Junior Team Expectations

Our school expects a high standard of behaviour from our students, as they learn to follow our school motto of Character, Kindness and Courtesy. As classroom teachers we will be revisiting these in the first few weeks of school, helping the children to further understand how we behave when we show these qualities. Discussions will also continue throughout the year as appropriate.

Alongside our motto, there are other rules that need to be followed and, in order to support our classes, our first unit will be titled “Ourselves, Our Community, Our Country” This unit provides the vehicle for exploring further the social studies objectives in the new curriculum of how places are significant for individuals and groups and how people can influence places and vice versa. Our initial intention is to build a team and classroom climate where there is a shared understanding of who we are as individuals, as a group and what our rules are at Te Hihi School, providing an opportunity for our students to feel secure and to have clear boundaries. We will then look at important places in our community and our country

We would also appreciate your help in ensuring our classes begin the year in a happy and successful way. The following routines may seem small to you but, to our little people, helping them in these ways makes life so much easier and smoother.

Name all of your children’s clothing with labels or a permanent marker. In particular, names on jackets, hats and swimming gear are important as these are items that can often be put down or mislaid. Of course, there are consequences if these items are lost or mislaid. For example, if you don’t have a school hat, you have to play in the shade area rather than the playground as a whole. If you lose your togs, you can’t go swimming and if you lose your jacket you get cold. For little people these can be devastating events and ruin the whole day. If you would like to purchase labels, visit the website www.stuckonyou.co.nz to order.

Remembering to return library books in your child’s library bag and reading book in the reading bag is really important. Our children love taking library and reading books home and not having their bags or having overdue library books means no new books. It also means they can’t do what their classmates do and that also is important to the children.

Bringing our togs on our swimming days means we can have fun in the water with our classmates. For some children, swimming may be an anxious time and, rather than not go swimming, please let us know so that we can cater for your child and help overcome that anxiety. This year the Board of Trustees are generously providing swimming lessons with trained swimming instructors for all of the children in our school. We are delighted about this opportunity, the details of which were outlined in this week’s school newsletter.