Term Two...

Welcome back to term two everyone. It has been super to spend the first couple of days settling back into class routines. We have made a few changes to our timetable based on some ongoing professional development that we received during term one. We have attached the updated version of the timetable for you to peruse at your leisure.
This term will be as busy as every other with Cross Country and lots of fun things planned. We will also welcome a number of new little people as they transition to school.
 
We are super excited that Annie Jacobs is returning to run a Cognitive music session with our youngest children. Kelly will run a music session with our older Year two children.
 
In Mt Algidus we have been very fortunate to be able to play around with our timetable to incorporate all the wonderful things we manage to fit into our week. Kelly will continue to work with us each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and during this time we are lucky enough to be able to support one another with the teaching of the different learning areas. This term we will share the literacy teaching, working as a whole class with our writing programme. Rhian will run the core Numicon programme and during this group time, Kelly will be supporting the children’s number knowledge within the play-based approach.  
 
The children have begun to discuss their planning for the coming weeks. Before we move into investigating Matariki we are looking at our ANZAC soldiers following Anzac Day last week. Lots of the children blew us away with their knowledge and their keen interest. We were wondering if anyone has any family links such as photos, medals or other artefacts that we could look at, please could they be brought along to school.
 
Yesterday we introduced a class Dojo. This will form the basis of our reward system in Mt Algidus as we move away from our sticker charts. A dojo is like an online sticker chart and children are awarded a Dojo point as a reward. The whole class can also receive Dojo points too. A tally of points is kept and visible to the children and we have negotiated different targets/benchmarks in order to receive rewards. The children were super excited about this and we are sure that you have heard about their Dojo Monster.
 
In class Kelly and I are also beginning the process of using the Seesaw app. Before linking them in with the ‘in home’ side we are going to teach the children to create their own entries using the iPads. This will be another way of sharing our wonderful learning each week.
 
Each Friday we will do our upmost to update our classroom blogs so families can see exactly what we have been up to during the week. This may also be where we post updates about the coming week and things that are happening so please visit our school site http://www.lauriston.school.nz/
 
We are very excited about the term ahead and if there is anyone who would like to come in and be a parent help we would love to welcome you into our class.
 
Have a wonderful week all.
​Kind wishes, Rhian and Kelly.