Amesbury Digest - 5th July 2021

Kia ora koutou,

We are now in our final week of Term 2 - half of the school year gone already! It has been a very positive start to the school year, with a good range of events and exciting learning happening. We are endeavouring to send out more articles around the different kinds of learning going on in the hubs, so that parents can get more of a sense of what is happening for your tamariki (children).

Admin notices

- New appointment: We have employed a second release teacher for Terms 3 and 4 this year. Amaria has been completing some release in Koru Hub as part of her leadership role, along with teaching part time with a much smaller whānau group. From Term 3 onwards she becomes a full time whānau teacher as a second group of students from Kowhai move to join the main group (slightly older students) in Koru. Those students will form the second half of Amaria’s whānau group. With Amaria teaching full time, we need a second release teacher to work with Gina, covering all release in Koru Hub, and incidental release across the rest of the school.

The teacher we have appointed is Yeping He. Yeping has been teaching for a number of years in Singapore. Her two children, Xiangyi and Yiqi, are ākonga (students) at Amesbury. We are really looking forward to Yeping joining our team.

- 2022 term dates: The Board of Trustees has approved the dates set for the 2022 school year. We know that some parents are beginning to look ahead to book holidays and time away over the summer break, so knowing the dates will be useful for planning this.

*Term 1 2022: Tuesday 1 Feb - Thursday 14 April

*Term 2: Monday 2 May to Friday 8 July

*Term 3: Monday 25 July to Friday 30 September

*Term 4: Monday 17 October - Wed 14th Dec

Community Partnering Document

The Board of Trustees has recently reviewed our Community Partnering Document, which lays out our shared approach between home and school to working together to provide the best learning journey for our tamariki (children). Here is a link to the document.

The key aspects of this document are open and shared communication between home and school, engaging actively and positively with our tamariki, and engaging positively and respectfully with each other. It has been a while since we last consulted on this document, and given that it is a shared agreement between home and school, it would be good to have a shared discussion around this partnering document to review and revise it together. We will hold a consultation session mid way through next term around this.

Events coming up

Now that we are back in alert level 1, we are rescheduling the postponed events. 

Our second open day for co-curricular lessons ran last week. Our whole school evacuation and pick up drill will be held early next term, and our school discos will run on Thursday of the first week of next term. Reminders about this will be sent out at the start of next term.

- Tuesday 6th July: Regional Cross Country competition

- Wednesday 7th July: Report comments go live on HERO

- Friday 9th July: Term 2 ends. School finishes for term break at 3pm

- Monday 26th July: Term 3 starts

- Tuesday 27th July: Newlands Intermediate School in Action morning (year 6 students)

- Friday 30th July: Playhouse Theatre performance of Rumpelstiltskin at school (all students)

Kia pai tō hararei - have a good holiday. We look forward to seeing you all back with us again after the term break.

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham