Kia ora tatou katoa,

What an astonishing time we are living through. I hope you and your whānau are well and are making the most of the ‘bubble’ time together. For those of you who are working with the public in essential services, we cannot thank you enough. By now you have probably developed a daily ‘bubble rhythm’. Working from home brings its own challenges and benefits! I hope you are making the most of family time and are enjoying time to slow the pace of life.

Staff are meeting on Google Meet/Hangout and ZOOM regularly and we aim to get a new set of learning for everyone by the 15th April with regular ZOOM or Google Meet/Hangout meetings planned with the children. The older children will use GOOGLE as this is the platform they use daily in their classrooms to manage their own learning.  Learning programmes will be available from each teacher who will make a specific time each day to connect with your child. The time will be a maximum of one hour / usually 40 mins to enable all children to connect with their teacher. We will attach information on the times and internet platforms being used to our school website so that everyone can have access as easily as possible. Our teachers are working in their collaborative teams to make this happen, please do not worry it is new for all of us!!!

DAILY CONNECTION will happen starting on WEDNESDAY 15th April – The times will vary but we are aware some families will be sharing a device so are looking at different times for different teams.

TAKAHE TEAM (yr 7&8) Google Meet 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. 

TUI TEAM (yr 5&6)  will use Google Meet 11:00 – 12:00 a.m. 

KIWI TEAM (yr 3&4)  will use ZOOM 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. 

PUKEKO TEAM (yr 1&2) will use ZOOM 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.

School Terms – School terms have been moved. From the 28th March, we entered into the school holidays with the start date of term two moved to Wednesday 15th April. Other term dates are the same.

Learning Packs – Some children were given packs of books to use before we went into lockdown, please keep in touch with the classroom teacher as to how to use and when to return.

Zoom and Google Meet:

Google Meet will be used by Years 5-8. The G Suite is the online platform the students are familiar with as it is what they use for our day-to-day learning while at school. Please remind your child to make sure they are logged into their device with their Wainui School email address as Google Classroom and Google Meet will only be available to users from the Wainui School organisation. If they are logged in with a personal Google Account, this can cause issues in accessing work, etc.

ZOOM will be used by years 1-4

To enable staff to have a weekly meeting with students, you will need to become familiar with Zoom. go to https://zoom.us  and have a try. 

A meeting schedule for your child will be provided.

Learning at Home – Children will not come to any harm if they have a break from formal learning for a while. I am sure many of the experiences they are having at home with you at this time will be creating special bonds and memories for life. Please do not feel any guilt over unfinished tasks.

There are some amazing online learning opportunities that I have been sharing with you already through website links. Try some out, I am sure these links and others you have found will engage students in many rich learning activities. The Ministry of Education is adding to their bank of online resource links so do try some of these:

https://learningfromhome.govt.nz/home

”The Learning Staircase – Stepsweb” has provided free learning literacy licences to Wainui students for the duration of Lockdown. [Stepsweb is a NZ based specialist literacy programme which teaches reading, spelling, vocabulary and comprehension. It is an online programme full of activities to enhance children’s learning at whatever stage they’re at.] All Wainui students have the opportunity to trial this programme and teachers will be adding their students (particularly Year 1 – Year 4 students) over the next few days. Once added into the system, parents will receive an email with their child’s login details.

If you have no access to the internet at home or have no device for your child to use then please email me by the end of tomorrow, Thursday 9th April on gbray@wainui.school.nz

The Ministry of Education is trying to help with these issues and I will pass on your information to them. The Ministry is targeting NCEA level students and those in disadvantaged areas first. Today’s news has announced support in a variety of ways from packs to two TV channels. 

This is a whole new experience for all of us and we don’t want it to be overwhelming for anyone. So please remember that wellbeing comes first, then learning.

“We are all doing “amazingly” in our bubbles!!!

Ngā mihi nui

Gillian