31.1.20
Dear parents/caregivers,
Kiaora koutou! I look forward
to working with you this year to help your child become an even more
independent, responsible, motivated life-long learner with a growth mindset.
Each week I will send an
email home letting you know what is happening in the Indigo Room over the week.
Your child will also be using a Communication
Diary, that will be kept in a purple
book bag in their school bag. The objective of the diary, is to provide a
link between school, parents, students and whanau to help support your child’s
learning and for your child to use to record any notices, dates, tasks to do or
things they need to bring in to help them with their learning.
Home Learning in the Indigo Room/Room 4
There will be very few school-set
learning tasks, other than reading and talking, that your child will be
expected to complete at home. Any home learning activities done at home will be
activities that may not able to be done at school or are a task that your child
has chosen to complete at home e.g. learning their spelling words, times tables
etc.
Weekly Home Learning
TALKING: Talk to you child about their learning. Research shows that the talk
you have with your child each day around their learning is one of the most
powerful things you can do in furthering learning and in strengthening the
“triangle”, (the learning relationships between school, home and the learner.)
Try asking questions like “Who did you sit with to do your learning
with today?” “Who helped you learn today?” “What was something tricky you did
in math/PE/writing etc.? What did you do to overcome it?” “What questions did
you ask your teacher/what questions did she ask you?” “What was the word of the
day/Challenge of the day?” “What was something funny that happened today?”.
READING: A love of and ability to read are the major keys to success in all
learning. Every day, encourage your child to read for at least 20 minutes. They may read silently, to you, a
sibling, friend, pet, guest or other family member. To get the new students
started and used to being part of a book club, they will have a book sent home
from school each week in term 1. This will be geared to be at a level of
reading lower than they are at, (a “quick read”) that they discuss in a book
club group on Fridays.
After reading the “Friday Bookclub Book”, they can read their own choice
of material for the 20 minutes, (or more of course!). The emphasis this year is
on maintaining reading over several nights, so encourage the reading of chapter
or transition chapter books or non-fiction texts. Reading books on Kindles,
using websites like Tumblebooks or the like, on devices, is perfectly ok. Please talk to your child about what
they are reading e.g. what has happened so far, what they like, or
don’t like, what they think will happen next and why they think that.
To encourage reading mileage
your child may fill in what they have been reading in their Read-Around–NZ reading log, (see chart in back of the Communication Diary) keeping
a track of how many pages they have read, (which is tracked on a NZ map wall
chart in class – pages read equals a distance). As they travel around NZ, they
have small tasks to complete to help them find out more about NZ and to think
more deeply about what they have read. Once completing NZ, they move onto
travelling around the world, then the Solar System and then the Galaxy. There
are small prizes to be gained as they travel on their journeys.
Weekly Home Learning – Can
Do List
(These activities
are all done at school, so don’t have to be done at home as well, unless you or
your child wishes to do so. Your child may choose to bring home these or other
activities they want to complete or practice at home according to their own
motivation or interest levels).
·
The children learn multiplication and
division tables, with the expectation that year 4’s learn the 2x, 5x and 10x, that
the year 5’s will have mastery of the multiplication tables and that Year 6’s
will have mastery of both multiplication and division tables, by the end of the
year. They practice a table at school for the week and get tested on Fridays. This
will start near the end of this term and it would be great if they could
practice their tables at home too.
·
Each week, your child will have their own list of spelling words to learn. They will be
learning these at school using their "tools" based on spelling rules
and how sounds in words can be spelt. In order to help increase your child’s
vocabulary and to support learning these words, they could also learn them at
home in whatever way they or you wish or using the grid of ideas in the front
of their Diary.
·
Each week at school, your child will practice and complete a math certificate. It is a selection of basic
facts and algebra problems that your child will learn to help them become
quicker with basic fact recall and which gradually increases in difficulty as
they work their way through the 20 levels. If they have passed a level, then
they will have a new level certificate to practice on. If not, the problems
they still need to focus on will be highlighted. They may choose to practice
this at home with or without your help and they can complete more than one in a
week, according to how motivated they are. The first round of 20 certificates
is done with no time limit, then in 5 minutes, then in 3 minutes and I’ve even
had some getting onto doing do it in 1 minute!
·
News Presentation is an important part of our
oral language programme, especially in teaching students confidence and skills
in public speaking. The students have a say in the topics that they share on
their allotted day, once a fortnight. They will have time and support in class
to work on this as part of their literacy programme. A description of exactly
what is expected is at the back of the Communication Diary and on the class
blog at www.indigo-ngatimoti.blogspot.com.They can upload their news to the class blog or use their
own Gmail account to create a Google doc or slideshow on which to create and
share their learning with their classmates, with you and with other friends or
family members. Your child may want a little support at home with doing this,
on top of what they are getting at school. It would be great if you could encourage
your child to share their news items with you, before they share it with their
classmates, as practice.
·
Online Activities
have been set for
your child at a level that should provide some challenge. They do these at
school, but of course these can be accessed at home too. Your child has their
own password and login, which is the same for all sites. This will be on the
inside cover of their Communication Diary. The sites we use in the Indigo Room
are SumDog, StudyLadder, CSI Online and Typing Tutor. These sites, as well as
other sites we use all can be accessed from our class blog at www.indigo-ngatimoti.blogspot.com, under Our Favourite Websites on the
right hand side.
If you have any questions
regarding home learning or anything else regarding your child, please write in
the Home/School Diary, come and see me before or after school in the classroom,
contact me on 5268842, send a note with your child, or email me at
laurenemilnes@gmail.com.
Thanks for your support in
advance! I am really looking forward to working together with you and your
child this year to help them in their learning,
Lauren Milnes (Indigo Room/Room
4 class teacher)
