One and a half weeks to go. We begin our run of special events this week -starting with a special assembly for Lorraine Malpass this afternoon. Lorraine has been with us for 27 years and we will most certainly miss her. She has been such a positive teacher and colleague -and all of us have fond memories of her time here. We wish Lorraine all the best for her retirement and planned adventures around the country!

Week 9 Calendar:

Monday: Special Assembly for Mrs Malpass

Tuesday: Swim Safety (Junior); BOT Meeting

Wednesday: Junior Syndicate Prizegiving 9:15am

Thursday: House of Bricks -Kiokio

Friday: Whanau Friday; Reports Online & Class Placements

Important Dates for your calendar:

9th December -Junior Syndicate Prizegiving 9:15am

11th December -Year 8 Dinner; Reports Online

14th December -Junior Syndicate Beach Trip; Wheki Prizegiving 1:00pm; Korau Prizegiving 6:00pm

16th December -End of Term 4 -finish time 12:30pm (roughly)

Week 9 News:

Kia ora

A huge thank you to the many families who gave us feedback on student homeroom placements for next year. This has been useful in many cases, particularly when it comes to discussions on learning progress, interests and maturity.

It has been more problematic when we receive direct requests for students to be with a best friend, or to be separated from someone. While this information is useful to understand the friendship dynamics, it cannot be the main driver for student placements. Pairing up individual student preferences is not our main placement criteria. (We know friendships fluctuate greatly over the course of schooling.)

Our responsibility at school, is to place children in the best learning environment, where the homeroom teacher can best meet their learning needs. This involves their current learning levels, their learning style, their interests, and their ability to work with the other children in the room. In most cases our school based decisions have been the same as parental requests, but in some cases it has not.

In the cases where we have not followed a parent request, please be assured that we have taken your input seriously. Every parent email has been discussed across the whole teaching staff. We have weighed up all the factors above, coupled with the need to keep all class sizes within a reasonable range.

The 2021 class organisation will be published on Friday. It has changed slightly from that published earlier. Based on parental feedback, teacher observation and the number of students involved, we have split the Year 2 class into two Yr 2/3 homerooms. This has allowed us to take account of parental feedback at the same time as making homerooms more balanced in the Katote Hub

Thank you all for you trust. We look forward to 2021.

David Taylor

Principal

Fernside School

School Reports & Class Placements:

These will be released on Friday afternoon (After school)

What will you be receiving?

Comments explaining progress against our Fernside Standards for Reading, Writing and Mathematics. A Grow/ General comment -a personalised comment explaining how your child has gone over the year in regards to our GROW values. 

Attendance data for the year.

Class placement for 2021 (This is the first time we have tried this -it is a preliminary draft and we may need to make a few tweaks and changes before the start of 2021).

How do you access your reports?

Read the reporting article from term 2

Any issues accessing reports please don't hesitate to contact me. andrew.spencer@fernside.school.nz

Thanks

Andrew

Stationery Lists 2021

All stationery lists can be found at the link below. These can be ordered from the office max website or you can source your own stationery. Please be aware that we will not be stocking stationery next year so you may need a few spare items to cover the year.  

https://www.myschool.co.nz/fernside