ORATIA DISTRICT SCHOOL - NEWSLETTER

Week 3 - Thursday 31 October 2024

MESSAGE FROM MS LINDA

Tēnā koutou katoa. Nau mai ki te whānau o te Oratia. Talofa lava. Malo e lelei. Zdravo. Ni hao. Namaste. Kamusta. Greetings Oratia whānau and families.

I hope that you all enjoyed the long weekend celebrating Labour Day. We had to dodge the rain showers here in Auckland, so hopefully you got a little more sunshine if you went out of town. It seems like true Spring weather. When we were up at Waitangi for the MAC conference we saw a number of pohutukawa already in bloom, and the flax plants were full of flowers/putiputi. I am hoping this is an indicator of a good warm summer coming!

On Tuesday we had our Staff Only Day and had some excellent professional learning from Micaela Bonner, who works for Massey University. She is growing our knowledge of how to approach writing from a structured literacy perspective. For those of us who were not taught these things at school ourselves - grammar and sentence construction using clauses and phrases etc - it is a steep learning curve to master the new knowledge ourselves so we can pass it on in a easily accessible way to our students.

I am very impressed with our teaching staff who have taken on new learning in Reading, Maths and now Writing in order to meet the mandates of the government in such a compressed time frame. We are learning as we go, but we are happy to do this as we can see the difference it is making for many of our learners. Real curriculum change can take two or more years to embed and become the natural way of doing things, so bear with us as we keep learning and growing to make our teaching fit the needs of our students in better and better ways. Our teacher aides also took part in this training, and we are very thankful for their support of our tamariki throughout the kura.

Please note the upcoming whānau morning on Tuesday, November 5, which will give you the chance to visit your child's classroom, and also check out the Calendar Art on display which you can order for Christmas. There are many events and activities planned for Term 4 so please look at our calendar on the school website if you would like to see what is coming up.

Thank you for making sure your children have wide brimmed hats this term as we are focusing on this safety practice over the summer.

Take care and stay safe.

Kia kaha, kia atawhai.

Ngā mihi nui, Ms Linda

DO YOU HAVE A 5 YEAR OLD STARTING WITH US IN 2025 ?

If your child will be enrolling at Oratia School in 2025, please let us know. This will help us with our planning for next year. Please email deborahd@oratia.school.nz with your child's name, address, date of birth, and your contact details

Thank you.

EPro8 CHALLENGE

This week, with the support of whaea Debbie, senior students had an opportunity to participate in the EPro Challenge. EPro 8 is the inter-school science and engineering competition. Students participated in a series of events, firstly within our school and then inter-school. These events are designed to promote science, engineering, problem solving and teamwork. Today, teams will be selected to represent our school and compete against other schools. Good luck everyone!

SCHOLASTIC BOOK ORDERS

Scholastics Issue #7

TODAY THURSDAY 31st OCTOBER is the last day to get your Scholastic Book orders in. This is our last issue of the year so if you fancy any ideas for Christmas, now's your chance!

Books make wonderful gifts for children so don't delay, place your order today!

WHAT IS STRUCTURED LITERACY ?

Structured literacy is an approach to teaching oral and written language. It’s based on the science of how kids learn to read.

Structured literacy is especially helpful for kids who struggle with reading. But research shows that it can help all students improve their reading skills.

With structured literacy, teachers introduce new concepts and skills in a logical order. They teach in an explicit way that fully explains concepts and skills. Teachers also continually check in on students’ understanding.

Structured literacy covers the following concepts:

Phonology: the study of sounds in spoken words
Sound-symbol (orthography): how to map sounds (phonemes) to letters (graphemes)
Syllables: knowing the types of syllables and how to divide words into syllables
Morphology: the study of base words and affixes (prefixes and suffixes)
Syntax: understanding the grammatical order of words (like sentence structure)
Semantics: understanding the meaning of words and sentences

RONA AND THE MOON

Rona and the Moon

There once was a girl named Rona that had dark brown hair and also lovely brown eyes.

But one stormy night Rona and her husband had a big fight about who would get the water from the creek. Rona was so fed up with it she stormed out the door all grumpy. She snatched the calabash and she cursed her husband then she ran off into the dark

It began to get foggy so it was hard to see the way but then as she walked closer to the creek she stubbed her toe on a rock “ ouchhh!!”she shouted, then she also cursed the moon then the moon said, “you cheeky girl no more cursing people it is very rude “.

But she kept saying bad and cheeky stuff to her husband and the moon.

The moon was so fed up with it so he grabbed Rona by the arm and started pulling her up into the sky. Then Rona grabbed the tree next to her but then the moon pulled harder and harder then the next minute Rona was going up into the sky.

Then 3 years had passed. Rona and the moon had gotten very close. The moon had gotten less and less angry at Rona so then the moon grabbed a cloak that had glowing stars. The moon said “Here take this” and then Rona became the controller of the moon and that is the story of Rona and the moon.

By Yani, Ruma Waru

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN GARDEN TO TABLE THIS WEEK

This week in Garden to Table, students worked with our Garden specialist Tanya Harre and planted pumpkins and seed pods that were donated to our kura. Working in the garden helps children to -