1. Principal's News Term 1, Week 3 2017

Family Learning Hui – Meet the Teacher

We enjoyed meeting the families who turned up for the hui last night.  We had a short gathering in the hall to talk about general homework before separating off into the hub areas where teachers and families were able to have a more informal gathering and discuss classroom routines and expectations.

Please book your session for the goal setting interviews next week - more information in the news part of the blog

Library

Thank you to Jan Plieger, Jill McCartie, and Adrienne Spillane who have set up our library in its new location.  

Homework

The research tells us the best thing you can do for your child’s learning is to have a positive attitude towards learning and initiate learning conversations with your children.  We share our weekly learning intentions with you so that you can have this conversation.  Each time the child is reminded about the learning, it creates a new pathway in the brain and if the learning is reinforced enough it becomes a permanent pathway and remains with the learner – and that is what we want!

Depending on age and stage there will be some learning reinforcement at home e.g. reading, learning basic facts, and basic spelling words as well as the conversations you are having.  The intermediate department are also having more formal homework to learn how to manage their time and get into good habits in preparation for high school.

Having a Learning Conversation

Look at the weekly learning intentions on the Teaching and Learning site and ask something like; “You’ve been learning to form questions (or whatever their learning intention is for the week).  What does that mean?  Can you give me an example?”

Sometimes the class blog will have an example of a child showing the learning intention in action - another good opportunity to have a conversation e.g.

“Look Anna did_________, I saw it on the blog.  What did you do?”

Every time you have that conversation you make a new link in your child’s brain and take a further step to making the learning permanent.  

It takes about 98 repetitions of a new learning for it to form a permanent and quick pathway in the brain.   Cortisol is the hormone people release when under any form of stress, such as arguing about homework, ad cortisol destroys newly formed neural pathways - so stress destroys learning.

Keep it happy… and calm!

God Bless,

Lorraine Frances-Rees