End Of Year

Wow! The year seems to have flown by but when we have both looked at the progress and achievement of the children we have seen huge growth and learning. We are sure you have too.

Many thanks for your support at-home and helping with the classroom programmes. We have truly appreciated working alongside you all - as we say at Banks Avenue, 'Together is better!'

We hope you all have a wonderful festive season and enjoy some time escaping from the routines of the school week.

Swimming

From Monday 13 November until Friday 24 November we will be swimming every day.

You have, of course, received notification of what your child needs to bring to school each day.
This weekend will be a good chance for all the members of The Landing to practise getting out of their clothes, sorting the clothing and then dressing themselves. :-)

Thank you to the parents who are able to come along and support us. This help with getting all the children sorted is much appreciated.

Milk in The Landing

We have started our Fonterra Milk in Schools and the children have been enjoying some refreshing cold milk after lunch.

Each day the children can choose whether they want to have a carton and they like drinking it dry and folding it flat.

Diwali

This is the time of year for the Hindu festival of lights, called Diwali.
We read a great story about Diwali ... and then Maryam shared her beautiful dress with us.
Look at her dancing to some music!

What's Growing On??

Welcome back to Term 4 and beautiful spring weather, we hope!
We have a fun, busy and action packed term planned. Keep an eye out for notices about events, notices, emails, newsletter, school website, tweets and blog!

Our science topic for this term is "Growing". We will be growing lots of things, in the classroom and in The Landing garden.

We have tomatoes, beans, lettuces, Lebanese cumcumbers and butternut pumpkins all ready to plant.

We have also planted out lots of little pottles from the New World "My Little Garden" promotion. They donated many to the school, at the time they presented us with our Leafcutter bees and bumble bees.

Keeping Ourselves Safe

We continue to work on our Keeping Ourselves Safe programme.
Our latest discussion was about people who can help in our community.
Our learners created a spiderweb thinking map to show all the people they can trust.
Great thinking The Landing children!

The Grand Performance

We loved having the CSO working with us.
The big performance at SBHS was a huge success and the children in The Landing all did a fabulous job, both in terms of striving for excellence in their performance and by showing respect in their behaviour.

Christchurch Symphony Orchestra

This week we have been extremely fortunate to have the CSO (Christchurch Symphony Orchestra) working with our whole school.
We started on Monday morning with a fabulous first session, where they taught us about some of the instruments in an orchestra and talked about the CSO.
Each class has also been working on an individual performance piece, guided by the expertise of some orchestra members.
And the whole school has been practising for a massed item. You have probably heard us singing it at home - as it is a fun and catchy tune!!
We are really looking forward to the BIG performance on Friday 8 September.
Look out for the notice about this - as family members are welcome to come and see us all perform.

Growth Mindset

At Discovery Time we practise some important skills and strategies.
We have been learning about using a growth mindset - in which we learn that learning that is hard is okay as it means we are learning and our brain will get stronger.
We have also been learning how to work together - using our HEART values such as respect and aroha.
Here are three wonderful learners who persevered and worked together to solve some of the really tricky puzzles.
Good learning!!

PTA Calendar Art

Look at our great pictures.
We created these using our paper construction skills.
They reflect an important thread of our learning this year - our music!! (We love listening to music during the day to help us learn and self-regulate).

Hope you are able to purchase a calendar or two when the orders come out.

Stay tuned for the order form - there are calendars and other stationery items (all of which make great gifts).

You can view your child's special art work in the classroom during Week 6.

Paper Construction

In The Landing we have regular art lessons in which we learn specific skills and techniques - as well as having fun creating our own unique art works!

This term we are focusing on paper construction and we are learning how to use paper to make our art.

We have been learning how to manipulate paper by ripping, folding, cutting, curling, bending, making tabs and scoring.

Here are some of our first attempts ... stay tuned to the art works we create using these skills!!

Maths

Most of our time during our maths learning is spent working with numbers.
We also ensure that we learn about other areas in maths - such as shape, measurement, position and statistics.
For the first part of this term we have been learning about length.

We are learning how to;
Compare and order lengths
Compare the length of two different lengths
Use the correct language when talking about length, e.g., long, short, longer, shorter, longest, shortest, tall, taller, tallest, the same as ...).

We had fun drawing our faces and then measuring to see how tall everyone in the room was!!

Learning Conversations

It was lovely to see you at the Learning Conversations this week and last week.
What a wonderful opportunity for you, us and the children to talk about their learning and set a goal.
(As always, please don't hesitate to see either Helen or Suzanne if you have any questions).

Welcome Back

We are all pleased to be back in The Landing where it is cosy and warm each morning.

This term will be busy as we doing our Keeping Ourselves Safe programme and lots of children are participating in Healthy Heroes.

The children have been talking about who lives in their house and what their house looks like. They have also been trying to remember the number on their letter box and the name of their street - all part of keeping safe if they ever get lost.

Busy Mornings

At the start of each day, each Home Room (Rooms 9 and 10) in The Landing starts with some really valuable teaching and learning.
This includes; settling the children for the day, greetings (in different languages) maths and literacy skills using the calendar and timetable, calling the roll and the news board.
The news board is a really important way to teach about the world around us, while also teaching and reinforcing vital reading and writing skills.
We are always amazed at the amount of learning that goes on during those first 10 to 15 minutes at school!!
This makes it really important that your child is on time for the school day. Not only so they can settle into their learning day, but also so that they can fully participate in this important part of the programme.
If you are unavoidably late, we ask that your child comes in as quietly as possible to minimise distractions for other young learners.

Here is LingLing doing some learning at news board time!

Simple Machines

Wow! We have had a fabulous time learning all about Simple Machines.
We have done LOTS of learning and taken part in experiments - both during our Inquiry Learning time and our Discovery Time.

Matariki Evening

Thank you to all the people who came to our Matariki Evening in The Landing.
Wow! Lots of children and their whānau came to enjoy some kai, look at the learning we had been doing about Matariki and enjoy some waiata.

A Hoop Around the World

Ayla talked about this special hoop this morning in class.

It has come all the way from England and it is on a journey around the world.
Ayla's family will send it on after they have written their special message on it.

Here is a photo of Ayla with the hoop in our school playground.

It was in Lincoln England on 15 May 2017, and here is a photo of it at Banks Avenue School in Christchurch, New Zealand on 9 June 2017.  Since we are sure it is a bit more chilly this morning in Christchurch, New Zealand than it is at the moment in England we have shown the frost on our school playground!!

Bon voyage hoop!

Print Making

Autumn was a wonderful source of motivation for the beginning of our print making unit for art.
We are learning how to make create prints using different media - and the autumn leaves made a perfect print block.
We painted the leaves and pressed them onto paper using a printing roller.
The work we did looked so good it got put on display in one of the public areas of the school.

Mums and Maths

We had an enjoyable Mums and Maths session on Friday 19 May.
Lots of games were played and it was lovely to see the children showing such great HEART values.
Big thanks to the mums who were able to come and help.

What a great tower!!!

Science Learning in The Landing

We have begun our inquiry about Simple Machines.
We are learning all about force and the six types of simple machines.
 Stay tuned for us sharing more of our learning!
In the meantime, here is a photo of us sorting a range of simple machines into different categories.

I wonder if this is a lever or a screw? An inclined plane or wheel and axle? A wedge or a pulley?
Simple machines are all around us and they are really interesting!

HEART in The Landing

We all enjoy learning about how we can show our HEART values during the day.
We made some fabulous capital Hs with our buddy class and have displayed them on the wall in Room 10.

This term we are focusing on Aroha and Hauora.
We will be thinking about using kind words and kind actions with each other.

Yay! It's Autumn!

Welcome back to Term 2.
We hope you have all had a wonderful holiday.

We have been enjoying the lovely sunny autumn weather and have been wandering around the school collecting crunchy leaves from our deciduous trees.
We are going to use these in our art lessons, as well as sorting and classifying them.

Keep looking on our blog to see the latest news and happenings from The Landing.

Cross Country Running

Our cross country event is coming up for the juniors and we have busy practising running around the field. Wow, what a great way to develop our value of hauora!
The event itself is on Monday 10 April at 11.00am and you are welcome to come along and support your child. There has been a notice come home, or you can check out the details on website.

Lāvalava

This week we read the book "Lāvalava" together.

We enjoyed sharing the story - and were especially lucky when Nofoaga and Adoration brought in lāvalavas from home to show us. They were beautiful!

We looked at lots of pictures of lāvalavas and listened to some music from Samoa.

Nofoaga wore her lāvalava and showed us her wonderful dancing.
It was a very special time.

Look at the picture of Nofoaga in her lāvalava, and the video clip of her dancing so gracefully.

Buddy Time

Each Thursday we join with our older buddies in Dudley to share learning activities and build relationships across the school. Activities can include; reading to each other, physical activity, designing and making. This helps build a tuakana-teina relationship, with tuakana referring to the older buddy and teina referring to the younger buddy.

"Ma te tuakana ka totika te teina, ma te teina ka totika te tuakana”

“From the older sibling the younger one learns the right way to do things, and from the younger sibling the older one learns to be tolerant”

Our First Newsletter

Discovery!

Each morning the children participate in "Discovery".
This is a learning activity that involves the children practising and consolidating their skills and knowledge, as well as exploring the world around them. In addition to this we focus on different "Key Competencies". These are the part of the New Zealand Curriculum which involve Thinking, Relating to Others, Understanding Symbols and Text, Managing Self, Participating with Others.
Later in the term we will reduce the number of sessions we have, but will retain this valuable (and popular!) part of the learning week.

Sunny Days

We are all enjoying the sunshine and have been doing lots of fun and new learning in The Landing.
For the next few weeks we are learning about our new learning environment and what we need to do to be a learner.  Have a look at the Yetis we created with some older buddies. These help remind us that even although the learning may be new and a little tricky we always say "We can't do .........yet".

Welcome to 2017!

We have had a great start to the year and are working busily and happily in The Landing (Rooms 9 and 10).
We have been busy reading books, counting and learning the school HEART values.
We will continue to work collaboratively and over the next few days we will let you know your child's home room. This will be the room they have their tote tray in and come into in the morning for the first part of they day.