From The Principal's Desk

Dear parents and caregivers

I hope this newsletter finds your family well, coping with the colder weather.

Drum roll please............ this term we are excited to announce that we will be proceeding with our new Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA). This will be located outside the hall covering the asphalt area. The goal is for this to be completed by the end of term, we are currently waiting for good weather and the council to confirm the start date. This facility will provide flexibility and a great environment for activities and events.

We have been really lucky with our weather for school events. The School cross country was a great day with the students demonstrating great determination and sportsmanship towards each other. Thank you to parents that came and helped out with this event. Thanks also to Miss McCurdy and Mr Harder for their organisation. It was wonderful to see so many parents in the school supporting this event and our children. The students love it when you come into school, and so do we!

We had our Lockdown practise yesterday and would like to report back that this went extremely well. We work with Harrison Tew, who are an experienced company in Emergency Planning. We regularly update our documentation and make sure that we are ready should the real thing ever happen. Tammy from Harrison Tew came out yesterday and she said our students and our staff were "amazing! It was like coming into the school in the weekend you could hardly believe anyone was in the school". This was due to everyone minimising sound and movement and they did this exceptionally well. It's also good for us to test out our systems and processes and make sure that everything is working well. We hope you received your communication around this.

We have just installed a new intercom and bell/sound system and were able to test this yesterday for the lockdown horn. When you are in the school you may also notice that we now have music playing for bells to indicate break times. We are testing that the sound is able to be heard in all parts of the school. The students have commented that they enjoy the music and I have seen the odd staff member or two (including the office staff) singing along and even doing a few dance moves when the music is playing!

Thank you also for your contribution to the Footsteps dance programme. This is a great way to focus on fitness, movement to music and co-ordination. It involves great listening skills along with understanding people's personal space and self expression.

We have an exciting new Lego wall in our Library and I would like to thank Mrs Angela Pye for organising the book sale to facilitate this as well as Mr Costello for building it. If by chance you have any lego at home that you would like to get rid of (or know of anyone who does) we would greatly appreciate it.

These opportunities above enable us to foster children's curiosity and creativity, which are very important aspects in children's development as well as great attributes to have in adult life. Creativity is an essential disposition in our Learner Profile. We also want them to be able to communicate with confidence, and this can happen through dance and images as well.

Thank you to the parents who came to our teacher parent sharing at the end of last term. We modified our report page and we hope you found it a useful indication of where your child is at for reading, writing and maths. Because we have had such a different start to this year we are now looking forward to a whole term of learning.

Over the year we have taken a focus on each of our values and this term the focus is Resilience. This is such a great opportunity to build on the resilience the students showed last term. The children will be talking about how you cope when things change, what you can do if you get stuck or what to do when things don't work out. Plus that it is OK to fail, we learn from our mistakes and pick ourselves up and try again. You may receive a resilience challenge for your child and/or your family to complete at home. When classroom learning is reinforced by your family in your home environment it can build even more confidence.

We look forward to this term and our engagement with you and your family in this learning.

Ngā mihi nui 

ColleenMargison

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, uniform shop purchases and all school events and activities.  We invite you to see it in action and register.

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