If your family and whānau is experiencing difficulty at home, I would like to provide [additional] emotional support to your child at school.

I understand that you are not always able to share details and that's okay.

If your child is unsettled when coming to school after a difficult night, morning or weekend, please send me a message through Seesaw saying "Handle with Care."

This will let me know that your child may need extra time, patience or help during the day.

Nothing else will be said or asked, unless you would like to inform me of the circumstances.

General:

Room 5 (and the whole school) are using Seesaw (read more here). You will need to be involved here, please.
I love seeing [my] tamariki succeed and am therefore committed to ensuring that our learning environment will have the expectation that all tamariki will experience success in their learning. I am a firm believer that telling tamariki “I believe in you” can empower them - not just in their learning, but also with their moral and social development. I look forward to working with you to support your child’s education, getting to know your child as an individual and celebrating their uniqueness! ‘Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti arahia o tatou mahi’ - ‘Let the uniqueness of the child guide our work’.

Structured Literacy:

With Structured Literacy, tamariki will be taken through a systematic approach that begins with sound level, then word level, building into sentences and text.

Home Learning of reading and spelling may look slightly different to before.

If your child is in the early stages of learning to read, they may bring home alphabet letters to learn the sound of and to write. Please look HERE on how to make/say the letter sounds.
If your child has to reinforce word level reading, they may bring home a list of words to practice reading or writing or maybe a game that you can play with your child.
If you child is at sentence level, they may bring home sentences or short passages to read with you. When you are listening to your child read, you are wanting to hear accuracy, reading at a good rate and pace and with beautiful expression.
If your child is an early reader or an older catch up reader, they may also bring home a decodable text. Decodable books are simply designed to support reading development by controlling the text in a systematic way. To compliment the decodable texts, I will also be teaching specific words during spelling and reading, before introducing your child to the book. There are no surprise words in these texts. I would have taught your child to read each of the words in the book. Through this purposeful text selection, I will ensure that tamariki are 'lifting' the words off the page without any guessing.

Remember, children love being read to. Read to them regularly and enjoy books together.

How can parents/whānau help with literacy at home?

Mathematics:

Maths - Year 2

How can parents/whānau help with mathematics at home?

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

find numbers around your home and neighbourhood – clocks, letterboxes, speed signs
count forwards and backwards (clocks, fingers and toes, letterboxes, action rhymes, signs)
make patterns when counting "clap 1, stamp 2, clap 3, stamp 4, clap 5…"
do sums using objects such as stones or marbles eg 2 + 3, 4 +1, 5 + 4
make up number stories – "you have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. There are 4 of them"

Here's a tip - maths is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

preparing and sharing out food – "two for me and two for you". Ask, "How many for each of us?"
talking about time – "lunchtime", "storytime", "bedtime"
using words in everyday play like "under", "over", "between", "around", "behind", "up", "down", "heavy", "light", "round", "circle", "yesterday", "tomorrow". You can get library books with these words and ideas in them too
asking questions like "How many apples do we need for lunches? What do you think the weather is going to be like today/tomorrow? What are we going to do next?"

Here's a tip - use lots of mathematics words as your child is playing to develop their understanding of early mathematics (eg "over", "under", "first, second, third", "round", "through", "before", "after"). Use the language that works best for you and your child.