Welcome to 2019

This year we have made some changes to our ESOL support programme.
Many of our students that came to the ESOL department for withdrawal lessons last year will this year be supported in class by one of our ESOL teachers or learning assistants.
There will still be withdrawal lessons for our students who are very new to English.
Working in class means that we can keep a closer check on what our students need to know and be able to do to be successful in their class. It also allows us to keep in close contact with their classroom teacher.
Please feel free to come into the ESOL department and ask if you have any questions about the programme or the support your child is receiving this year.

Children of the Pacific Books

We have been using the 'Children of the Pacific' book series with our middle and senior school inquiry groups, focusing on using natural resources. Here are some of the titles we have been researching:

On Friday we had a special surprise, as the photographer and graphic designer, Scott MacGregor, came to visit us at school to talk about how he helps to design the books. His mother, Jill MacGregor, is the author of the stories. They love to travel around the Pacific Islands and Asia to find interesting things to write about and photograph. 

We have learned so much from these fascinating books, and we love the beautiful photos Scott has taken. It was very special to be able to talk to him about these books, and ask any questions we might have. We are now all ready for Book Week next week!

Here are some pictures of our visit with Scott:

Harakeke Fun

For our inquiry 'Change', we are talking about changing natural resources into useful items. We are looking particularly at harakeke. As part of the 'tuning in' part of our inquiry, we experimented with flax. We could make anything we liked, but we couldn't use anything man-made, only the harakeke itself. Here are some photos of our middle school inquiry group experimenting with harakeke.

Speeches - Coming to New Zealand (Group 1)

As part of our latest inquiry on challenge, we have been writing about the challenges we or our families faced when coming to New Zealand. We also wrote about our feelings leaving our country and coming to New Zealand. In the videos above you can see us presenting our speeches to our group. We worked hard on speaking with the correct pace and volume, making our voice reflect the feeling of the story, making eye contact with the audience, and pausing at full stops. How did we do?

Speeches - Coming to New Zealand (group 3)

As part of our latest inquiry on challenge, we have been writing about the challenges we or our families faced when coming to New Zealand. We also wrote about our feelings leaving our country and coming to New Zealand. In the videos above you can see us presenting our speeches to our group. We worked hard on speaking with the correct pace and volume, making our voice reflect the feeling of the story, making eye contact with the audience, and pausing at full stops. How did we do? 

Speeches - Coming to New Zealand (Group 2)

As part of our latest inquiry on challenge, we have been writing about the challenges we or our families faced when coming to New Zealand. We also wrote about our feelings leaving our country and coming to New Zealand. In the videos above you can see us presenting our speeches to our group. We worked hard on speaking with the correct pace and volume, making our voice reflect the feeling of the story, making eye contact with the audience, and pausing at full stops. How did we do? 

Challenge Inquiry

As part of our work on our school concept of challenge, some of our middle and senior groups have been learning about the challenges people have when immigrating to New Zealand. Today we had a visitor come in from the Christchurch Resettlement Services. Denise is a social worker who helps people when they come to New Zealand. She talked about some of the difficulties and challenges people have when they immigrate to New Zealand. She told us about the U curve of adjustment, which is illustrated below. Many of the students in our group could relate to the kinds of things Denise was talking about. They had lots of questions to ask and comments to make. We would love it if the students could talk to their parents about the challenges their families had when immigrating to New Zealand, as we will be discussing this next week.