Discoverers One - Rooms 1 and 2: May 2019

These things can help me at home - Reading and Writing

 Tell me stories about family events, and then ask me to re-tell in my own words. (My teacher says it doesn’t matter if I miss some things out).
 Tell me stories about events that are important to our hapu and or iwi and help me to think about how and why they are important today.
 Help me see that reading and writing go together, by leaving notes for me and encouraging me to leave notes for you. You could put them under my pillow, in my lunch box, on the kitchen bench or on the bathroom mirror.
 Share with me the myths and legends of our tipuna. Help me to consider what messages these carry about tikanga Māori.
 Ask me to write short messages e.g. e-mails and texts to my nana and grandad.
 When the reading book I choose seems a bit hard, take turns at reading it with me and talking about the story - for example, ask me things like: What do you think will happen next? Do the characters remind you of anyone you know?
 Help me see that words can be organised in different ways on a page by helping me to read bus timetables, maps and recipes.
 Help me to write for different purposes - for example, ask me to write a shopping list, a menu for a special dinner, or thank you messages.
 Talk to me about the books I am reading and the authors I like. It would be great if you could take me to join the local library to find more books by the authors I like.
 Talk to me about interesting new words and what they mean. Have turns with me to find a new word to discuss each day.
 When I read to you, use the Pause, Prompt, Praise strategy we use at school. When I stop at a difficult word, remind me to pause and give me about five seconds to think. If I can’t figure out the word on my own, prompt me by reminding me to use one of the strategies my teacher uses e.g. say Try that again, or ask me a question about the meaning of the story, or ask me to think of a word that makes sense. If I don’t know the word after I have tried it twice, tell me what the word is. When I try hard, praise me, tell me something good you noticed. You might say:
-  I like the way you tried to work that out.
-  I’m glad you noticed that didn’t make sense/sound right/look right.
-  I saw you checking the picture. Good idea.
-  I like the way you skipped the word and then went back.

 Watch Kapa Haka with me. Talk with me about the various ways meaning is made and communicated with an audience through words, actions and facial expressions.
 When you are reading to me, pause occasionally and talk with me about what’s happening in the story and any new or interesting words.
 Tell me about a TV programme you liked when you were my age and ask me to tell you what I like about the characters in my favourite TV programme.
 Talk to me about the steps you are taking as you make dinner or as you fix something.
 Talk about the things we see when we travel together, interesting signs, cars, buildings, and people. Play I Spy.
 Take turns reading with me, one page each.
 Encourage me to read - for example, by letting me choose reading or sleeping for the first 30
minutes of bedtime.

These things can help me at home – Mathematics

 Ask me to help with the shopping by comparing the brands of the things we buy to find the best value for money.
 Teach me a new card game we can play together.
 Let me show you my favourite app with some maths in it.
 Help me practise the facts I’m trying to memorise at the moment - for example, forwards and backwards from 100, the 7 times tables or doubling and halving numbers up to 20.
 Ask me to help prepare dinner and talk to me about any maths involved - for example, halves, quarters, litres, grams, temperatures, etc. and get me to do any measuring or weighing needed.
 Teach me one of the games you played when you were young.
 Show me and talk with me about what the graphs and tables in our newspaper mean.
 Have a traditional games night at home where the whole family plays a board game like Monopoly together.
 Tell me about the games you played with your brothers and sisters before computers and TV.
 Keep playing with me, and encouraging me, in the hard games I’m learning, for example, chess, backgammon or mah-jong, even though I’m not very good yet.
 Try one of the internet maths games I’ve found, and try to beat my best score.
 Talk to me about the maths you use every day and at work.
 Show me the family budget and explain how you pay all the bills and save.
 Ask me to figure out how much change you should get back from a purchase. If I get the amount right, occasionally you might let me keep the change!
 Help me learn to estimate things like how much things weigh, how long they are, the cost of our groceries, or how long it will take to travel to a certain place.
 Set up a reward system at home to encourage me to remember what I need to do.

 Make the points large or small to match what I am learning at school, e.g. a child in year 5 might get 10,000 points for doing the dishes or 758 points for taking out the rubbish and a reward when they have 250,000 points.

 When we are driving or walking, play Launchpad with me. Spot a number, then use it as a launch pad for seeing how many combinations we can make that number make. For example, there’s a 12 on a letterbox, that's 3x4, 2x6, 10+2, 100–88, half of 24 etc.
 Have a look in the families' section of the NZ Maths website for activities and games we can do together: http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/families
These things can help me at home – Key Competencies
-  Help me learn that time and effort pays off. For example, when I say This is too hard, say, That’s great because now you have an opportunity to learn something new.
-  If I make a mistake, celebrate it as an opportunity to learn. Help me to understand that making mistakes will help me learn.
-  If I feel like giving up on a task, encourage me to stick at it a little longer and/or to try another way to do it.
-  When I say That’s good enough, encourage me to ask if it is really my best work.
-  Encourage me to apply the ‘can do’ attitude I have in rugby to my writing goals.
-  Talk to me about the ways other people might see issues. Help me see things from a range of different perspectives.
-  Give me increasing responsibility for a task that will help at home, e.g. I could feed the cat, empty the rubbish on Saturdays or help prepare dinner on Sundays.
-  Help me to manage my television viewing time by giving me television tickets. Each week I could be given an agreed number of tickets that can each be used for 30 minutes of TV time. A variation is that any tickets remaining at the end of the week could be cashed in for 25 or 50 cents each.
-  Help me see my problems are temporary, by saying they are glitches, snags or hard spots and talking with me about things I can do to get through them.
-  Help me to role-play so I can see other people’s views as clearly as possible.
-  Help me to take more responsibility for my school things. For example, have me choose a place to put a cardboard box, perhaps near the door of my room. Every afternoon, I will put my school things in the box. When my home reading is done, it will go in the box, too. In the morning I will check the box before I leave for school.
-  Help me to understand and experience the consequences of my choices.
-  Help me break down bigger tasks (e.g. cleaning my room or getting ready for school) into
  smaller steps.
-  Encourage me to do small things that will help others.