We have had an awesome five days at Te Rōhutu Whio and have loved greeting you and your tamariki children at the gate. I have enjoyed visiting the learning spaces where the focus has been on Whanaungatanga Building Relationships. We have tamariki from 20 different countries and from 49 different pre-schools and schools so it is lovely to see the new friendships being made.

We are so very sad that we were unable to invite you to our mihi whakatau and we can’t wait to welcome you in and have a massive celebration once the Covid traffic lights go out.

You are all so awesome at dropping off and picking up your children in our red light system and we cannot thank you enough for your help with this. It’s fantastic to see every child wearing their safety vest and bringing their hats - we know how tricky it is as parents to get everything organised at the beginning of the term so well done!

At Te Rōhutu Whio we think that it is important for you to see what your tamariki are up to here so we use the Seesaw App for this purpose. If you have not joined or are finding it tricky, please email Cindy at cindyn@terohutuwhio.school.nz.

This wiki Hangarau Technology starts for our Years 5-8 ākonga students and they will get to create their own projects and use our state of the art equipment in our tech hub. We also start Kapa Haka!

If you have not received your e-learning email which was sent through our Student Management System, Hero, please email Cindy at cindyn@terohutuwhio.school.nz.

Kia pai te wiki. Have a lovely week,

Hākui Kate

It was so exciting to welcome our first ākonga students from our whānau partner schools to Hangarau Technology last week. We're very proud of our facility and look forward to sharing it with the tamariki of our district.

A special thanks to the Rolleston Men's Shed who handcrafted our woodworking tables for the hard materials room. They're a fantastic addition to our hub and we're thrilled with how they turned out. Ngā mihi nui to the team who spent so many hours on them for us!

We love seeing tamariki choosing to engage so deeply in their learning. From next week, all children will have four guided literacy and mathematics sessions each week as well as exploring other subjects, passions and concepts. There are many benefits to mixed age groups. In this picture some of our Te Rōhutu Whio tamariki are being extended by learning algebra with one of our Year 8 ākonga students. Teachers have discussed what is going to be happening in the learning and Year 5, 6 and 7 tamariki have also been extended in their learning by joining in. While our Year 8 ākonga is being taught at his level, younger learners are being stretched by exposure to more advanced concepts and different ways of doing things. After a guided session of teaching, tamariki are encouraged to share their learning with others. This reinforces concepts and ensures that they are remembered so that they can be used in real world situations. Older learners are extended through their personalised ako learning plans and may learn at a more advanced level along with having concepts they may have missed reinforced where developmentally appropriate. Ākonga all benefit from the strengths and ideas of others.

Our teachers have high expectations and use flexible forms of grouping. Sometimes they’ll group ākonga by age, including socially. Sometimes they will have mixed ability grouping. Sometimes they’ll pair learners with someone who is of similar ability, sometimes with someone who is not at the same achievement level, and sometimes they’ll have whole class learning.

The thinking behind flexible grouping is that all ākonga should be given high level learning opportunities that empower them to be successful. Student engagement in stimulating activities is critical for motivation, achievement, and progress.

A key characteristic of flexible grouping is that ākonga are offered choices in activities. While there will be levels in the activities on offer they won’t be obvious to the tamariki. For example, in a reading programme the teacher might create a theme box based on “outer space” and in that theme box they would place lots of books about planets, space travel, moons, and stars. Some books would be easier to read than others to cater for a range of different reading levels.

The difference in this approach is that ākonga choose what they want to read. The teacher isn’t insisting that learners read something only at their level. Teachers get alongside ākonga to help them choose texts which they enjoy as well as texts that extend them in their learning. Ākonga don’t typically choose things that are too hard because they get frustrated and they don’t choose things that are too easy because they get bored. They often choose texts or activities that offer challenge and extension. This is where we see rapid growth.

2022 Registration form

Y5-8 please complete registrations by 15th March, Grading Day 30th April.

Y1-4 registrations due 25th March, play begins early Term 2.

See the RNC Website for more information.

Team Selection Dates: