Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful holiday break filled with everything you love. We’re off to a fantastic start in the new year! The atmosphere is buzzing with positivity, with happy, smiling children, enthusiastic staff members, and supportive parents. In class, our teachers and students are getting to know each other and diving into learning straight away. We look forward to a term filled with learning, growth, new opportunities and friendships.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We want to make certain that your child's experience at school is a positive one.
Over the holidays, our teachers have worked hard to prepare for the school year by planning and preparing resources and learning spaces. We also participated in professional development with a focus on Executive Functioning. There is also an ongoing focus on structured literacy and numeracy in alignment with the NZ Curriculum.
Haere Mai! Welcome!
A warm welcome to all new students, their families and our new staff members. May you love learning and working at our school. We will introduce our new staff members in the next newsletter.
Welcome to our new students, Maya and Blake and our teaching staff, Mrs Tracie Baigent (Ruma Tūi) and Miss Rachel Hart (Ruma Pīwakawaka).
Our Learning/Ako
Inquiry This year our inquiry focus will be on The Arts. Every term will have a different focus. We start in term one with a focus on dance and will learn about how we express ourselves through movement. The whole school will participate in weekly lessons on Mondays when instructors from the Footsteps dance company will facilitate the lessons. We are very excited about this opportunity.
Literacy Structured Literacy will remain a part of our literacy programme. Encouraging a love of reading is a partnership between home and school. To improve literacy skills, children need to read regularly. At home reading to or with your child/ren is essential.
Other areas of literacy focus:
Letter sounds and spelling patterns
Developing and using the correct letter shape and size
Thinking and talking about ideas for writing
Building vocabulary knowledge
Maths The new maths resources arrived at school last week. We have Prime Maths rolling out for all our year levels. Our kaiako will attend professional development throughout the year to help build a clear understanding of this program and will continue to unpack the new curriculum. It’s an exciting but busy time ahead. Developing number knowledge, problem-solving and statistics will be our main focus areas.
Physical Education
Our first focus is on teaching water safety skills. Students should bring their named togs and towels with them daily (in a separate bag). If your child cannot swim on the day, they need to bring a note written by the caregiver/parent to explain this.
Te Reo
We will integrate the learning foci across the curriculum. We will continue to develop our knowledge of waiata, mihi, greetings and karakia. The term will focus on building knowledge and understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi and engaging with stories about Aotearoa.
Our School Values
Focus MY RESPONSIBILITY – TĀKU TAKOHANGA
At school, we learn to take responsibility for our behaviour, the choices we make, our learning and for the environment we live in. Examples of our actions include:
Please discuss what responsibility looks like at home and how your child/ren can take responsibility at home, at their sports practices, engaging with whānau, etc.
Music @ School-MusiqHub
As an exciting new venture here at Motumaoho School, we will have music lessons on offer during school hours. Although most people don’t need scientific research to prove that music can bring us joy and lift our moods, there is a growing body of evidence that shows just how important music is for cognitive development. MusiqHub will be delivering lessons for different instruments e.g. guitar, ukelele and even singing. They also provide the musical instruments.
On Friday, 21 February, during our first assembly, MusiqHub will perform and also talk about their program. The following week there will also be a ‘Have a Go’ opportunity during drop-off time when students can try the instruments to see what suits them best. We will send out more information closer to the time.
Reminders
Arriving after 8:30 am: Please report to the office and sign your child in on the Vistab tablet.
Leaving before 2:30 pm: Please sign your child out at the office on the Vistab tablet.
Drink bottles: Please ensure your child brings their full drink bottle to school daily.
Book bags: ALL students require a book bag. This should be brought to school every day.
IMPORTANT:
Please report any absences as soon as possible to the office. The easiest way is through the Skool Loop app. Alternatively, you can phone the office, or email.
If your child is being collected by someone other than yourself, you MUST tell your child's teacher, Mrs Baptist or contact the office directly.
Before School Student Expectations
As our staff prepare for the start of the school day, there is no supervision of our tamariki on the courts and playground, before school starts at 8.30 am. Students are welcome to arrive from 8 am to get organised for the day and to connect with their teachers and friends. This is also a time for parents to come in to share information that can support the teacher and student on the day e.g. if your child did not have a good night’s sleep.
The Skool Loop app Our Skool Loop app has all our contact information plus links to our latest newsletter, website, Facebook page and calendar. We also send out urgent messages or reminders as required via the app, have permission forms function and most importantly you can submit an absentee via the app at your convenience.
If you need help in downloading the app, please contact Angela.
Children Turning Five and New Enrolments
If your child is turning five in the next six (6) months, please ensure you enrol them as soon as possible. If you know of any families looking to enrol their child/ren, please provide them with our contact details.
Please collect enrolment packs from the office, or email office@motumaoho.school.nz. We also have our enrolment details on our school website. Click here for online enrolments.
Happy Birthday/ Rā whānau ki a koe!
Happy birthday to the following students and staff. We wish you a wonderful year ahead.
Toni, Esther, Ashton, Hazel, Theo and Raimapaha.
Yummy Apple Stickers
Collect the Yummy cut-out labels from bags (each cut-out label is worth 10 stickers) and individual Yummy apple stickers for our school’s share of the $200,000 free Sport sports gear prize pool. Yummy apples are available from New World, PAK’nSAVE and participating Four Square stores. The more you collect, the more sports gear we get, so get going and start collecting your Yummy cut-out labels and stickers now!
Fuel for Schools
Our school has been nominated by local businesses/farms that receive bulk fuel deliveries from Fern. For every 100 litres of bulk fuel they purchased, 50 cents is donated to their nominated school- which is us!
Motumaoho School is on the way to reaching the Fuel for Schools $1,000 threshold for redemption. Our current total is $724.00. Once we have reached your $1,000 target we can redeem from a range of sports, technology, literacy, music and vegepod packages.
We would like to acknowledge the following members of the community who support our school:
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