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.

Ilam School International Lunch

Thanks to all of the parents that attended our International Lunch today. We had 23 countries represented, from all over the world! It was great to see people making new friends and contacts, and to hear their impressions of Ilam School. We had an amazing array of food, as can be seen in the photos below. We look forward to another International Lunch in August!

Senior school visit to the Biology Department

On Wednesday afternoon our senior school ESOL students visited the Biology department at UC. We have been working hard in ESOL developing our observational skills and it was time to use them! One of the biologists at UC, Matt, showed us round. He then gave us a quiz which we needed to find the answers for. We had to look really hard for some of the answers, using our observational and reading skills. Matt then let us go right up to the 6th floor of the building and look down at where we had been. We had an amazing trip to the university, and we learned a lot from Matt. We might take our families to have a look there during the holidays!

Inah's presentation to staff

As part of her Cultural leader's role, Inah presented information to the staff today about delicious Filipino street food. Inah and her mother prepared kwek-kwek, which are orange quail eggs, for the staff to enjoy. Inah explained that kwek-kwek are the number one street food in the Philippines. Thank you to Inah and her mother for providing such a treat for the staff, and for the new learning we gained about the Philippines.

Eid al-Fitr 2017

We had a huge celebration today to mark the end of Ramadan. Well done to all of our children who had a go at fasting over the last month. It was fun meeting and working with you every lunchtime in the Blue room. Our decorations for the hall looked amazing!
What a great turn out of parents, children and friends we had today. Our Muslim children each invited a friend to come and share in our special celebration lunch, and some of their parents came along too. We had an amazing feast with foods from lots of different countries. It was great that we could all get together and meet one another to celebrate our friendship. Look at the photos below to see how much we we enjoyed it!

Welcome back to 2017!

We hope everyone has settled into their new classrooms at Ilam School. We have lots of new faces this year from a number of different cultures. We are very glad you are here with us at Ilam School. We have started the year with a focus on ourselves and our families. Some of our senior students have been working on their introductions. We looked at their pace, volume, expression and eye contact. Click on the videos below to see how they did!

Birds in the Spring

Some of Kirsten's groups have been learning about birds. We see more birds in the Spring. We found lots of birds around our school, including blackbirds, sparrows and ducks! They were looking for worms on the grass. Some birds were in the kowhai tree, with their beaks inside the kowhai flowers! We made some bird feeders to help the birds find food in the Spring.