Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 7

It has been another action-packed week in team Kōwhai, as detailed below!

Reminders:  

• Matariki whānau evening next Wednesday, 22nd June at school - please come and enjoy crafts and other Matariki learning from 5-6pm. There will be a short performance by the Kōwhai Kapa Haka Group at around 6:20pm, followed by an optional Hangi. Hangi food can be ordered from the PTA. If your child is in the Kōwhai Kapa Haka group and they are coming to perform, could you please make sure they are in Pūkaki by 6pm in order to get ready for the performance.
• Learning Conferences - to be held in the last week of term, on Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th June. Please note school finishes at 2pm both days. If you haven't already, please book online.

Cross Country 

Thank you to all those parents and whānau who attended and supported our Cross Country event on Tuesday. We were delighted to have families back enjoying a beautiful sunny afternoon. Congratulations to all participants. We were so proud of the way you embraced the challenge of completing the course!

The top 6 placed children for each year (top 6 boys and top 6 girls) will be invited to run in the Cross Country Challenge at Hillview on Tuesday 5th July. There will be more information on this to follow.

Structured Literacy in the Kōwhai Hub

Structured Literacy happens from 11-12.40 in our hub, and includes the following:

Oral Language 

Oral language features throughout the sessions, with lots of shared discussion, peer discussion, teacher-led groups, games and play reading on occasion.

Reading

• Phonics warm-up (using the Heggerty Phonics Programme) 
• Speed sounds: flash card reading and/or writing of key spelling patterns and sounds
• Small group reading with the teacher (using the Little Learners Love Literacy range), which includes dictated words and sentences to practise spelling patterns
• Follow-up tasks focused on specific spelling patterns: games, worksheets, sentence work
• Dragon word spelling 
• Heart word spelling 
• 'Must do' and 'can do' tasks, such as reading, free writing, wordfinds, targeted work sheets, word challenges, cartoon drawing, Chromebook or iPad literacy games and more

Writing

We focus on different genres or text types for a few weeks at a time. We have just completed a focus on descriptive writing, and were blown away by the student's progress with using adjectives, verbs, similes, metaphors! We are now moving into narrative writing, and some groups are starting this with fractured fairy tales (or fairy tales which are mixed up or slightly twisted from the original!). Each writing session includes some or all of: 

• Teacher modelling or shared writing (teacher and students working together to write a text) 
• Reading good examples of a genre or text 
• Planning writing using varied templates or strategies (e.g. a mindmap, picture drawing etc)
• Independent writing and editing time 
• Teacher conferencing and feedback to students 
• Small groups working with the teacher on specific elements of writing 
• Publishing 
• ICT research 
• Handwriting 
• Spelling or grammar tasks

Kete Awards: Week 6 (last week)

Discovery Fun!