Olympics day tomorrow

Team Awa is taking part in Isleworth School's Olympics day tomorrow. There is a note in their reading folder to let you know more details but all students can wear their house colours tomorrow instead of uniform. Please remember they will be doing sport activities all afternoon so need to be wearing appropriate clothing and footwear.

Reading with our buddies

On Thursday mornings we are lucky enough to have some of the senior students come over to Team Awa to read with some of our students and help them to develop their confidence and get some extra reading mileage.

The students seem to enjoy getting to read to their big buddies and their buddies love being the expert and being able to help their little buddy when they get stuck.

Some students even read so well they get to choose a second, third or even forth book to read with their buddy.

GoNoodle

Just a quick video of the kids up and moving doing a GoNoodle dance. 

This gets them moving and having fun being active after they have been sitting still for too long or to start our day.

Storylines Free Family Day

Something you might be interested in as a weekend activity.

Storylines are holding a free family day on Sunday the 28th August between 10am and 3pm at the Upper Riccarton Library.

Share the excitement of New Zealand books and authors at the Storylines Free Family Fun Day. Readings by New Zealand authors, face painting, arts and crafts, music, storytellers, book signings and a chance to meet Clifford the Big Red Dog are all part of the exciting day.

You can find more information and the timetable for the day at the link below. 

storylines.org.nz

Week two update

Production practice is taking hold of Team Awa and keeping us very busy. We had a chance this week to practice on the stage in the school hall and are well on our way to being ready for the production in week six. We have began the filming process for our mini movie and will be finishing the filming during week three.

Here are some examples of our digraph and alphabet activities from week two. The focus was on "a" for apple and "wh" for whale.

Production Update

A quick production notice was sent out today in the children's reading folders, please look out for this. As part of our production scene we are filming a mini movie. The notice is requesting dress up items for costumes and props. I know it is short notice but please have a look around and see what you can find to bring in, in a named plastic bag, by Thursday 4th August. If you are unable to find something on your list please don't stress about it just let us know, we do have access to some dress ups at school and we may be able to find something that will work.

Learning through play

In Team Awa we have learning through play time three mornings a week before our dedicated literacy and numeracy times.

In the photos below you can see some of the children's rich learning experiences during this time.

We practice our shapes, words, letters, numbers and fine motor skills as we draw and write with chalk.

Sometimes mysterious dinosaur footprints appear and our storytelling skills are tested through pretend play.

We develop our persistence and imaging skills as we work on hard puzzles.

Our fine motor skills, forward planning and creative thinking come in to play as we create with the blocks, k'nex and construction toys.

We develop a story together and practice our oral language through pretend play when we use the dolls house, dinosaurs, puppets, cars, robin hood set and soft toys.

The drawing table helps to develop our creativity, our fine motor skills and strengthen our pen grip.

We have many different puzzles and games to help us remember our letters, blends, numbers and sight words.

This is just one morning of learning through play in Team Awa, the activities and the learning can change on any given day to keep in interesting for the students and to encourage them to mix with different students and different activities. The whole time students are developing their oral language skills and social skills and becoming more and more confident with each other and within the classroom.