Principal Pānui

Kia ora e te Whānau

Classroom programmes are humming with teachers having delved deeper into start of year assessment information. Our learners are busy, and already showing signs of progress. It's action stations!

Curriculum Updates - this affects parents and caregivers: With the Ministry of Education's updated priorities, we are now required to be implementing the new English and Maths Curriculums. As you may have read from my pānui last year, we started this mahi | work in Term 4, with Team Leaders Janine and Sharna leading this change. These are two massive projects! Curriculums are key documents to teachers. They outline the overview of expected progress across a school, what to teach, how to teach and with that comes changes to assessment routines and revised professional language. It means a few things for parents / caregivers: have awareness that our teachers and leaders are doing some hefty professional learning after 3:00pm - they may not respond to emails in time, and to expect changes in our reporting routines and language when we report on progress and achievement (commencing later this term via Hero).

A reminder that we have a Teacher Only Day for curriculum work on Monday. We are joining our community of learning colleagues from eleven other schools at Cobham Intermediate.

Information Sent to Parents / Caregivers: We understand that a number of notices are being sent via the Hero app. This reduces the need for our newsletter to be published every two weeks. We will now be moving to a cycle of sending a newsletter every three weeks.

It's great to hear that parents are appreciating the Hero app - having just one place to receive messages and celebrations of learning. If you have children in more than one teaching team, I bet that you are receiving a number of Hero notices. Please be patient with us as we learn to schedule notices according to priorities.

Student Leadership: Feedback from parents last year tells us that opportunities are key to develop our children's confidence. Year 6 feedback last year informed us that children want to work as a team to develop solutions, and that they want to have more voice in our school events and improvements. Enlightened with this information, we have updated what was previously the two school leaders and the School Council.

Ngā Mahuri Tōtara | Young Leaders: This is a group of six Year 6 students who present as examples of learning skills and values in action.  They represent areas of interest to other students, and they yearn to improve our school through compassionately listening to the thoughts and ideas of our people. While I see a whole year group of Year 6 children who reflect this profile, children have applied to be a member of the Ngā Mahuri Totara team.

Class Ambassadors: Each class votes on the ambassador each term. They are responsible for sharing with members of the Ngā Mahūri Tōtara team what matters to their class.  They will also be room tour guides to any visitors.  They are confident in the class’ routines.

Thank you whānau for your support already. I know that the staff will join me in saying that I am grateful for our wonderful community!