#7 Newsletter

Have something to share? Get in contact with one of our Across School Leaders – we would love to hear from you!

[email protected] 21st Century Learning

[email protected] Structured Literacy

Facebook Group

Exciting news! Kāhui Ako ki Orewa has launched a vibrant new Facebook community designed to ignite connection and collaboration among us all. This is your opportunity to dive into a dynamic space where we can share our incredible teaching and learning journeys, and celebrate the innovation happening across our schools. Ready to be inspired and connect with fellow educators? Click here to explore and join our fantastic community and let’s amplify the amazing work we do!

Orewa Matariki Celebration 2025

Tēnā koutou,

Te Herenga Waka o Orewa Marae warmly invites the Hibiscus Coast community to join us for our annual Matariki Ahunga Nui ceremony, which will take place at Orewa Beach (in front of the surf club) on the Matariki public holiday, Friday 20th June, at 6am.

Join us for a special event to celebrate the rising of the Matariki star cluster and the beginning of the Māori New Year. During the ceremony, we will share karakia, waiata, and mātauranga Māori, including knowledge about the Matariki star cluster and its cultural significance. This gathering offers a dedicated moment for reflection and remembrance, where we will honour our loved ones who have passed by collectively naming and paying tribute to those who have left us throughout the year.

This event will be held outside the Orewa Surf Lifesaving Club, rain or shine, and will begin promptly at 6am. We recommend wearing warm clothing and bringing rain gear and a seat if you wish to be comfortable. A sausage sizzle, hot drinks, and soup will be provided.

You can keep up to date via our Facebook Event.

We also have a selection of Matariki gear available on our website (cut-off date is May 16th)

Please feel free to share this amongst your communities, we hope to see you all there to share the morning with us.

The Compensating Reader:

That student who seems to be able to read and scores high on a PM Benchmark or Probe, but not on a science of reading aligned assessment.

Why does it matter?

Some students make up for their lack of decoding skills by guessing, using meaning and identifying memorized words. These strategies lead to problems with fluency and comprehension as they move up the year levels. When students sight read, it strains their working memory, leaving very little attention available to comprehend. In the early years they appear to be doing well, but it can eventually lead to underachievement, anxiety, and behaviour issues.

Some signs to look out for:

Weak spelling
High levels of verbal language, but writing doesn’t match

Compensators often have strong intellectual skills and may be intelligent students who have taught themselves an alternative strategy (they memorise words) and convince themselves and others that they are reading.

Pay attention to what your SOR-aligned assessments are telling you!

All students need explicit instruction of word recognition skills to ensure that they can decode effectively.

Read the full blog here

This article is an interesting read about compensators, referencing David Kilpatrick, and how to promote orthographic mapping and break the guessing habit for different types of readers.

What can I do about a compensator?

Classroom Highlight: Bee-Bot Coding + Geometry Fun!

Today, our Year 2 buddies joined us for a hands-on coding adventure all about 2D shapes!

Using our trusty Bee-Bots and Code & Go Mice, students explored geometry in an exciting new way—programming robots to find shapes like triangles, circles, and rectangles on a giant floor mat.

They worked together to:

Identify and describe shapes
Plan and input directional code
Debug and improve their instructions

One of the challenges? “Go to the shape with four equal sides, the picture of the square, and the name of the shape” — and off they went, coding their way to a square!

While selected groups worked with their teacher on this challenge, other students explored coding pathways with the Code & Go Mice… many interesting strategies for following the path were observed!

It was incredible to see the learning come to life, combining maths, teamwork, and digital technologies in one interactive lesson.

Big thumbs up from our tamariki

Introduction to the Wellbeing Stories

There are six wellbeing stories, full of characters which help children understand how we think about things, and how to turn those thoughts around with resilience and positivity.

Click on the link to access the introduction, character descriptions, posters and the six stories.

Wellbeing Stories

From the Website:

Meet the characters: find out about the stories: learn about the toolkits

You know how sometimes there’s a little voice in your head that says things like ‘that’s not fair’ or ‘that stupid idiot missing the goal’ or ‘I wonder if Mel still wants to be friends with me’. Most of the time, these voices are just thoughts but sometimes they are attached to some strong feelings such as excitement, anger, disgust, fear or misery.

We make sense of the world by how we think about things. Some ways of thinking are helpful – but others are not. They can make tricky situations worse and make us feel bad.

These six wellbeing stories are about alternative ways of thinking. There are ten characters to represent different kinds of self-talk. These are either helpful to you or really not helpful at all and get in the way of your wellbeing big time!

The positive characters give you good ideas and good feelings but the negative ones usually make you feel horrible. They sometimes encourage you to think nasty things about other people. Recognising these different voices shows there are choices about how you see the world and how you deal with what happens to you. Making friends with the positive characters will help you bounce back when things are tough.

It is hard to do this all by yourself so in each story, someone else lends a hand.

Click here for one of the six stories: Dana and the Doom Merchant Messages

Kāhui Ako Across the Motu

A Kāhuinga Arataki National Association shared some of the achievements from Kāhui Ako Across New Zealand. These were shared at the Leading Change: Collaboration and Connection Conference in May last month. There is some amazing mahi being done around the motu! Check it out here!

One keynote speaker, Ken Wilson, spoke directly regarding the disestablishment of Kāhui Ako and the effect this will have on teaching as a profession. Read his speech here.

Hui Dates

Thursday 19th June – ASL @ Orewa Primary – WSL @ Orewa College