Silverstream School Friday 5th August 2016 Term Three, Number 1

Tena koutou Parents and Caregivers!

It’s Business as Usual!

Welcome back to Term 3, and my first newsletter as Acting Principal. The process is

well underway for the appointment of our new Principal, but in the meantime, it’s

business as usual.

My focus is to continue with our 2016 direction - the learning and achievement of ALL of our

children. I am looking forward to working closely with our Staff and Board of Trustees to ensure the

transition between Principals’ is smooth! We want to continue to build on the great work we have

done as a school over the last few years.

Being a SMARTstreamer

At Silverstream School, we know that Literacy and Numeracy are important aspects of learning

but we also believe in developing the ‘whole child’. To help us do this, we use the Silverstream

SMARTstreamer Framework. This is designed to help students focus on important skills for

lifelong learning!

The Framework is broken up into four aspects:

SMART Thinker

People SMART

Self SMART

Safe SMART

Each aspect makes links to the New Zealand Curriculum’s ‘Key Competencies’.

These competencies have been identified as key skills that people use to “live,

learn, work, and contribute as active members of their communities.”

I will share information about the four aspects of our SMARTstreamer Framework with you

throughout the term.

The SMART Thinker

This aspect is about how children think and handle information! Through referring to the ‘SMART

Thinker’ in the classroom, children learn how to:

Access Information

Understand Information

Organise Information

Evaluate Information

Create

The SMART Thinker is strongly linked to our Inquiry topics, where children have real opportunities

to gather, interpret and use information in authentic learning contexts. This term, children will be

developing their SMART Thinker abilities through the concept of Energy.

ICAS English Exam

Well done to the 30 students who completed this year’s ICAS English Exam on

Tuesday.

Papers have been sent off and we look forward to receiving your results later in the

term.

Your child’s learning – how you can support

Help your child to follow their interests and find answers to their questions about the

world! By accessing information from different places, including books, newspapers,

the Internet, TV, and other people, children learn to locate information that is

relevant and useful.

Encouraging them to ask questions about what they have found and talk about it in

their own words, are important skills to help them become successful thinkers!

Haere Mai - Welcome to Silverstream School

Last Tuesday at 9.30am we had a whakatau to welcome all our new

tamariki/children, families/whānau and teachers to the school. Since our last

whakatau at the beginning of Term 2, there have been 20 new tamariki start

here and it was special to officially acknowledge them and their whānau.

We were also able to welcome John Edmonds and Sarah Young to the teaching

team.

The Fairest of Them All

On Thursday last week our Year 3-6 students enjoyed a show performed by the

New Zealand Playhouse.

The Fairest of them All was a humorous story involving a range

of fairy-tale characters. It included messages about Internet

safety and responsible use of social media - both entertaining

and educational!

This was a great chance for our Ako Nui children in particular,

to see a live show before they put on their production at the end

of this term!

Thanks to Mrs Pringle for organising this performance.

Green Streamers Planting

Our Green Streamers have been busy! During the holidays, a number of our

children attended a community planting bee at Sommerville Range. This is part of

the Trentham Restoration Project. They were hoping to go to another planting bee

on Wednesday this week, but this had to be cancelled due to weather.

It is so great to see our children out contributing to our community!

Thanks to Mrs Peauafi and Mrs Henderson for enabling our participation.

Tough Guy/Girl Junior Challenge

On Thursday some of our Chug-a-Lugs attended the Tough

Guy/Girl Junior Challenge event in Wainuiomata. They had a

great time climbing under, over, and through a number of

obstacles getting themselves very muddy! The only casualty

was Elise’s shoe that got stuck in the mud.

Thanks to Miss Clark for organising this fun experience for our students,

and to the parents that helped out with this event. See photos further

along in our gallery section…...

We have quite a bit of lost property in our collection again! Please check

this over the next week.

Any un-named items will be donated to charity next Friday.

It’s great to have you at Silverstream School!

Our Newest Students at Silverstream School

Room 6

Janneke Scrimgeour

Room 11

Lachie Finlay, Georgia Jackaman, William Lawrey

Room 22

Fedora Clark, Pyper Dyason, Cleo Emery, Nevayah Marino

Keerat Sandhu, Seerat Sandhu, Alexander Sceats

Learning Hub News

As we start Term 3 we have a new group of keen Year 5 and 6 children who have volunteered to be Learning

Hubbers for this term. It is a job that requires a commitment for a whole term and I am always impressed by the

number of children who put their names down to do this duty. We have five Year 6 students who have a Year 5

student working alongside them, learning what to do so that they can take over as leaders in our Learning Hub

next year.

Over the last term Mrs Cope has been working hard to set Silverstream School up on Wheeler's e-platform.

Together we have chosen a selection of books that we think our students would like to read. This has been

introduced to our Year 5/6 students this term. Each child has been given a bookmark with instructions on how to

connect to the e-platform on their devices. It would be great for parents to support and encourage this initiative

from home as we feel that this reinforces our future focussed vision for our Learning Hub.

Some of our fiction books now have genre stickers on their spines so that children are able to source a selection of

books that have similar themes. For example fantasy books or adventure books which may be written by a range

of authors.

We have several of this year's NZ Book Awards books displayed in our Learning Hub and many teachers have

read these during class visits. The winners will be announced on the 8th August.

Lastly, the latest displays are scratch 'n' sniff posters focussed on the Goosebumps series of books by R. L. Stine

and 3D fish art by Rooms 6 and 14.

Year 1 Curriculum Information Evening

Wednesday 10th August

6:30 - 7:30pm

We would like to share information with you about what learning

looks like in the first year of school at Silverstream. We will explain

the National Standard expectations after One Year at School in

Reading, Writing and Maths.

This will be approximately a 30 minute presentation.

During the evening there will also be a chance to visit the Room 14

and 22 classrooms.

Year 2 Trip to Plateau School - Rooms 4, 6 and 7

Unfortunately our trip to Plateau was postponed on Wednesday due to bad

weather. Room’s 4, 6 and 7 will now be visiting Plateau School on

Thursday 11 August.

They are excited about going to find out more about their Enviroschools

Initiatives.

___________________________________________________________________

Year 6 Visit to Fergusson Intermediate - Monday 15 August

All of our Year 6’s will visit Fergusson Intermediate on Monday 15

August.

This is an opportunity for them to experience what life at intermediate is

like. You would have received a separate Signmee notification about this

trip earlier this week.

Year 1 and 2 Students Get Firewise!

Our Year 1’s and 2’s are looking forward to a fire engine visiting us on

Wednesday 10 August

This is part of the ‘Firewise’ programme they have all been involved in.

The NED Show - On Monday 8 August, the NED Show will be visiting our

school. This is a character education programme that centres around three

important messages that have lifelong relevance:

Never give up

Encourage others

Do your best

This is a free show that works on a Pay-it-forward model where the sale of products

funds the opportunity for the next school.

A separate letter has been sent to you via Signmee about this show. It showed you

the types of yo-yos that will be for sale. These will be available for students to

buy at lunchtime on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

After their purchase, students will be allowed to play with their yo-yos in a

specially designated ‘NED Zone’.

ICAS Maths Exam

This is happening on Tuesday 16 August for those students that have registered for

the 2016 exam.

Whanau Evening

Save the date!

Our next Whanau Evening is on Wednesday 17 August.

We hope to see you there.

Click here - Full Website Calendar Dates

Ka kite

Bryan Trevean

Acting Principal

CARDBOARD NEEDED!!

The reading recovery teachers would love some cardboard to

use for cut up stories. It needs to be white on one side but

can be printed on the other. If you have any old white

cardboard lying around, it would be greatly received.

Please either speak with Mrs Pittams or you can

alternatively drop it to the Office.

Adrienne Pittams

Reading Recovery Teacher