sandwich in half a different way?
• helping at the supermarket – choose items to weigh – how many apples/bananas weigh a kilo? Look for the best buy between different makes of the same items (eg blocks of cheese) – check on the amount of sugar or salt per serving
• telling the time – o’clock, ½ , ¼ past
• deciding how much money you will need to put into the parking meter and what time you will need to be back before the meter expires
• thinking about how many telephone numbers they can remember – talk about what they do to help them remember the series of numbers
• reading together – help them look for numbers and mathematics ideas
• looking for shapes and numbers in newspapers, magazines, junk mail, art (like carvings and sculpture).

Here's a tip - mathematics is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play card and board games that use guessing and checking
• look at junk mail – which is the best value? Ask your child what they would buy if they had $10/$100/$1,000 to spend
• do complicated jigsaw puzzles
• cook or bake – use measuring cups, spoons (½ and ¼ teaspoon) and scales
• collect boxes – undo and see if you can make them up again or make it into something else
• make paper darts and change the weight so that they fly differently, work out which is the best design
• create a repeating pattern (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns) to fill up a page or decorate a card
• play mathematics "I Spy" – something that is ½ a km away, something that has 5 parts hide something from each other and draw a map or hide several clues – can you follow the map or the clues and find it?
• do skipping ropes/elastics – how long will it take to jump 20 times?

Here's a tip - the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

Millennium trip

On Tuesday we went to the Millennium Centre on the North Shore. It was really interesting, we did water sports and team building. Our water sports were kayaking, snorkeling and water safety.

During water safety we learnt how to get onto boats, the strongest person gets on the boat first so they can lift the next person up. Then both of the people can lift everyone else on.

Kayaking was fun. We had to flip the kayak over and then swim the kayak back to the pool edge. It was kind of scary for some of us, but we all did it. We learnt how to use the paddles. We got shown how to go forward, turn and paddle backward.

Snorkeling was very hard because we didn't have the life jacket to keep us up. It was hard to breathe when the water went into the pipe. When that happens you have to go up to the top of the water and blow the water out. Lots of us hadn't done it before but we all tried.

Team building was outside. We had 3 tasks to do. The first one was getting the hoop to go around us. We all held hands and had to step through the hoop and get it over our heads. It looked really funny. Some times the hoop got stuck.
Our second task was to get from the volcano island to the safe island. We could only use 6 disks. We had to work out how many people to a disk and how to get the end disk to the front. We all fell off and "died" in the lava. Lucky we were only pretending.
The last task was to get a tennis ball go through lots of tube into the bucket. The bucket was a long way away and we had to run to the front of the line when the ball had gone through our piece of pipe. We all had a small piece of pipe. We all worked together and got the ball to the bucket. We had to concentrate really hard.

Here are some pictures. More to come soon.
Bloggers: Lawrence and Jazlyn

Room 14's Treaty

We have now proudly displayed at the front of the room our Class Treaty. We have made a lot of promises on how we want to be in our room this year. We have decorated it with our hand prints and also signed it in good faith.

1st Buddy Class

Hi everyone, our buddies this year is room 10 and 11. Here we are enjoying the afternoon reading under the trees.

Mathematics and Literacy Links

Hi everyone, below are links to some Sunnyhills Literacy and Mathematics information and sites that you may find useful. Thanks.

Literacy

Mathematics

Reading activities

Hi everyone, the first website below is a reading activity site. Please look through and use whichever ones appeal. The second website is great for children with learning needs.

I hope these are beneficial for you. Leanne.

https://www.education.com/activity/third-grade/ela/reading/

Handy Apps for Learning needs

Fill a Bucket

Hi everyone, I introduced a book yesterday called Fill a Bucket. It is about how we all have imaginary buckets that we walk around with. If someone is nice and gives you a compliment, it fills your bucket. If we smile or make someone laugh, we fill their bucket and our own bucket.
We have our "buckets" up on the wall and are starting to fill them. Please talk to your children and get them to explain to you what they will do to fill a bucket not only at school but at home as well.

Nice to meet you all

Hi everyone, it was great to see so many of you last night. I hope my chat was useful and managed to answer your questions. Below is the link to the "sounds" individual letters make. If you click on each letter of the alphabet it will give you an example and the sound.

http://www.multilit.com/help/toolbox/single-sounds-demonstration/


Please find below the notes from last night. I hope you have a great weekend.

Leanne.

2017 Meet the teacher notes

Hi I hope to answer most of your questions in my little spiel now. If I don’t you are more than welcome to ask at the end.

I am in my 11th year of teaching. I have been senior teacher of the senior syndicate for the past 3 years. I have taught years 4 - 8 in my career so far.

I am looking forward to having year 3 and 4 this year.

I have a partner who works with Air New Zealand. We have been together approx 14 years, I can’t remember… and also I forgot anniversaries… he is used to that. I don’t have any children. My family and friends are very important to me. Some Friday’s I rush off at 3.10pm as I drive to Tauranga for the weekend to see my mum and dad.

FOSTER INDEPENDENCE

This one will be hard for some of you. In middle school we are starting to foster independence. Your children are ready to take on jobs and challenges and prove to you and myself that they can do things.

Many children will say to me “my mum forgot to pack it”. Well I will say to them “no you forgot to pack it, it is not mum’s job”. Please don’t “do” things for your children. Yes I know it is faster and easier. I may be wrong but if we do this for your children we are teaching them that mum and / or dad will just do it, so why should I try?

Handy hint, make up a small calendar to put on the fridge and write in the days we do swimming. Look at it the night before and get the children to pack their bag the night before so you are not rushing in the morning. Get children to make their own lunch the night before. They are more likely to eat it if it is something they have made.

They need every day:

Hats

Communication Diary

Swimming gear: (in a seperate bag) - togs, towel, goggles if wanted

Monday

Thursday

CLASSROOM EXPECTATIONS

• Try not to be a school before 8.30am. If children are they go to the senior courtyard, not standing outside it.
• Be at school before the bell - we have to write communications, get ready for the school day
• Enter class at 8.30am.
• Write communications straight away and give to me to sign. No going outside to play unless communications are done by the student
• Straight home at the bell at 3.00pm no playing on the school playground
• Homework -
• SPELLING: I will not be giving out spelling lists every week. Some teachers in middle school might. We have a spelling programme called Switched Onto Spelling. I will be going through sounds of the letters with the children first. There will be a link to these on the blog and here: http://www.multilit.com/help/toolbox/single-sounds-demonstration/ You can practice these with children on a wide range of words at home if you choose to. If words come home in the diary they will be from the essential spelling list that all children need to know.
• MATHEMATICS - Practice basic facts at home. Children need to know what adds up to 10 and subtracts. Place value up to thousands. I will put a list of different websites suitable for children on the blog for you to look at. I will not be photocopying worksheets. If you want worksheets for your children there are many free printables if you search google and you can print at home. Again other teachers may do things differently.
• READING - We expect children to read 10-20 minutes each night. This can be anything. It can be a recipe you are making for dinner. It can be a comic book. It can be instructions on how to play a game. Forcing a child to sit and read a book can be difficult. Read together. I am hoping for comprehension. This means reading the same book for a week and asking questions for your child to answer. Many children “read” - they just know the words. They don’t understand. I want your children to understand what they are reading.

READING/MATHS/WRITING GROUPS

I have a range of readers this year from Red through to age 9-10 readers. Maths stages this year range from Stage 3 through to Stage 6 and writing stages from Level 1 through to level 3.  I group children into ability groups and see them on a rotation.

CLOTHING

Uniforms all look the same. I have told the children I am a teacher not a uniform finder. If all items of the uniform are named then they will make it make to the child. Including shoes.

COMMUNICATION

By email is easier. I am in the my classroom usually at 8.00am every morning. I have meetings every Tuesday and Wednesday at 3.10pm. Otherwise I am free after 3.00pm, Monday, Thursday and Friday. If there is an issue, please make a time to see me first. I am your first call. If I can’t resolve the situation, I will bring in my Team Leader. If he can’t resolve the issue, he will bring in the dean. If they can’t resolve the issue it will go to the Assistant Principal. Please do not go straight to the AP or Principal if you have not seen me first.

Anything from me will go into the Communication Diary. E.G. I need newspaper could anyone help me. Just basic stuff.

Absences please email the office or leave message on the answer phone. Sometimes I could be away on a course or sick myself so I don’t see the email.

Office should be contacted for emergencies only.

TRIP / EVENTS

Swimming Carnival Week 5 - Tuesday 28 February

Millennium Institute coming up in Week  7 - 14 March - Rm 14 and 16 going together.

BYOD

All devices will be locked in cupboards and classrooms locked during morning tea and lunch. They are not on them all day everyday. We use them for certain things like finding information, reading the information we find.

We will still use books, pens and pencils.

I want to take this opportunity to say how excited I am to be here with your children this year.