Newsletter Week 4 Term 1
Sawyers Bay School 24th February 2022
PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
Kia ora Whanau,
This week we get to welcome Kai to Papatuanuku. Its great to have you at school, Kai!
Thank you once again to our families who were able to join us for Parent/Child/Teacher Discussions. These were invaluable and a nice chance to catch up. We did have an unusually high number of families not turning up to their appointments. While we understand that things can pop up, please do let us know if you are not able to attend these meetings and we will make other arrangements. Our teachers have families too and do not want to be left here in the evenings waiting without knowing, thanks for your understanding.
It seems that we can no longer avoid the inevitability of having Omicron within our community. There will be times over the next while where families might find themselves in the position of either being positive for COVID, or a close contact. While we have already published information on what to do in this case, the rules and goals posts are constantly changing on us. My best suggestion is to get in touch and we can talk through all situations. We have plans in place for this eventuality, and can help your child from home. Please do be patient with our teachers if you have been put into isolation.
While we will continue to work extremely hard to provide online learning opportunities, teachers will also have full teaching loads at school, as well as running online programmes. You might find that responses, marking and interaction will not be as frequent as we would like, but our teachers are dedicated to offering as much support as we possibly can, with the time that we do have.
Ka mihi nui,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Term 1 Swimming - Monday 7th March - Friday 18th March
- Otago Anniversary Day - Monday 21st March
- Good Friday - Friday 15th April
Papatūānuku
Kia ora families! This week we welcome Kai Swete into Papatūānuku!
We ended last week with a Fun Friday all about the sound “fffff”. Felix the Frog entered the classroom, along with a kete filled with items that we identified, all started with the sound “f”. We learned a song about Felix the Frog and drew frogs whilst following a drawing tutorial. Have you been finding our phonics songs on Spotify? They’re all there under a folder called Milo Monkey.
This week we thoroughly enjoyed our Kelly Sports session, continuing to learn about teamwork. We worked with a buddy to carry a soft ball between two hockey sticks, in a game of Reverse Rob the Nest! We learned that communication is a key to good team work. In learning more about each other, we have created fantastic drawings of our families. These are up on the individual Seesaw pages if you’d like to view your child’s art. We are learning to introduce our family members in English and Te Reo. While the sun was out this week, we took the opportunity to spend some time at our school garden boxes. We planted flowering plants to encourage the bees and the butterflies. We’ve just got to remember to water them on days it doesn’t rain. We look forward to watching them flourish.
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
This week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi we have been working on measurement. We have been comparing and ordering objects. We decided it would be a good idea to compare and order our height from the tallest to the shortest. The object of doing this was to compare our heights and order ourselves without engaging in any talk, it was a little bit tricky but we made it. We have also finished our Pephas and published them onto our Welcome to our class wall. Check out our photo.
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
This week has been another busy week in Tāwhirimātea. We have been busy writing Who am I? stories. We wrote clues about ourselves (without giving too much away). These will be published and displayed so we can read them all and see if we can work out who the stories belong to. On Friday, we will read these aloud to you on Seesaw and you can see if you can work out which clues belong to your child.
Team work has been the focus of our Physical Education programme this term. Below you can see some pictures/videos of us in action at Kelly Sport on Tuesday. We started working individually to try and get all of the balls out of our team's nest, and then we had to work in pairs to move the balls - this was much trickier and required us to use good communication, patience and cooperative skills.
In maths, we are learning to quickly recall basic facts to 10. We have been talking about what the = sign means and looking at how it doesn't always have to be placed at the end of a sum e.g. 8+2=10, 10=8+2, 8+2=2+8
We are currently creating visual pepeha. A small homework sheet will be coming home this week -Can you help us to write down the mountain and the river that are most important to us, the names of members in our families and the place where we were born so we can include these on our pepeha?
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora from Ranginui
It has been wonderful to meet you through our school’s parent teacher meetings. It has been lovely to learn more about your child and how best to support your child's growth and development. Please keep in touch.
We have shown our love for writing over the past few weeks and today we had a wonderful surprise. We had written a retell of a favourite book called ‘Herbert, The Brave Sea Dog.’’ Some children were chosen to read their writing to Mr Swete, who surprised us with a painting based on the book. The author Robyn Belton visited Sawyers Bay School in 2012 and while she was there she spoke to the children and drew the picture, which still hangs proudly in Mr Swetes office. (I wonder how many children and parents remember that event)
We have been learning how to play maths activities this week. They are all based on addition. First to 100 seems to be the hit! Along with four in a row and roll and make. These activities support our learning of number problems and also how to take turns, communication, and fair play.
Our reading programme routines are well established now and I am very impressed with how many children quickly settle to the task in hand. Well done Ranginui you have shown perseverance and self management.
We are great artists and this week we have begun a collage showing a self portrait. (if you have any magazines or newspapers please send them along)
Jewellery and toys are not to be at school please as we have already had some upset children who have lost or misplaced items.
Ka Kite
Report by Mrs Ruzsa
Hinemoana
It has been an amazing week in Hinemoana with the children settled into routine and applying themselves in their learning.
Our Reuben Paterson artworks are coming to fruition and once they are all painted, we are all looking forward to adding the finishing glitter touch! (watch this space next week for some photos).
In Writing, we have explored nouns, adjectives and verbs and are beginning to create some beautifully descriptive moments in time. We went on a ‘Nature Walk’ and used our five senses to brainstorm everything we could see, feel, hear, smell and ‘taste’.
We also had a very fun Kelly Sports session this week where we continued to focus on collaboration and communication. We played a game where we had to use hockey sticks like giant chopsticks. It was great to see so many children in Hinemoana working together and helping one another.
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
It has been quite fun this week introducing a new Oral Language activity in Tane Mahuta. This activity is called “Chit-Chat Cards” and for this, we have a bit of a challenge! The kids are mixed into random pairings and draw cards from a pack that have random starters and topics on them. They then have one minute to explain their point of view on this starter/topic to their buddy and their buddy then has to share back. Then there is a little class competition where a topic is chosen to be the ‘challenge’ topic. The groups that have that specific topic have to battle it out to convince the rest of the class that their partner’s point of view is the most interesting! The rest of the class then anonymously votes on who they think had the most interesting points about the chosen topic. So far this week - we have had challenge winners, Levi and Anja with the topic of “by the end of today, I want to achieve”; Donnie and Liam with “my worst first day experience at school” and finally; Jorjah and Alice with “If I got given $50 right now, would I spend it or save it…? And, if you choose to spend it, what would you spend it on?”. These have been fun topics to share about and helped us to build confidence skills when talking to each other and sharing to the class. We’re looking forward to seeing who the next winning group will be!
Report by Miss Tenci
Sports News
This Week's results:
Touch Rugby
SBS Awesome 6 - 2 W
Community Notices
Contact Us
Email: office@sawyersbay.school.nz
Website: https://sawyersbay.school.nz/
Location: Sawyers Bay School 99 Stevenson Ave, Sawyers Bay, Dunedin 9023, New Zealand
Phone: 03 472 8981