Amesbury Digest - 19th October 2020

Kia ora koutou,

We have had a very positive start to the term. The week began with rain and wind, but thankfully ended with glorious sunshine! Our year 3-6 students braved the cold wind and occasional rain squall on Wednesday to participate in their Athletics Day at Newtown Park. An article will be sent out shortly to give you all more details about the fabulous event, and the teachers were so impressed with the efforts our students put into the day. Special thanks to Michelle for organising the day, and to all teachers and parent helpers who worked hard to make it all run smoothly.

Students crossing Amesbury Drive

As I was on morning crossing duty one day last week, I noticed a  number of students crossing over Amesbury Drive at or near the intersection at Erlestoke Crescent. This is quite a dangerous place for students to cross by themselves, as cars can come down the hill fairly fast along that part of the road, and cars come from several different directions at the intersection. There are also often cars parked along that stretch of the road at drop off and pick up times, as it is so close to school, and this can make it harder for young children to see the road clearly and make good judgements about when to cross.

If you know your child/ren walk to school and need to cross Amesbury Drive, please talk with them about safe crossing habits, and remind them that the safest way for children to cross this busy road is to walk down to the patrolled crossing, where an adult is on duty before and after school each day. We also recommend that parents and whānau who walk with their children also cross at the crossing, to model safe crossing habits.

New learning management system in 2021

For the past seven years we have used our own bespoke student management system called ALF (Amesbury Learning Framework) to record and track student learning. We designed this system ourselves, because at that time no other learning system seemed to have the depth of detail that we required for personalising learning. However, we have now found a new learning management system that provides the personalised approach and depth of detail that we are looking for, whilst being faster and more powerful than ALF. As such we will be moving over to this new system, called Linc-ed HERO, for the start of 2021. HERO will take the place of ALF, and it will also take the place of our school app, and will become the one place to go to for all main communications and information about your child’s learning.

We will spend this term populating HERO behind the scenes and getting it ready for use. Early next year we will run information sessions to introduce the new system and show parents how to use it. Some of the more established members of staff, especially those of us who have been with the school since the start, are sad to see the end of ALF, as this system has been fundamental in helping us to develop our collaborative practice and personalised approach to learning. However, we are really excited about the opportunities this new learning system will open up, and we hope that it will be much easier for parents to have all key information and communication in one place.

Events coming up

- Mihi Whakatau: Monday 19 October (Week 2 of Term 4). This is our whole school welcome for any new students who have started school since our previous welcome. It is held in the school hall at 2:30pm on Monday. For more details, please see this article. There is an information session for the parents of new entrant students at 3:15pm, just after the Mihi Whakatau.

- Staff only day: Friday 23 October (Week 2 of Term 4). Please note that school is closed for instruction on this day. This makes it an extra long weekend for students, as Monday 26 October is a public holiday (Labour Day), meaning school is also closed. During the staff only day, teachers will continue our work on development of our maths programme across the school.

- Walk or Wheels Week: Week 2 of this term (19 - 23 October). All students are encouraged to travel to school by walking, biking, scootering or skating, rather than travelling in a vehicle. They can gain stamps on their passport card each time they walk or wheel to school, and completed passport cards can earn chances to win prizes.

- Northern Zone Athletics: Monday 2nd November. This is for year 4-6 students who qualified at our school Athletics Day to represent the school at the zone event. 

- Year 0 - 2 Athletics: Tuesday 3rd November. This event will be held at school from 9:30am - 12:30pm. 

Just a reminder that the coming weekend is a long break for Amesbury students; we have a teacher only on Friday 23rd (school is closed for instruction), and on Monday 26th school is also closed due to our Labour Day public holiday. We will look forward to seeing you all back with us again on Tuesday 27th October.

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham (Acting Principal)