Welcome to Term 2! 

I hope you all had a fun and restful holiday. We are all ready for another busy term of learning in Room Pīwakawaka. 

Our focus for the inquiry is the environment and the different ways humans create waste. We will begin looking at NZ native frogs and their life cycles. This will lead us into learning about the impact of humans and their waste on the environment for all living things. We are planning to have a look at all the waste we create at school daily. We will use measurement and graphs to track the amount of waste and how it changes once we start making changes, and hopefully reduce the amount of waste we create. 

This inquiry topic will cover all learning areas: we will be reading books, writing stories and creating artwork around our frogs and waste investigations. This, of course, is alongside our everyday learning of numbers, addition and subtraction, handwriting, knowing the letter sounds and daily cross-country practices. 

We look forward to another wonderful term filled with engaging activities and learning for everyone. 

Kind regards

Rachel Hart

r.hart@motumaoho.school.nz

Kia ora to you all and welcome to Term Two. 

I trust the holidays gave your family the chance to recharge and enjoy a different pace of life.

Our Inquiry Unit this term is based around the concept of Zero Waste, which will have links to our literacy and maths programme.  Specifically, our instructional reading and writing will include the opportunity to do individual research and present findings as we use a range of resources to support our learning.  Our Maths programme which includes daily basic facts, will include a focus on measuring, gathering and graphing data as well as other topics.  

These are some of the activities we have planned:

•  burying different types of waste and investigating decomposition

•  setting up a worm farm and finding out how to keep the worms thriving

•  doing a school-wide waste audit and thinking about how we can reduce our waste.  (Fun fact: humans are the only species to produce waste that doesn’t decompose).

To kick start our unit, we are learning about different types of frogs, which are known as bio-indicators… your children will be able to explain this idea to you.

Cross country is coming up, so we are working on activities each day that build fitness and stamina.

Matariki is at the end of the term, so we are looking forward to finding out more about the importance of this celebration.

As always, we appreciate our learning at school being supported at home. Reports are being compiled during the term ready to be sent to you by the end of term. There are plenty of changes coming this term, but we remain focused on positive outcomes for all our students.

Kind regards

Tracie Baigent

t.baigent@motumaoho.school.nz