The school has very clear expectations regarding behaviour. Aiming for full engagement in learning, an inclusive collaborative culture and strong home/school partnerships certainly goes a long way to minimising negative behaviours.

Modelling and rewarding pro-social behaviour and encouraging a ‘culture of telling’ is first and foremost.

What we do know, however, that things never go entirely smoothly. We are in the people business and there is always an element of unpredictability! While we always focus on the positive, we also have consequences for negative behaviours. Teachers and your child/ren will be able to explain the ‘colour chart’. Although very rarely utilised, it serves a useful purpose.

It is extremely important to act on negative behaviours quickly. Most incidences occur in the playground, usually out of eyesight or hearing of duty teachers. Please help us by encouraging your child to speak up - then teachers can deal with things at the time. Please don’t wait for a month for things to build up. This isn’t helpful.

It is useful to also be mindful of the use of the term ‘bullying’ and be very clear as to what it is. It has 4 defining characteristics:

• Bullying is deliberate

• Bullying involves a power imbalance

• Bullying has an element of repetition

• Bullying is harmful

In a nutshell, it is not a word to be thrown around lightly!

Developing resilience in our children, supporting them to have the ability to bounce back, to stand up for themselves, to be flexible, to show courage and make good decisions, to deal with things for themselves, to really understand who they are and what they value can never be underestimated.

Ultimately, we have one value = one rule and that is of respect.

Let’s get away from homework being a stressful time. While it can still be a time to practice basic skills, homework, or home learning as we like to call it, needs to be a time for positive sharing of your child’s learning and successes. We also recognise that many children have a very full schedule after school!

Prof. John Hattie, in his extensive research about what has the greatest impact on student achievement says…. “Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, “Is it really making a difference?” If you try and get rid of homework in primary schools many parents judge the quality of the school by the presence of homework. So, don’t get rid of it. Treat the zero as saying, “It’s probably not making much of a difference but let’s improve it”. Certainly I think we get over obsessed with homework. Five to ten minutes has the same effect of one hour to two hours. The worst thing you can do with homework is give kids projects. The best thing you can do is to reinforce something you’ve already learnt.”

There are many studies that show a negative impact of ‘traditional homework’ like worksheets, on student learning and self esteem in primary aged children.

OK, so what are the expectations?

Home learning  is about practicing basic skills, but most importantly it is a time for positive sharing of the learning your child is involved in.

What happens in the Junior area?

Home Readers

This will look different for individual children. Children will bring a reader, article or other relevant text each day. They may read the same book over a couple of days, or revisit a text they have already read. This is to either encourage fluency, build expression, identify high-frequency words, or to develop comprehension skills. Please help your child to be ready for reading by ensuring their book bag is at school each day.

Spelling

Tautoru: Each child in Tautoru has a spelling notebook. This contains high frequency words or other relevant words for your child to practise at home and at school. Your child will receive ten new spelling words every two weeks. At times, these words may come from the Essential Words list or your child’s writing. There may also be two additional red words. These will often be related to our inquiry learning that is happening in the class. Please note red words are discussion words only. Your child will not be expected to spell these.

The words that your child has got correct in their fortnightly spelling test will be highlighted in green. The words that they need to continue to practise will be highlighted in pink.

You can support your child’s spelling at home by:

• encouraging them to write these words on a whiteboard, chalkboard, in the sand, with magnetic letters, etc.

• write them on card and play games with them.

• look for them in their reading.

• and, most importantly, encourage them to use them in their written work.

Autahi: Children in Autahi have a Word Rocket. This is a list of 5 new words each week for your child to practise reading. These high-frequency words are taken from the readers they are reading that week. The focus is on students being able to instantly recognise the words, not to have to spell them. These words are checked each Friday. The words that your child has got correct will be highlighted in green. The words that they need to continue to practise will be highlighted in pink.

You can support your child’s spelling at home by:

• encouraging them to make these words on a whiteboard, chalkboard, in the sand, with magnetic letters, etc.

• write them on card and play games with them.

• look for them in their reading.

A little bit more background on developing spelling knowledge and skills

As children begin to acquire a store of automatically recognised words, simple spelling activities and short word lists are introduced. These are the words that they are likely to use often. These will include:

• High Frequency Words
• Words that have a similar pattern
• Words from the students' writing that they can almost spell
• Words that are of high interest to the students

From known to unknown

Opportunities to consolidate learning by choosing texts or activities that build on what they know is important. Children can draw upon their own existing knowledge to help them with unknown words, eg. "mall". If the child knows how to spell the word "all" they can work out how to spell the word mall due to their existing knowledge of both the high frequency word and their letter-sound knowledge.

Teaching and learning sequences such as these shows children how much they already know about sounds, letters, and words and how they can draw on this knowledge in their independent writing.

(From Teaching Writing in Years 1-3 - Building a Strong Foundation, Pages 13-14 2012, Ministry of Education)

Maths

Each child will have a Basic Facts booklet. These are basic facts that you can work through with your child. These are checked in on twice a term by teachers. The focus is on children being able to instantly recall these; not to have to work them out with fingers or materials.

Making Links to our Inquiry and Learning at School

We encourage parents to connect and follow the class blogs. You can do this by: @@@

This is a great conversation point at home. We would love to have you and your child comment on their learning from home.

What happens in the Senior School

In the senior school the expectations of home learning is similar to the junior school, however, the emphasis begins to change as the children become more independent.

We strongly encourage the discussion, reflection and questioning at home around our Inquiry. It is essential to build and reinforce the home/school partnership to ensure children make connections with what they learn at school to the wider world. The discussion you have with your child around the ideas and concepts we are investigating is the richest homework possible. Please check out our blog to find out what we are doing so that you can keep up to date: http://matarikiwbs.blogspot.co.nz/

Most of our students are connected on Google Apps and continue to work at home independently on things which they are interested in or passionate about. These children are doing homework because they want to keep their head in something that they are interested in.

Some children require further support. The base group teacher will discuss how best to support your child at Data Meetings.

We recommend the following websites for supporting the learning of basic skills.

Basic Facts

It is essential that Year 4 students become fluent with the recall and accuracy of basic facts. They must know them off by heart and, in order to do so, need to learn them by rote at home.

Multiplication Grid 

(Can be used to support the learning of Multiplication and Division facts.) http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/factsheet/ma13tabl-e3-f-times-tables-grid

Maths Links

Number Knowledge and Strategies.

http://mathzlinks.wikispaces.com/ This site has games related to each strategy and number stage.

www.sumdog.com Each child has their own login.

http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/math_games.html

http://nzmaths.co.nz/families A specific site on the NZ maths curriculum designed for home learning.

Spelling

Essential Word List

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/word-play/hig-pig-word-game/

Reading  

All students need to be reading at home. This could be reading independently or might involve sharing a book with a sibling or parent. This is still a rich literary experience and can be nice time together. Some students will be bringing a reader home from school regularly.

It is important to keep up with current affairs, children could use the Kiwi Kids site for their home reading: http://www.kiwikidsnews.co.nz/

Some children may be keen to improve their keyboard skills.

• Typing: Keyboarding Practice