Our Term’s Living and Learning Focus is
CHANGE WHAKAUMU
Our School Values
Tina Justice, Pono Truth, Aroha Compassion, Manaakitanga Hospitality and Tapu Respect for the Environment
lived out in our Motto
Courtesy Care Co-operation Courage
Learning to Learn at St Joseph’s #L2L
Key Competencies*
Capabilities for living and lifelong learning
The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies: • thinking • using language, symbols, and texts • managing self • relating to others • participating and contributing.
St Joseph’s Catholic School Takapuna Learning Model
TO KNOW What Do I Know? What Do I Need to Know?
TO DO What Do I Need To Do? How Do I Do This?
TO USE How will I Use What I Am Learning? What Other Ways Can I Use It?
FAREWELL TO SARAH CATTELL WHO STARTS HER TEACHING ROLE AT TAKAPUNA NORMAL INTERMEDIATE NEXT WEEK
We wish Sarah all the best for the next adventure in her teaching career.
Key Competencies*
Using language, symbols, and texts
Is about the different ways to communicate and understand information, experiences and ideas.
This includes the foundation skills of literacy and numeracy, but is much more. It’s about how we make meaning of things, based on what we already know, or think we know, and our experiences and beliefs.
There are many examples of this key competency in action at our school, such as
- maths – where numbers and symbols communicate ideas
- dance, drama and kapa haka – where your child is learning about movement as a language, or way of communicating
- science – where your child is learning how to think, read and write in scientific language, investigating, gathering evidence, drawing conclusions and justifying explanations
Some different kinds of learning times with children in Kea team.
Managing self
This means being self-motivated, having a can-do attitude and understanding yourself as a learner.
Being good at managing self means your child will be more persistent and resilient, and more likely to be a successful learner.
Your child will get better at managing self as they develop a good understanding about how they learn.
Examples of managing self are:
- working to complete an activity or project by a deadline, and to a certain standard
- setting a challenging goal with help from the teacher, and then working towards it independently
- being willing to take learning risks, try new things, make mistakes, learn from them, and try again
- your child understanding how their ideas and skills are changing over time and why they think, act and respond in the way they do
- understanding that it’s okay to make mistakes – they are an essential and important part of learning – so your child doesn’t give up when school becomes difficult
- understanding that sometimes there is no one “right” answer, and that you have to make decisions even when you don’t have perfect information (you then need to be aware of how those decisions are working out and be willing and able to change tack as you gain information).
from parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school)
The Building Programme
Our school name is finally up on the new building!
Just like the children in the car asking “Are we there yet?” we are all asking the same question!
Well, we are nearly there!
The bitumen is in place in front of the classrooms.
One of the front courts should be back ready for use, anytime soon, and the basketball and netball posts are where they should be.
The blue panels up the sides of the stairways are also in place.
Rooms 7 & 8 will be demolished in the holidays. Heaters, Lights, ActivBoards, Data Projectors, outside seating and any other useful items will be salvaged for other use, by the school, before demolition. Once they are demolished, the area will be cleared and we will be inviting a small group of people to get involved in looking at how we can design this new play area.
We will also be looking at re-doing playground markings and generally getting everything back into working order, as soon as the site is handed over to us.
Congratulations to Jo Sargisson, who had a wonderful job, accompanying the Mascot at one of the matches in the Under 20’s Football World Cup !
Thank you to all parents who supported their children’s learning by coming along to the Parent /Teacher Conferences. It makes for a great recipe when children know that the parents and teachers are on the same page……working hard for and wanting the children to do as well as possible in their learning and behaviour!
Debbie Pratt, Alice Simmers, Ingrid Young, Annette Woodhead and I are representing the school at the Catholic Education Convention in Wellington from 10-12 June.
Remember that the Disco is on next Tuesday night!
Ka kite ano! God bless! Phil