Experiencing Marine Reserves

We are looking forward to our visit to Reotahi Marine Reserve on Wednesday 28 February.
All children should have brought a letter detailing our visit, along with a permission slip, that now needs to be returned to school.

Jordan, from the EMR programme visited us on Tuesday and took a session with the children in the classroom, followed by one in the pool, teaching them how to correctly use their snorkels and flippers. The children all enjoyed the experience.

Introducing the First Learner Quality : Resilience

Along with our work on "The Learning Pit", "Key Competencies" and the Hurupaki School Values, we are now introducing the "Learner Qualities". These are the capabilities that will help the children to cope when faced with situations of challenge in their learning, or other areas of their lives.

Pod 2 discussed this and have made a Y-Chart on our classroom wall, of what showing resilience looks, sounds and feels like.

We wrote some memoirs of times when we used resilience, and shared some of them at our first assembly of the year. We also had a team who presented a great skit demonstrating different ways in which people have showed resilience in difficult situations.

Devron, James and Aylee sharing their experiences of resilience.

Drama skit about resilience.

Look out for some of our stories featuring resilience.

Our Learning Environment:

We have been establishing expectations for our learning environment. We discussed the different areas that are required for working and decided on the behaviour that is expected for each area.

The class first brainstormed, then voted on the names for the areas.

Some of suggestions were very creative!

Our areas are:

The Station: we are all on different learning journeys and the station is a stopping off point where we gain directions for the next part of our journey.

The Whanau Space: Where we complete the attendance register, share ideas and have workshop sessions for different groups.

Greenwater Hut: where people who want a quiet space may go to work.

Buddy Bach A space for buddies to work, giving peer feedback, buddy reading, discussing work together.

                                                     Green Water  Hut

                                           Collaborating in the Whanau Space

Welcome to Pod 2 2018

Welcome to Pod 2    2018

We are all ready and excited! We're looking forward to a great year ahead, and seeing our year 5 and 6 students becoming even more skilled at driving their own learning and becoming true examples of reflective and self-managing individuals..

Mr Nicholas has been busy organising our new environment and we're looking forward to input from the students as to how the different learning areas can be best utilised for a range of learning activities. Giving the students greater autonomy and responsibility for decisions affecting their learning and relationships is one of our big goals for the year.