Welcome back to Room 2, Term 2, 2017
Dear parents/caregivers,
I hope that you have had a restful Easter break, and that you and your children are feeling well settled into Room 2. I have been home to Christchurch, with Mia, to visit family and have been raving about the great first term we have had in Room 2. I can’t wait to support the children in more amazing learning. This term we have Georgina Monigatti, who will be teaching in Room 2 on Mondays and Tuesdays. The children have settled into a new routine with Georgina and are engaging with the work she is setting for them on these days.
An important feature of this term will be Cross Country and Rippa Rugby. Our aim is to teach the children that physical fitness is important to our overall health, and to develop fitness and skills in order for us to enjoy physical activities. We will focus on teamwork within this.
In maths, we are continuing to develop the children’s number knowledge and strategy. For the most part, this includes number identification and sequence, place value, and basic facts.The children are very enthusiastic about our basic fact ladder programme in the classroom and are setting themselves goals to achieve during this term. The children are learning to explain how they have worked out their math problems and a lot of focus is being put on the different strategies that they are using. Georgina will be teaching how to measure the time followed by probability in statistics for our strand maths.
We have enjoyed learning about writing personal recounts and explanations on bees in Term 1. This term we will continue to develop our skills in these genres and include descriptive writing and narratives. I would like to thank you all for your support in helping your child to learn their weekly spelling words. I know this takes time and commitment, but for many children it is a real source of pride when they study hard and do well in their spelling test on Fridays.
Reading is going well with a majority of the children taking responsibility for their own reading logs and sight word cards. The ongoing reading support at home is evident in the classroom with the children progressing in leaps and bounds.In our teacher reading time we are putting a strong focus on unknown words and meaning of text. Please discuss the books that your children are reading with them and take the time to question them about what they are reading. These skills will help them with their vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.
Our ‘bucket filling’ inquiry is strengthening Room 2 and we see a great team of kind, compassionate, respectful young individuals blossoming. At the end of Term 1 each child created their own papier mache bucket. These are displayed in our classroom and will be used to celebrate all the times that we show these bucket filling qualities.
In Te Reo Maori, Georgina is working on pepeha with the children and teaching daily greetings. We have Mandarin on Tuesdays and I teach Japanese on Fridays. Georgina can speak Italian and would like to include some of this into our term as well. Wow, how lucky to have all these experiences with second languages and culture!
We are looking forward to another exciting term with you all.
Emma-Jayne Tadamasa and Georgina Monigatti