Kia ora koutou

Primary Years Programme (PYP) Network Meeting

Last Friday we had twenty-one International Baccalaureate (IB) principals and coordinators from around New Zealand attend a PYP Network meeting held at Mt Pleasant School. These events are held twice a year, and are hosted by schools within the IB network. As part of this, they visited classrooms, talked with our students about their learning, and observed students working on their current Unit of Inquiry. The overwhelming feedback was around the culture and feel that exists within the school, and the learning that was taking place. Many of these schools have been IB schools for many years, so it was great to get such positive and uplifting feedback. 
After visiting classrooms, we went down to the new community centre for the remainder of the day (oh to have our own facility).  There, we presented the work we have been implementing around the well-being initiative and worked with the other leaders on professional learning around the IB programmes. It was great to feel connected with like-minded schools and share the developments that will make all our schools stronger within the network.

Keeping our Children Safe 

You will be aware of the spate of attempted abductions of students on their way to and from school. While Mt Pleasant is a very safe community, it is timely to discuss this with your children and the strategies to use should they be faced with this. We do cover this in the Health Curriculum within the Keeping Ourselves Safe Programme. The programme talks about identifying ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ situations and how to recognise these. The main point here, is being able to recognise the ‘unsafe’ feelings and what to do if they experience these. We recommend that for students who travel on their own to school, you have an agreed plan for where they will walk and an agreement they will not deviate from this. Including if an adult offers a ride or asks them to get in their car. 
It is important to also discuss the scenario of another parent stopping to pick them up. Probably the best rule here is if they know the parent and their children are in the car, this is a safe option. Certainly, an adult saying their parent had asked them to pick them up is to be avoided. To this extent, we would advise that should your pickup arrangements change, just call Carolyn in the Office and she can let your child/ren know. We are very accommodating and understand delays in parent schedules, so if you are going to late, call the office and we will look after your child/ren until you arrive.

International Space Station passing our way next week...

Finally, if you are into science, an event to watch out for next week is the International Space Station will be visible over Canterbury next week on the 1st June. It will appear at 5:48am - look for it in the North and will disappear in the East at 5:55am… amazingly it will reappear having done a complete orbit of the Earth at 7:22am in West and will disappear at 7:31 in the Southeast. This is an amazing spectacle, especially with New Zealand joining the space community after successfully launched a rocket this week (a great link to our Learner Profile attribute of - Risk Taking)!  
If you are interested you can also download an ISS spotter app (follow this link for the Apple app or this link for the Android app).

See you all at the Bingo!

Noho ora mai

Chris Nord