Classroom+Information

Kia Ora and Greetings to all our parents. Robyn and I have settled in to Room 21 well this year with an amazing group of talented and socially adept children. We are now at the end of term 1, and we are all dealing with many changes around the school - we have building changes, classroom movements, new children in our room, and of course, the arrival of Mrs Butcher to lead us through the new standards and to initiate some new ideas into the running of the school. Room 21 will be having Mrs Butcher teaching them in their room for 2 mornings a term, while Ngaira has her government -allocated Classroom Teacher Release time. I know that Mrs Butcher relishes her returns to the classroom, and I am sure the children will enjoy getting to know her as more than an authoirty figure within the school. Many things are happening within the school this year, and as a school, Lincoln is going to be planning a unit on Sustainability for Term 2. This is a new approach for Robyn and I, and we are both looking forward to the collaborative approach to planning. There are some creative staff at Lincoln, and with pooling all our knowledge and resources, we are looking forward to the children gaining some great knowledge on this topic to carry them into the future. There is also training starting in Term 2 for many staff to upskill their ways of teaching your children maths. The Numeracy Porgramme has been done in various schools throughout NZ over the past 8 years, and is becoming the "norm" for the teaching of maths. The children in Room 21 who have come through from Year 4 are already familiar with this programme, and our not having been trained is not diminshing the delivery of maths to them - it is a programme where the children are taught that there is not just ONE way to solve a maths question - each child is different, and each will have a different method of finding their answers - the end result of getting the correct answer is what we are after. This may make assisting your children with their maths homework a bit more challenging as parents, but rest assured that by listening TO your child, you may well find that a whole new way of thinking opens up to you as well!