Letter Home

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)