What have Tōtara been up to?

Week 5: Tōtara Weekly Focus

Focus: Respond appropriately

How: Thinking about what has been asked of you and how you should respond.  What context are you in? Is your response appropriate to the person you are speaking to?

Life Education

Over the last two weeks, our students have been visiting the Life Education caravan to look into peer pressure. Today our year 8's farewelled Harold and thanked him for all his visits over the years!

Basketball

Well done to these guys for placing in their Senior Basketball Tournament last Tuesday!

The Fully Engaged Tōtara Student

Kia ora Parents and Caregivers,

This term we have introduced a new programme to our students which reflects what a fully engaged Tōtara student looks like at Kaiapoi North School. This is a programme that has been specifically designed for our syndicate by our teachers with the help of behaviour specialists.

Each week we will focus on a new skill or value that will be explicitly taught in home classes. This skill or value will be shared with all staff in our school. Students who show the skill or value we are focussing on for the week may earn Tōtara tokens. Tokens can then be traded in for rewards of differing token values.

The skills or values that we choose to work on come from our framework which encompasses learning, behaviour and attitude/mindset. All Tōtara teachers plan this together and choose skills/values that are relevant at the time.

We have started an extra teaching session for students who may not be grasping the values or skills we are teaching. This is not a detention but rather a small group teaching session during lunchtime. This may be as simple as a quick, practical run through of how to show a certain skill e.g. active listening or a one-to-one conversation with a teacher on how they are going and the reasons why they are struggling to show a particular skill e.g. coping with challenge. Some students who do not complete their learning tasks may also need to attend these sessions to get their work done.

Starting from Week 5, we will be posting our weekly focus on our team blog and sending it out via email to keep you informed. It will be extremely valuable if you can talk to your child about our weekly focus and discuss ways in which they can show or do this at school, at home or in the community. For example, so far this term we have focussed on, Week 1: Greetings, Week 2: Manners, Week 3: Muck up, Own up, Fix up, Move on, Week 4: Active Listening.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s home class teacher.

Regards,

Tōtara Team Teachers

CHESS CLUB

Thanks to the KNS PTA, we now have several new Chess sets and will be getting a proper chess clock to practice with in preparation for the Canterbury Inter-School Chess Competitions in September.   We meet each Thursday lunchtime and everyone is welcome!  We look forward to seeing you there.

Our new learning space

Fingers crossed, we can move in by the end of this term!

Tōtara Swimming

Swimming is on Tuesdays - remember togs and towels!

Term 2 - Technology!

Everyone is off to a great start at Kaiapoi Borough School for technology. All our students are engaged and ready to get creating with various textiles!

Week 1, Term 2 - Tōtara Shoutouts!

Welldone Mikayla, Lachie, Libby, Saki and Seth for receiving certificates in this weeks team assembly.

First Aid Training

Our Tōtara students have been working with Stacey from St Johns training in first aid