All students have Paul, a specialist in Maori, come into their classroom to develop their understanding of both the Maori language and culture in NZ. The children enjoy many parts of this programme, waiata ( song) being a favourite.

An Outside Sports Agency comes in to take the whole school for football skills. The Juniors, practice their soccer skills and play a mini game. PE and sports develop the ELL`s instructional language skills. Comprehension of the instructions given, is demonstrated instantly in the session.

An Instructional Language Activity. Year 2 ELLs made windmills.Here they test them out by catching the wind or creating a wind force by running.

 

An Instructional Language Activity. Year 3 ELLs make their wind wheels spin faster, using an alternate power source.

Animal Reports.Oral Language Skills. Every child researched an animal of their choice, with Mrs McCabe. They found information in books, on animal cards and online. They found pictures and fabulous photos on line. Some of the facts they discovered were amazing. Did you know a tiger can stay standing up when it is dead? These were presented in two ways. One was text and picture reports that were put on the walls of our room and the corridors of the senior school. The other way was through the medium of film. A lot of scaffolding with reading, listening and speaking was done before anything could be presented. These were done in Terms 2 and 3.

Oral Language opportunities galore! We made a city complete with an airport, zoo, water front, museum , bank, shops, and much more. Then we designed a home on the floor using string to cordon off the rooms and make hall ways. Fun ways to learn and recall many new verbs, the names of places in a city, and the rooms, furniture and utensils of a home. Wonderful sorting and categorising and talking about position (prepositions). A lot of planning and sharing of ideas and resources. What symbols we used to represent different things was full of wonderful reasoning and language. Our new sturdy doll`s house furniture and accompanying family was a wonderful new resource bought this year.

The main street has a bridge going over the sea linking the north and south shores.

A look back on the YEAR in no particular order.......

Term 3 saw a new ESOL learning area emerging in the Atrium. Lots of sunlight and working alongside Rainbow Reading.

                            Animal Reports      Objects in the Classroom.  Numbers and Colours

                     A Trip to the Garden Centre        Maps reading    The world and NZ.

                                 Animal puppets, names of parts of the body, classifying and grouping animals.
                                             Parts of speech.            Tenses.

                                             Spelling,             The MIGHTY TV

                                                                         Computers.

                                           Photos and a recount of the trip to the garden centre.

In July, VAS Students brought in a blanket, to help those who were cold,homeless or living rough.

Term 1 and 2, saw the ESOL room, used as a social hub for years 3-6, during Thursday lunchtimes, promoting creative play and board games.

The supermarket.

                                                             

                                                              Hand  puppets and drama.

                                                                           Dress Up

                                                                      Matchbox cars.

                                                   Giant Chess and  Giant Connect 4.

Term 1 2016 Chinese New Year was celebrated. A display was set up in the Foyer and VAS middle school students also made paper lanterns to help decorate the Remuera Shopping area .

HALLOWEEN is a popular annual event at VAS, that allows the children to dress up and play a variety of harmless, spooky, fun games.

Friends......

                                                                       Siblings.

                                                                    Contestants.

Parents running stalls and games.

Families

                                                                   
                                                                    Class Teacher

                                                                        Treats

                                                                       food and drinks

                                                                 smiles

                                                                         Trick or Treat

                                                                           Music

                                                                         Drama

                                                                Mothers and sons

                                                              Parent and  ELSOL teacher

                                                                  sisters

ESOL Teacher and daughter dress up for Book Week Parade as do all the students.