Term 1 2024 Blog Post

Welcome to our first blog of 2024! It's crazy to think we are nearly at the end of Term 1! An extra warm welcome to all of our new Learning Support families. We appreciate you entrusting us with supporting your child with their learning.  We hope that you were all able to have some much needed downtime over the Easter period and are ready for one last week of Term 1 before the school holidays. 

Term one can be a super exciting time for some and an anxious time for both students and their families as they adjust to new teachers, classrooms, schools, routines & get back into normal bedtimes!  We feel for you all, as parents ourselves, and know how challenging it can be to remain upbeat and positive, whilst you watch your child resettle and re-establish themselves.  We are hoping that everyone is now well settled in. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your tutor if you need any support getting your concerns or messages across to your child’s new teacher.

Term 1 has been a busy one for schools with lots of sports events, camps and activities occurring. We thank those of you who have let your tutor know when potential clashes are going to occur with your child’s tuition time.  

We’d love you to be following us on facebook if you aren’t already, we offered some tips, advice and hopefully relatable content to support you on your journey with your child.  

We are very fortunate that many of our branches are continuing to grow, so we are on the hunt for some new fabulous people to join our team. If you know of a teacher or someone who is experienced in the education sector in Dunedin, Wellington or the Papamoa/Tauranga region, that is looking for a new work opportunity, please ask them to email us on [email protected] and we can flick them our New Tutor Information Pack. 

We found this podcast to be a relatable and great listen and wanted to share it with you in case you need something to listen to over the next few weeks. https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/the-little-things/id1666714719?i=1000650863827

We thought this story below may be relatable to some of our wonderful students, so please share with your kids if you think they’ll get something from hearing a story like this!

If you are looking for some quick learning related games, Room Recess may be worth looking at. They have a large range of free games to play online and it can be accessed via a tablet or desktop. Check it out here. Some of the ones we’ve tried are; 

Syllable Slurp - to practice short/long vowels 

Main Idea - read short texts and choose the main idea of that text

Say What? - create crazy recipes/texts by inputting parts of speech

Pirate Plunge - Cloze reading activity to practice homophone use

Sir Roundalot - Focuses on rounding and estimating numbers

Jet Tank - Focuses on Place Value 

Our tutors all appreciate you letting them know when your child is unwell and won’t be attending school and/or tutoring sessions. The more notice you give your child’s tutor the easier it is to reschedule, or switch to a Zoom session instead. A reminder that our LS policy states that all offered tutoring sessions are paid for but that tutors will offer one make-up session per term for missed sessions. If the tutor is unwell then you receive a refund or a credit for missed sessions. 

We hope the remainder of Term 1 goes well for you! 

The Learning Support Team XX