Team Kawakawa
Kristi Hiles
Teacher
Room 1
Kirsty Hull
Teacher
Room 2
Fiona Riach
Teacher
Room 3
Josephine Pinfold
Team Leader
Room 6
We transition students from preschool to school life through visits prior to students beginning school and have regular contact and visits with the local early childhood providers. We inspire play based learning in all of our classes which range from New Entrants to Year Two. We welcome whānau at any time as part of our wider learning.
This year our team made the move to Structured Literacy and we are following the Better Start Literacy Approach. This approach provides our students with the skills they need to become independent and life long learners in literacy. This approach has many aspects and focuses around students building their phonological skills to be able to initially learn the sounds of the alphabet and to then progress to being able to use this knowledge to decode words in their daily reading. We are working in conjunction with the University of Canterbury who developed the approach and uses the decodable phonics books plus that have been put out by the Ministry of Education.
PMP (Perceptual Motor Programme)
This programme runs in Terms Two and Three each year. During these terms students in Year 0-2 will take part in two sessions a week. The focus of this programme is to get students moving in a variety of ways. They rotate through a circuit of activities in a session that help to build both fine and gross motor skills, both of which will help students' academic needs, especially in literacy and mathematics.
Seesaw
Seesaw is an educational tool that students use in class to share work that they have done. They can do this by taking photos of their learning. This is then linked to their own Seesaw page and parents can see this learning. There are also opportunities for students to complete activities that have been set by their classroom teacher and it also provides another way for teachers to communicate with whanau as there is a messaging section as well.
