Primary School News

Teachers in Year 0-3 have started to deliver the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) in their classroom programmes this week. As many of you will have heard via the media, the teaching of structured literacy will become compulsory from the beginning of 2025 in all New Zealand classrooms in Year 0-3.  This is a huge change in our approach to teaching reading at school. It will also mean a huge change in the strategies you see your children using and the types of reading books they will be bringing home.  The new approach to teaching Reading is phonics based and will be different to how we all were taught Reading at school.  Our BSLA facilitator Karen Nicholls and I are hosting a parent meeting about BSLA so we can share how the programme operates and answer some of the questions you will have.  Our BSLA parent meeting will be on Tuesday September 10th at 2pm in the community room and we look forward to seeing you there.

For more information on the Better Start Literacy Approach, visit the website: www.betterstartapproach.com.

Last week our Year 4-8 students travelled to Hurunui College to compete in the HPSSA 7 A-side Tournament where we had the most amazing day.  Our teams played three sports: soccer, netball and touch against other schools in the Hurunui District.  A huge thank you to all the parents and whanau who travelled down to Hawarden and helped to manage and support teams.

Later that day I was delighted to attend the Hawarden Waikari Lions speech competition at the Hawarden Hall. We had four students competing in the Year 7/8 division.  Congratulations to Molly Schuurman who won the cup and to Tazmin Emsley for placing 3rd.  Congratulations to James Van Arendonk and Emma Whittleston who were also selected from Tapuae-o-Uenuku to represent our school. 

It's our Pet Day year, so we have booked Friday October the 18th.  We really struggled to find a date that would fit in our calendar this term so next term is the soonest we can hold this much anticipated event!  There will be more details coming out before the holidays, so please watch out for these. In the meantime, we would love to see some more calves and lambs at our pet day, so please help encourage your children to bring a calf or a lamb if you have access to one.

Ngā mihi nui

Kylee Habgood

Deputy Principal - Primary School