‘Am I making positive connections in the world?’ is the 2010 Learning Theme
Kia Ora Tatou, Greetings to all
Dear Parents
I hope you had a wonderful and exciting time over the holidays with your children. We have a very exciting learning term planned for Term 3.
Topic Programmes for Term 3 “I am a Geographer”
Students this term will be learning about the world around us through a geography lens. They will be looking at how people explore and interact with the world around them. Inclusiveness is the school value this term. To sustain our world, we need to live in inclusive communities.
The Junior School title for the geography topic is “My Maunga” (My Mountain).
Some of the key learning concepts that the Year 1 and 2 students will cover are:
- A geographer studies places
- A geographer studies where people live and how
- Maps show us what places are and help us to find our way around
- Places are important to people
- People are important to places
- We are surrounded by geographical features
The Middle School title for the geography topic is “A Tale of Two Cities”.
Some of the key learning concepts that the Year 3 and 4 students will cover are:
- Maps identify major features of a surrounding area
- People living in two different cities may have different cultures but they have the same needs
- Relationship between land and people – determines settlement, lifestyle choices, clothing
- Building cities changes the landscape
- Recognising that people have the same basic needs wherever they live
- Understanding and comparing our unique use of natural resources, eg water, energy
The Senior School title for the geography topic is “Utopia”.
Some of the key learning concepts that the Year 5 and 6 students will cover are:
- Geography is a discipline that focuses on how people interact with their land
- People over the ages have always explored new lands, whether for necessity or curiosity
- People group together and sometimes in large groups, for necessity or by choice
- Cities are built on different land surfaces
- Being an inclusive community helps us to live in a more harmonious sustainable community
- We all have unique talents that are useful to the world and need to be shared
Some of the Senior classes will be participating in Geocaching where they will be asked to orienteer themselves to a specific location and find a hidden treasure. This will teach them about co-ordinates and further develop their ability to read maps.
Parents for their own interest are welcome to visit the official Geocaching website at http://www.geocaching.com. This is an activity you may take up with your whole family. One of our administration staff, Edwina Halliwell, has travelled all over the world finding treasures. Edwina will be working alongside some of the senior children to find treasure in the Epsom area.
Education Review Office Visit
In the second to last week of Term 2, the Education Review Office visited our school. Their verbal presentation was extremely positive and we are presently waiting for their written report. Once this happens we will send you out the Community Page via the school newsletter.
Parent Consultation Week
Parent Consultation Week is being held in Week 10 of this Term. During this week we will be holding morning and afternoon teas with parents. More information will be sent to you about this week later in the term.
Property Development
Over the last eighteen months, the board and senior staff have worked to look at ways of upgrading our school property. We are presently meeting weekly with our school architects. They have recently provided us with a Master Plan for school property developments. There are three areas in the school that will be redeveloped. The Library area will be redesigned to take into account another extra classroom which we will be needing in Term 4 for our new entrants. The Administration Block will be enlarged to make a more welcoming reception area for our community and finally the Senior Corridor, starting at Room One, will be redeveloped to utilise this area for extra teaching spaces for students. Our current ICT suite will be moving to a withdrawal room, temporarily. We are hoping to house two ICT suites, one in the Senior area of the school, and one in the Middle area of the school.
We also have a leaky building under the Library which will have to be remedied. These property projects will begin during the middle of Term 3 and will take over a year to complete.
DOT Days
The DOT days were extremely successful days where students had the opportunity to develop their talents and have fun. We were very pleased to see our Green Kiwis feature in the Central Leader. The article was titled ‘The Fruit of their Labours’ and we will be putting this article on our website. Thank you to Kay Wight and her Enhancing Potential team for organising these two days and the teachers and various tutors who planned inspirational sessions for the students.
Warmest regards
Jane Cavanagh-Eyre
Principal