Friday, July 29, 2016

First Discovery Time of Term 3

This term at school our life skill is "Thinking" and our  value is "Learning"... so with that in mind our focus for Discovery Time this week was to "Think about new ways of doing things".
It was a difficult thing to actually see happening, but for the children, knowing that they have choices in how they approach a task, is knowledge worth having.



Learning about Volume

This week in maths we have been looking at how to measure the inside of a container and how to compare which one is bigger or smaller than another.
We have discovered that if you pour the contents of one container into another you can see if it holds more or less.


Sunday, July 17, 2016

Celebrating Cultures

Our 'Celebration of Learning' morning on Tuesday the 5th of July was very successful. A special thanks goes to our parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles who came along to see what we had been learning about during term 2.
Each class presented the activities or displays they had been involved in and the children were able to talk about the many different cultures they had discovered. There was even some traditional costumes and a variety of food to try.



Monday, July 4, 2016

Celebration of Learning

To show our learning about other cultures around the world... Hope School are having a celebration session with our school community tomorrow morning. (9:15am) All classes are ready to share what they have been doing and what they have learnt.
In Room 3 we have put a video clip together which shows some of our learning. The children will be happy to show you this and other examples of their new found knowledge.

 Of course if you can't get into school the video is below...






Sunday, July 3, 2016

Life Skills at Hope School

Have you heard about The Key Competencies??

The Key Competencies are a big part of our NZ Teaching Curriculum. They are the knowledge, attitudes, and values that children need, in order to live, learn, work and contribute as active members of their community.

At Hope School we use the term "Life Skills" instead of Key Competencies.  Because basically they are the skills you need to get through life.
There are five Competencies:
  • Thinking
  • Relating to Others
  • Using language Symbols and Text
  • Managing Self
  • Participating and Contributing
At school we usually focus specifically on one of these Life Skills each term.
This term we have been developing our understanding of Relating to Others.
Below are a couple of web site links you might like to look at. It may help you to understand the importance of these Life Skills.

TKI the online knowledge basket - Min of Ed

Parents Portal, Ministry of Education - Key Competencies

At Hope School we believe these Life Skills are just as important as reading writing and maths. In fact if you can ensure children are competent and confident users of these Life Skills they generally concentrate more, think harder and find learning more enjoyable in other areas of the curriculum. So we believe these skills are worth spending quality time on. We encourage and model these skills daily in our classrooms.

This term the Room 3 children have been working on a series of video clips showing what Relating to Others looks like when you are 5 or 6 years old at Hope School. Of course there are many components to Relating to Others. Take a look at our video and you will see some of them.






Friday, July 1, 2016

Discovery Time Week 9

Discovery Time this week was all about accepting other peoples ideas....
Sometimes other people don't want to do the things you do, or do it the same way as you do. So we need to learn how to deal with that and accept that everyone can have their own ideas. It's ok not to agree with your friends, if you don't want to do something they do. So long as you can explain this to them in a nice way. Often you can work together and sort out a way of including both your ideas.

This week we had the-ever-popular Lego, Construction with boxes (no photo), Making snowflakes, and Marble tracks outside.