From The Principal's Desk

8th June 2021

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I do hope that you had a lovely Queens Birthday weekend. It was great to see the children back at school today. When I asked one child this morning how her weekend was, she said "yes it was good and it was long!"

Thank you very much for your understanding with our Teacher Only Day on Friday. This is the 4th of the 8 days that we have been granted by the Ministry of Education.

During our Teacher Only Day we explored further the concept of Learner Agency and what this looks like at Mellons Bay School. We want our children to be independent thinkers and workers and able to self regulate. We want them to be able to decide how best they learn, where the learn best and with who. The teacher is there to facilitate this learning and also to give explicit teaching to support those who need it and in real time. Our definition is:

At Mellons Bay School Agentic Learners are confident in knowing and using their strengths and interests, understanding what they are learning and where they are heading to next. Learners are supported and empowered to take ownership, choice and action to navigate their learning.

Thank you also for your support of our fundraising events lately. We would like to thank the PTA and all the parents who helped. There were some yummy delights, many smiling faces and happy tummies.

It was great to see our community support Pink Shirt Day - we had parents support and I know that some parents even supported the cause in their work place. We also had many young brothers and sisters who do not attend our school yet supporting. We love it when our whole community gets behind our events and we do things together. In the picture Daniel wanted to take an extra $2 out of his money box to support the cause and when another child was passing him on the way into school, she realised she didn't have a coin and Daniel said, 'don't worry you can use one of mine'. Such lovely support and caring without any prompting!

Our pyjama breakfast was a great hit with the juniors. I would like to let it be known that I do bring the dinosaur onesie out at this time every year, and not at any other time! Along with donations we have 31 pairs of pyjamas to donate to Starship so thank you for this support.

We are continuing with Kelly Sports and Mrs Costello remarked to me this morning how much fun the children were having trying to play hockey with polystyrene noodles. Lots of shrieks of laughter could be heard. This was all able to to happen under our Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA), which is absolutely fabulous for this weather. Even the Kelly Sports staff have commented on how good our COLA is. We are so blessed to have this facility at this time. The field is out of use at the moment as we are having new drainage, so that we can use it more often. We hope to have the Tiger Turf under the COLA in the October holidays. This will also soak up some of the echo that can be heard under the canopy.

We have an excellent event coming up! Even though the weather is a bit wet and cold I do encourage you to come and see Kathryn Berkett. We are lucky as she will be coming specifically to talk to our community about our value of

RAISING RESILIENT CHILDREN

Kathryn is practical. She understands from her own experience. She has great strategies and is so easy to listen to.

A NIGHT NOT TO BE MISSED

Please mark 24th June in your calendar.

Please also mark July 1st as we look forward to seeing you at our Parent Teacher Sharing in week 9. This will be a great time to chat with your child's teacher about your child's achievement, their progress and next steps. You will receive a mid-year report that indicates your child's achievement in Reading, Writing and Maths in relation to the New Zealand Curriculum, at this point in time. This will be used as part of the discussion with your teacher which we hope you will find helpful.

Ngā mihi nui

Colleen Margison

Principal

Learning to Navigate our Changing World

News Bites

Kindo is here!!

This is a cashless and simple payment system designed for schools.  Going forward we will be putting all school related costs on Kindo to make life easier for all.  School donations and all school events and activities.  We invite you to see it in action and register.

To register please click here

Already registered? Click here to sign in

To view 'how it works' click here