From the Principal

The day started with a presentation by the Ministry of Education on the curriculum refresh. Why it is timely that it is reviewed and refreshed and what it aspires to achieve.

Each school took responsibility for running one or two workshops following this presentation – maths, writing, Aotearoa New Zealand histories, cultural competencies, science, among others. The RTLB presented a workshop on autism.

Each of the curriculum areas, is structured around 3 important ideas –

Understand – the big idea behind the learning. For example, language and literature give us insights into ourselves and others.

Know – the contexts for learning. For example, text may have more than one purpose and more than one audience.

Do – the practices and skills. For example, building meaning by comparing, evaluating and synthesising ideas.

There is a lot of new material and terminology for our teachers to absorb and master so it is good news that the curriculum rollout is over the next few years. Here at our school, we are developing our knowledge of the new aspects of the curriculum by exploring Aotearoa New Zealand Histories. Celebration of Learning evening at the end of term 3 will be our first opportunity to showcase this new learning with you.

Both Onslow and Newlands Colleges have given our year 8s a presentation about their schools in recent weeks. Most colleges are expecting all 2024 students to have enrolled before the end of July. For those of you new to this transition process, we do not enrol your child at college. You must do this.

I recently attended the New Zealand Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools conference in Auckland. A couple of speakers really resonated with me – Michael Carr-Greig and Nathan Wallis. If you have the chance to read their work or listen to them, I recommend you do. They understand our age group and give sound strategies for nurturing great teenagers! Nathan is a strong advocate for getting students calm and engaged, ready for learning, with exercise, laughter and singing. We did this post-Covid, and it worked – with both staff and students.

The pedestrian crossing outside school is going to be raised and made more visible soon. The WCC has told me that there will be publicity about this circulated in the community and the work will be done in the holidays. Not sure which set of holidays though – hopefully not Christmas! Please watch out for this, hopefully it will improve safety for all our students.

Happy holidays.

Angela Lowe

Principal