Term 2 Week 1 Room 5

By jill Kumar | Posted: Friday April 10, 2020

You may be wondering what this term is going to be like as we start the term inside our bubbles. Rest assured the staff has spent time over the holidays planning for this.

Firstly it is important to acknowledge that each of our families will be experiencing this time differently and because of this, you will have different expectations of how you expect your child to complete their learning at home. Some of you will want your child to stick to a strict schedule, some will want small amounts of work that are manageable while juggling a household and others will want to use the time to teach important life skills. 

We are aware that some of our families have parents working from home, parents who work in essential services, and parents who have plenty of time to work with children. Some families will also have multiple children needing to share devices and complete their work. For these reasons, it is imperative that first and foremost we are looking after our children's wellbeing and of course our own too. The children are going to remember this time for the rest of their lives and it is so important that they have a positive mindset and are keeping active relationships and active bodies.

Keeping all of the above in mind teachers have made plans for children to be learning at home. We have worked together to ensure the content is similar within each syndicate and not put too much pressure on parents to become teachers. Remembering that although we have aimed for this to be as independent as possible, our middles are aged between 6 and some soon to be turning 9, so they will need some support at times.

Term 2 officially starts on Wednesday the 15th of April. As part of our Remote Learning, we will be using Google Classroom.  To access Google Classroom the children need to log into  their google accounts.   Their user names are their first initial and surname followed by @kaikorai.school.nz(most of the children should be able to do this already but may need help especially if they are using a device different from a chrome book). When they have logged into google there is what we call the square of squares (9 dots on the top right of the page - see photo gallery below ). If you click this, you can find  the green google classroom sign - see photo gallery below.    They can easily log in straight away with google.

In our Room 5 Google Classroom, notices and general discussions can be found in the 'Stream'. Children may want to (with support if needed), add to the discussion to find out what their classmates have been up to.

Under 'Classwork' there is a section called links which is the easiest way to access our favourite sites (the children have their own passwords and should know them already, however do check on Seesaw notices or contact me if you have forgotten any).

I know lots of children have already been busy working on Xtramaths, Mathletics, Seesaw, Readtheory and reading through books on Epic.

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We will be meeting on Google meets at 11 am, Wednesday 15th April. The easiest way to do this is to open up Google Classroom, go to 'Classwork' and look for the picture of the video and  the word meet - see photo gallery below .  Then click on the  icon.  This icon will only appear when we are ready to start the session at 11am each day.   All of the middle classes are meeting at this time so that other children can meet with their classes at other times. We will use this time to catch up with the children, share news, talk about what we have been doing, read a story and talk about our topic 'Sustainability'.    Each Monday following, there will be a google slide with a collection of activities that children can be working on at home. 

Please remember to keep in touch via Seesaw as our messages will be sent through this app. Seesaw can be downloaded as an app onto your phone. This is a good way to make sure you receive notifications when new messages and activities are posted. A number of children have already been using this and it has been wonderful to see what the children have been up to.

Finally, I look forward to "seeing" the children on Wednesday.

From Mrs Kumar

ps if you need further clarification go to the video gallery below and have a look at my visual Google Classroom screen shots and for further clarification you could try Miss Gilberts video (just remember we are Room 5, however the same process applies!).