Dear Parents / Caregivers / Whanau

It's so good to see our students embrace school life, put themselves out of their comfort zone and achieve.  Recently, we had a team of 48 young athletes who raced in the Selwyn Zone Cross-Country Champs at Halswell Quarry.  Clearview Primary has some very talented young runners who finished in the top 6 and now progress onto the Canterbury Schools Cross-Country Champs.  There is an article detailing more information about this, but I do want to extend a massive congratulations to all of our children who competed - we are super proud of them all.

We are making some really pleasing progress with LINC-ED, our new SMS (School Management System).   Have you managed to successfully login to the parent portal yet?  If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to do so ASAP as there are so many fantastic features that you will able to access both now and coming up in the near future.

A significant step forward for us has been the development of a new reporting cycle. With National Standards now gone, we have had the opportunity to review how, what and when we report to parents on the progress and achievement of your child and LINC-ED has been the catalyst to bringing about a new way of doing this.   

With this in mind, we have opted for a new format of reporting and this will be shared each term.  This year, we are keeping the focus on "Progressions Reporting" for Reading, Writing and Mathematics. Throughout each term, teachers will evaluate the learning and progress of your child and as they achieve a learning goal, the teacher will then utilise the Linc-Ed software to create a graphic for parents to see detailing how they are progressing against the New Zealand Curriculum level expected for their age.

For example:   (this is a fictitious sample)

(NB: supporting material will accompany these graphics to assist you with making meaning of this)

Parents will also receive a written comment (post) at the end of every term.  It has a cumulative bonus whereby over time, parents will be able to look back over prior years and see the progress and growth that your child has made. 

 So all of this means that traditional “Mid and End of Year Reports” have ceased and we have replaced them with ongoing, termly updates on learning achievement and progress.  

So far, you have received a "Competency Post" (sent out in Week 2) and at the end of this term, you will be able to log into your LINC-ED portal to view another "General Comment Post" and a Progression report for Writing.

I can certainly acknowledge that this all sounds like a lot to take in, so we want to assist parents with learning more about LINC-ED and how our to interpret your child's progress and achievement report.  To help, we will be holding a "LINC-ED Parent Information Session" on Monday 24th June from 7-8pm in our library.  We will also have regular drop-in sessions to speak with our leadership team over a hot drink.

But, as always, we welcome any questions you may have about this, so please don't hesitate to speak with your child's teacher, Team Leader, AP or myself.

Nga mihi nui

Rob Rush

Principal/Tumuaki