By the end of year 8

The New Zealand Curriculum: Reading at school

If your child is meeting the Reading Standard by the end of year 8 they will be reading at curriculum level 4.

Your child will be able to find, think about, and bring together information and ideas within and across a range of books, stories and articles. As they do this they will be able to ask and answer questions across all curriculum areas.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• read books with pictures, photos, boxes, diagrams, maps, charts, and graphs that relate to the story’s content. And read books that need explanation, such as complicated plots, high-level (teenage) themes, and abstract (nonconcrete) ideas
• choose the right skills and technologies (eg the Internet) to locate and use a range of stories for particular purposes across the curriculum; eg reading to find out information on a science or social studies topic
• use a growing range of strategies to help them when they don’t understand what they are reading
• work out more difficult words by using a range of skills.

You may notice that the books your child is reading in years 7 and 8 are sometimes the same. Your child will be doing more complex tasks with these books in year 8.

Reading at home

Support their learning

• Help your child gather newspaper, magazine and journal articles for a topic of interest at school.
• Help them find information on Internet sites for a topic your child might be studying at school.
• Talk to your child about what they have been reading on the Internet. What have they learnt? What questions do they still have? Where else could they find information that would be useful?
• Talk to your child’s teacher about available books and resources that relate to your child’s interests.
• Read through your child’s homework tasks and questions together and talk about what they are planning to do to finish the homework.
• Play card and board games as a family. Increase the challenge – it really helps children’s learning.

TIP: Be a role model. Let your child see you enjoying reading – whether it’s the newspaper, a magazine, a comic, a cook book or a novel. Read magazines, newspapers and books in your first language.

Read together

• Read your child a children’s novel that they are interested in – try one or two chapters each day.
• Get your child to listen to younger siblings doing their reading homework (this is a good chance for them to practise some of their own reading skills).
• You can remind them about pausing while the younger child thinks about a word they don’t know, giving them help to work out the word, and giving them praise for their reading, too.
• Have books, magazines, comics, newspapers and other information available for everyone in your family to read on topics that interest your child – eg skateboarding, surfing, fashion.
• Listen together to CDs and mp3s of your child’s favourite stories, books and songs.

TIP: Be positive whenever your child is reading, no matter what they are reading. Respect your child’s opinion as it shows they are thinking about what they read.

Hunt out things to read

• Take a trip to the library and help your child to find books, audio books and magazines that they will enjoy reading – eg books about their favourite musician, movie star, sports celebrity or other role model.
• Find books or magazines that tell stories about who your child is and where they have come from.
• Find a difficult puzzle book to work on together.
• Read and talk about advertising signs you see – talk about how the company decided on the words and the design, and who they are trying to appeal to with the advertising.
• Use a map to find directions for a trip you are going on, or follow the journeys of people on travel and adventure programmes.
• Get some instruction books from the library on how to plan for and make food, gifts, or toys, for family birthdays, Matariki or Christmas. Work through the instructions with your child.
• Find some recipes together that your child might like to cook for a family treat. Be there to help your child as they read through the recipe, get all the ingredients and create the final result.

TIP: Help your child link what they read to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

The New Zealand Curriculum: Writing at school

If your child is meeting the Writing Standard by the end of year 8 they will be writing at curriculum level 4.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• write on their own, choosing language and a clear and logical structure that fits the purpose for writing
• use information they have found through reading, to write in their own words about a topic or theme
• write stories that are clear, short and fit the curriculum task – often including detail and/or comment supporting or explaining the main points
• create paragraphs where the ideas are clearly related and link to other paragraphs
• use complex sentences that are grammatically correct
• use basic punctuation correctly and attempt to use some complex punctuation; eg semicolons, colons, brackets
• use words and phrases that fit the topic, audience, occasion and purpose
• understand that they are writing for a variety of purposes and know how to do this.

Writing at home

Write for a reason

Help your child to:

• write a letter or an email to a newspaper editor, radio announcer or television broadcaster sharing your child’s opinion on a topic of interest in the news
• start a blog/wiki on the Internet and record thoughts about your child’s day to share with their friends and family
• write a proverb, family motto or pepeha and illustrate it with images from the Internet or photo albums
• develop a spreadsheet on the computer to record the progress of your child’s sports team or kapa haka (or one they follow), including games played, performances given, penalties, scores, player/performer of the day
• start a writing journal to record trips and weekend activities
• take some photos using a digital camera and write a picture book for a younger child using the photos
• write a comic using drawings and graphic design to present an idea or story
• make some birthday cards, thank you notes or letters to friends and family.

TIP: Be a role model. Show your child that you write for lots of reasons, eg replying to an email, writing a shopping list, invitation or letter, writing a story about your early life for your child to read.

Make writing fun

Get together with your child to:

• play strategy games and do word puzzles like wordfinds and crosswords
• make the weekly shopping list using supermarket flyers and finding all the bargains and savings to fit the budget
• write some descriptions for items you may wish to sell using the Internet
• find out about some of your family history (whakapapa) and/or family stories (pakiwaitara) and record these stories to share with other family/whānau members.

TIP: Make writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, anytime.

Talking about writing with your child

• Ask them about a piece of writing they are doing at school and/or for their homework.
• Tell them about some writing you are currently doing – a letter, a poem, a list for the holidays, a scrapbook, something you are doing for work or study.
• Help them to use dictionaries and thesaurus (both paper and Internet versions).

TIP: Talk about what your child writes. Be interested. Use it as a way of starting conversations. Listen to your child's opinion, even if you don’t agree with it.

The New Zealand Curriculum: Mathematics at school

If your child is meeting the Mathematics Standard by the end of year 8 they will be working at curriculum level 4, solving realistic problems using their growing understanding of number, algebra, geometry, measurement and statistics.

They will be able to use multiplication strategies to solve problems using fractions, decimals and percentages. They will be able explain different ways to solve problems. They will have a range of thinking strategies to help them to investigate mathematics.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• solve problems with decimals and integers using addition and subtraction
• use a range of multiplication methods to solve problems with whole numbers and fractions
• create and use tables, graphs and rules to show linear and non-linear relationships
• measure objects and make simple conversions between units of measure
• find perimeters and areas of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and volumes of cuboids
• explore transformation and discuss how shapes and patterns change after a transformation
• describe locations and give directions
• using scales, bearings and co-ordinates
• gather and use data that gives several pieces of information (eg age and size)
• sort data and display in different ways, and discuss patterns and trends
• use fractions to discuss the likelihoods of outcomes involving chance.

This is a small part of the skills and knowledge your child is learning in order to meet this standard. Talk to the teacher for more information about your child’s learning.

Focus on number

During year 8, 40–60 per cent of mathematics teaching time will focus on number learning.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child:

• find and connect numbers around your home and on family outings, e.g., read the odometer on the car to see how many kilometres the car can go on a tank of petrol and how much it costs to refill to work out how much it costs per kilometre
• talk about sales in town – 15% off, 33%, 20%, half price. Look for the best value. What would the price of the item be after the discount? Is it better to buy two items and get one free or get 25% off the price of the items?
• budget pocket money and/or plan ahead to open a savings account or reach a savings target. Talk about earning interest. Calculate what interest would be earned using different savings schemes
• work out the area of your home, sports stadium or whare nui – how many square metres is it?
• talk about goals and plan ahead to budget for items for themselves or for others
• do complicated number puzzles.

TIP: The way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• planning to help make a dish or a full meal for the family or even a community event at the hall or marae – working out the cost of making it at home versus buying it already made, planning the preparation and cooking time – and focus on the ingredients and the amounts of fat and sugar, too.
• planning what proportion of their own, or their brother’s and sister’s, time should be spent on tasks (like homework, sleep, TV, sport, kapa haka) to make sure there’s time left for fun and family
• watching documentaries, which are full of facts and information using mathematics
• reading the newspaper to find articles or advertisements featuring graphs or tables which may be misleading.

TIP: Talk with your child’s teacher to understand what they are learning in mathematics and what the learning is in the homework they’re doing.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play games – find new card and board games that use strategy
• calculate the chance of their favourite team winning the tournament. Investigate how many points they need and work out what their competitors need as well
• play outdoor games – skateboarding, frisbee, touch rugby, kilikiti, cricket, soccer, petanque, netball
• plan and perform a rap, dance or waiata a ringa and draw up the outline of the dance steps on graph paper
• make a present or gift for someone using scrapbooking, kōwhaiwhai, quilting, doing tivaevae, collage, painting, carving, knitting, sewing or carpentry
• plan for when you have saved $10/$20/$30 – what would be the best use of that money for a day out?

TIP: Being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’ t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Support your child

As parents and whānau you play a big part in your child’s learning every day, and you can support and build on what they learn at school too.

Work together

Help support your child’s learning by building a good relationship with your child’s teacher, finding out how your child is doing and working together to support their learning.