We love our community Reading Tutors. We have grandparents, friends of our school and parents all volunteering their time each week to help support those children who need a bit of extra reading 'mileage' and support.

If you can spare an hour (or an hour and a half) one or more mornings of the week, please get in touch with Deputy Principal Teresa Hannard - pop in or email her at teresah@westernheights.school.nz

Last week I shared some photos of our Learning Conferences.

Our Learning Conferences were a great success - thank you so much to all our parents who made the big effort to come along or to attend a Zoom conference. We got close to our 100% goal.

Congratulations to our Year One teaching team for putting together a fantastic display of the Foundation Curriculum, Junior Literacy and Numeracy and our Structured Approach to Play-Based Learning. It was a lot of work, but so valuable and informative for our parents.

We received some very positive feedback from this:

Families were very positive. They appreciated the hands-on activities and now understand foundation skills. Play-based learning was well received, and parents loved how soft skills were taught through this.

Families enjoyed seeing and listening to what we have available. They were blown away by the number of hands-on activities that support fun learning for our tamariki. They appreciated the handouts we provided and ideas to help support them at home. Some parents commented on how their children love to explore and play outside now and that they don’t ask to use iPads at home anymore.

Families enjoyed seeing and hearing how literacy and numeracy were able to be weaved into play-based learning - they saw the fun hands-on activities as very different in comparison to their rote learning at school.

Parents enjoyed seeing/experiencing the connection between play and curriculum. There were a few ah-ha moments, especially when talking about foundation skills. Parents were on board with the idea that creativity was important for children now and in the future, and education at WH supports this.

Parents were thankful for this approach and commented on how if it was like this when they were at school, they would have enjoyed learning a lot more.

Parents were really enthusiastic to hear about what we’re doing, and all were on board with play-based learning. They were really interested to see all the hands-on learning and equipment we use for maths and that they were learning so much through this instead of just rote learning through written work.

This was a great way to introduce families to our junior school team and share what happens in our classrooms and WHY. Families liked seeing resources on display and appreciated being given ideas for what they could do at home to involve the family.

Many families spoke about how they are so happy their child loves coming to school and looks forward to each day. Parents were fascinated with the life cycle of a bee resources and how that sparks the curiosity of a child for learning and development of oral language.

Lots of families commented on how awesome the hands-on activities were.

All the parents seemed to love the set-up and appreciated the opportunity to see play-based learning and hear about the reasons for play.

Sturges Road kindy teachers also came along to the open day. All were amazed at the opportunities the children had and could see the focus on transition and meeting the children at their developmental level, and most importantly, the social and emotional understanding. All expressed how the PBL and foundation skills supported this.

It was great to share some knowledge about visual and memory perception and crossing of the midline and why this was important. They appreciated the handouts which explained each area and things parents could do at home for bilateral learning support.

We note that Sturges Road kindy children are now coming to us with so much creativity. They now have a huge emphasis on loose parts, curiosity and connections. They have got rid of their plastic items in the kitchen area and replaced these with bottle tops and corkscrews for example. This creativity has been shown in children's urges, cooperation and expression of 'big ideas'. The kindy also has a large loose parts area outside that the children freely play with.

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