By Simon Clarke | Posted: Monday August 27, 2018
My favourite time of the year... The days are getting warmer, the grass is drying out for kids to play on, children are involved in a range of interesting learning experiences, winter sports is finished for the year and we have a break for 5 weeks before summer sports starts!
Kaikorai School prides itself on providing a wide range of learning experiences in an authentic context. Over the last two weeks, I have been lucky enough to see and hear about many of these experiences.
The EPro8 is an engineering and problem-solving challenge. One of our teams made the finals and eventually placed 5th. I was very impressed with their teamwork and ingenuity to solve very complex problems.
Well done to all of our winter sports teams and a huge thank you to the many parents who give up their time to coach teams. We would not be able to field so many teams without your support. Congratulations to our Year 5 and 6 Netball team who played so well on Wednesday and showed great Kaikorai Values.
Wednesday was a busy day with many children involved in the Ukulele Jam. Thank you to Mrs Kumar for the work you put into this group. I really enjoyed listening to you play the song 'Coming Home'.
On Thursday it was a time for our mathematicians to shine. Mr Hartley prepared them well as they have been developing their mathematical skills and understandings in an extension mathematics programme all year They placed 2nd in Year 6 and 3rd in Year 5 and this was well deserved.
Room 4 class assembly on Friday was a celebration of the arts with singing, dancing and drama, all proudly performed on stage. Thank you for sharing what you have been learning about this term on "significance", I was impressed with the aspirations you all have for when you grow older.
I look forward to the next four weeks as our senior students take more control over their learning and take part in their student selected inquiries. It is still essential to know "stuff" but what is really important is developing the skills of how to learn and that is what the teachers are focusing on. I am very interested to find out what the children have focused on and what skills they have developed in their inquiries.
We are fortunate in New Zealand to have a curriculum which allows for such a breadth of ideas and skills to be developed. Making sure our students are literate and numerate is extremely important, but we believe that developing children with a wide range of skills and a love of learning is equally as important.