Kia ora whānau,

We have had such a settled and beautiful start to the term. The weather certainly helps. Thank you for having your children well rested and ready to return back to school looking fantastic in school uniform and new haircuts!

Our Year 4’s have attended their very first overnight camp at Woodend and thankfully the rain stayed away and all activities could go ahead as planned. Sincere thanks to the parents who took time away from work and family life to help out and shout out to our staff for organising and leading a great first camp. That means that about 220 children have attended camps this year and that is fabulous. Many schools are unable to continue with these old school type camps as they are expensive. It can be hard for other schools to get parent support to attend and I can understand how both of those issues are challenging for whānau to manage in these very tight financial times. Our survey in 2023 was overwhelmingly supportive of continuing with overnight camps and so far we have never had an issue with finding enough parents to help out…in fact we have the opposite occur…too many parents which is a good problem to have! So thank you everyone. Your children are having a great experience.

Next week we are having a Book Week to celebrate the re-opening of our library and to promote literacy :) The Book Character Parade is on Thursday at 9:10am. We will walk around the block and it is always great fun to have parents drive around tooting encouragement:). We are suggesting a gold coin donation which will go towards the Heroes of the Hill BBQ. This is a way that the local residents can say thank you to the fire and emergency personnel and their families for their hard work and dedication during the Port Hills fires.   

In the next week, or so, you will receive a survey asking if you are happy to sell chocolates to raise money for the scooter track. Our PTA is a small group of hardworking whānau who come together to raise funds (and fun) for the school. The PTA has many small fundraisers throughout the year that you can opt into e.g; bulbs, pizza lunches, discos etc. Our major fundraiser this year is selling chocolates and this will happen this term. Our last chocolate fundraiser was in 2020, so it is not a fundraiser we do very often, however, it is a great fundraiser and we certainly need more funds to get the scooter track across the line! At this stage we have about $30k put aside for this, and we know that the track will likely cost around the $70 - $90k mark. We are applying for funding, as it will be a community resource, however the more we contribute, the more likely it is to be successful. Selling chocolates is optional, so please complete the survey so we can ensure we get chocolates to those people that are keen to sell 😀 

You may be aware that the Government is mandating the Structured Literacy Approach, for the teaching of reading. We have been using Better Start to Literacy Approach (BSLA), the Government accredited provider, for a few years now, so this is not new for us. Our reading achievement data has always been well above the Ministry guidelines of 80% of students achieving "at or above" expectation. For the last 3 years, our data sits between 87% - 90% and the decade before that, the percentages are also within that range. Regardless of the approach we use, our achievement data is consistently above expectation. I am sad to see the demise of Reading Recovery. In our school, the Reading Recovery Programme has worked successfully for nearly all of our most at risk learners. It bothers me that this support is being removed and I wonder what supports will be in place for those that need more assistance. Reading Recovery works well alongside BSLA and I would prefer it if support for both was continued. One size does not fit all, and we need to have other options for those that require more. 

The Government has also mandated that mobile phones are not to be used at school. This is not a problem for us. Another focus is School Attendance. In 2022, we were identified as a school that had high attendance and we were asked to be part of a case study to look at the strategies we use that encourage frequent attendance. Each term we submit our attendance data to the Ministry of Education where it is analysed and reported on. Our attendance remains well above the national average.

Our tamariki are having a blast in the sunshine, perfecting their skipping skills for Jumping June! It's such a lovely time at our school with all the fun activities happening! 😊

The forecast looks good for the weekend which is wonderful. I wish all the Year 4’s a long sleep in tomorrow!

Ngā mihi

Lee