Message from the Principal

Tena koutou e te whanau

Greetings to all our Parents / Caregivers

General

2021.. What a year! It’s hard to find the words to describe the year that has been. The children have told me..... “Great fun, better than last year, love all the learning opportunities, great friends, covid and lock down sucked” and so it goes on. They say it best. Reading between the lines; what the children are reminding me about is the resilience our young people have continued to show, despite adversity, change and disruption to their routine. Our end of year is finishing in a unique and different way with no parents attending final assemblies. We are sad about this but the children have adapted and taken this in their stride. Next year looks uncertain again on the pandemic front but I know that our children and staff will continue to adapt and respond to the challenges that come our way.

As I have looked out across our end of year team gatherings and reflected on our students and the challenges we have had this year I can’t help but think what nice young people we have at Queenspark. The majority of our children live out our core values of respect, being responsible and being respectful and doing the right thing and doing it well most days of every week. As teachers I firmly believe in the importance of “holding the line “ in terms of our expectations academically and behaviourally. We are in the business of working together to produce fine young people who are equipped with the skills, character and mental resilience and who are empowered to use their strengths to go beyond, achieve great things and make a positive contribution to that big world out there. With parents and teachers working together I believe that we are doing a good job here, especially in the context of this year. We are at the part of the year where we are hearing about the success our ex pupils are having in their respective high schools. This is further affirmation of the good work our teachers are doing at Queenspark School.

Student Leavers and Families who are leaving

We say farewell to all of our Year 8 leavers and children who are attending other schools for 2022. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours and we look forward to hearing of their future successes. It has been a privilege watching them all grow and learn at QPS. We are looking forward to these fine young men and women staying in touch with us. We also acknowledge and farewell families who are leaving our shores; especially families who have been with us a long time and who have been great servants of our school. This is an emotional time for these families, and for us and we thank them for their support and the many ways they have helped us as at QPS over the years.

Pandemic Planning

As we come to the year end we can be very proud of our school and how key staff have negotiated us through some challenging times with the Covid journey. I need to acknowledge Tony Mabin here in the role he has played in leading our Pandemic team and the staff in putting procedures in place to keep us all safe. I have lost count on the number of lengthy bulletins we have had from Wellington and the hours it has taken to interpret the Covid rules and what this will look like for our school. We acknowledge our whanau for the way you have supported us during the lockdown with distance learning and for the restrictions that we are faced with currently.

Canterbury Schools Rebuild

Our school is looking amazing. Special thanks to Chris Wheeler who has tirelessly led our property team and negotiated our way through all the red tape as we have completed our MOE earthquake rebuild. This has involved many hours of working with MOE people and contractors and I am sure you will agree the overall result is fantastic. I walk around this place pinching myself about the environmental vision that is being realised. We will paint the school soon and complete some modernisation in the Junior School. When I go back to our original education brief that we had to submit to the MOE way back, we can all feel proud. Job done! The creation of flexible learning spaces has been achieved. The outdoor learning areas are superb and fit the student voice brief that was captured in the original job brief. We are loving the new indoor and outdoor learning spaces.

BOT Chairperson & Board of Trustees

We also need to acknowledge Dean Taylor ( our BOT Chair ) for the huge number of hours he has given us this year as we have worked through the pandemic challenges and the personnel issues that have come our way. Dean’s wisdom, patience, leadership of the board and great people skills are appreciated by us all and contribute significantly in making our school such a great school for our learners and our teachers. We thank Dean for his unfailing support and for the many things he has done for our school this year. We also acknowledge and thank all the board members for their good governance this year and the way they have looked after our school under their National Administration responsibilities as follows: Dean Taylor - Personnel, Dallas Seymour - Policies and Self Review, Steve Frodsham - Personnel, Chris Wheeler - Property, Greg Chapman - Finance, Tania Maka - Community Partnership and Kylie Murcott staff rep.

PTA

Thank you to Krissy Tupou for the way she has led her enthusiastic and passionate PTA team members this year. What magnificent supporters of the school these people are. What a team. They have had to plan around the restrictions of Covid and their enthusiasm has not been dampened by this at all. Their hard work and dedication has raised lots of funds this year so that our children can have the very best in resources and learning opportunities. We have shining examples of their good work all over our school. We really appreciate what they do for us.

Vaccine Mandate

As you are aware all schools have been going through the health order that has required all staff to be fully vaccinated by 16 November this year. This has impacted on us and our people at a difficult time and sadly we have lost some staff. This process is still continuing and the reality is that we will not be in a position to fully disclose the outcome of this until the process is complete early next year.

Farewell to staff

We are farewelling and acknowledging the following staff this year:

Linda Goodson

Linda completes a distinguished 32 year career in education with 23 years service to Queenspark School. During this time she has taught at Cashmere Primary, Spreydon, Woolston and in the latter years with us in the senior School at Queenspark. Linda has been a very conscientious, hard working and highly respected teacher and has been a key staff member in the Year 7/8 part of the school. She has widely recognized strengths in literacy and has held leadership roles in this area over many years at our school. While we are sad to say goodbye we know that she is excited about her future and the many things she wants to embrace. We wish her and her family all the best for the future.

Fiona Lange - Term1 Study Leave 2022

Fiona has won a MOE study leave for term 1 next year. Her focus will be on Pacifica families and the inclusive approaches that schools bring here.

Sarah French

Sarah has worked in the Year 1 part of our school and joined our team part way through the year. We thank Sarah for her good work with the children that have been in her care and we wish her all the best for her future endeavours.

Virginia Van Arendonk

Virginia has been one of our hard-working Learning Assistants this year. We have appreciated her kind and caring nature. Virginia is retiring at the end of this year and we wish her all the best for this new chapter in her life. We know she will enjoy relaxing and spending more time with her large family.

2022 Organisation

The following is our organisation for 2022.

Learning Teams, Teaching Levels for 2022

TL = Team Leader

Year 7/8

Helen Willis (TL)

Brad Shaw

Ashleigh Inch

Mark Tarr

Taryn Boyte

Year 6

Siobhan van Arendonk (TL Term 1)

Fiona Lange (TL) ( Terms 2 - 4 )

Karen Brown ( term 1 )

Debbie Whitaker

Year 4/5

Mark Harris (TL)

Aaron Jukes

Gina Rose Morris

Bridie Cassidy

Beverly Blee

Year 2/3

Andrea Sullivan (TL)

Brigitte Duncan

Becky Elliot RRT

Barb Mulholland

Laura Everest

NEST / Yr 1

Sue Page (TL)

Amber Tucker

Karen Pearce

The Shining Lights Programme:

We have appointed two new music tutors for 2022. Firstly Mana Rae will be music tutoring for conchestra, marimba and woodwind instruments. Geneive Long who has been tutoring our conchestra and marimba groups and tutoring woodwind instruments for the past 8 years will be retiring during Term 1 2022. Mana and Geneive will begin together at the beginning of Term 1.

Secondly our guitar, drums and school Rock band tutor and mentor Jeremy Hardman has left Queenspark after 16 years of teaching music. Jeremy has been farewelled and we wish all the best for his future endeavours. The guitar, drums and Rock band tutoring will be taken up by Joel Coleman from the beginning of 2022. Joel is an ex-student of Queenspark school and an ex-student of Jeremy. The school website will be updated before the end of term with new contact and music lesson information for our new tutors.

Queenspark School Library:

We are very pleased to announce that a new librarian has been appointed to manage our wonderful school library. Cushla Nichols will take up the Library Managers position from the end of January 2022. Cushla is a familiar face to our school community having worked in our library while training to be a teacher and as a classroom teacher and digital curriculum leader. We welcome back Cushla Nichol to our library!

A special thank you to university and ex-Queenspark student Ruby Lange for ‘jumping in’ and running our school library for the second half of this year. Along with Miss Mane who has helped to keep our library functioning to the end of the year. Thank you to you both for a great job well done.

End of year Reports

Our end of year student progress reports were sent out on Wednesday 8th December. The digital report provides you with personalised learning information about your child’s progress and achievement through the levels of the New Zealand Core Curriculum.

Specifically, this digital report provides you with personalised information about your child’s progress and achievement in Reading, Writing, Number (Mathematics), on the wider curriculum learning areas and our Q-Competencies.

Literacy and Numeracy are important foundation skills for children. Primary and intermediate schools focus on these because your child needs to have sound Reading, Writing and Math skills to be able to do well in every area of learning at school and in life.

Teachers use many different ways to find out where your child is at. This includes a range of formative assessments, formal standardised assessments, observing your child learning and having conversations with your child about their learning as well as having your child assess their own and sometimes other’s work.

The digital report uses radials (dials) to visually report progress and achievement. The format provides parents with a more personalised achievement report for Reading, Writing and Number.

Student progress and achievement in reading, writing and number is reported as Curriculum Levels. The curriculum levels contain the Literacy Progressions and Numeracy Stages (drop down boxes).

Parents can see which specific new skill or new knowledge your child has achieved and what they are currently working on. The core curriculum - Reading, Writing and Number radials are updated twice a year: mid year and end of year.

We also report on the five key competencies identified in the New Zealand Curriculum. These are reported through our Queenspark School Q-Competencies which are integral to your child’s learning. Your child will be learning to use these capabilities across the wider curriculum.

Competencies are more complex than skills, our Q-Competencies draw on knowledge, attitudes and values in ways that lead to action. Successful learners develop their competencies over time and make use of their competencies to help them access success both academically and socially. The aim of the Q-Competencies is to give students the skills to live, learn, work and contribute as active members of their communities.

The Q-Competencies - Self Managing, Relating to Others, Thinking, Participating, Communicating, are updated twice a year: mid year, end of year. (For Year 0 students Q-Competency reporting happens within the General Comment at the end of the year.)

The Wider New Zealand Curriculum Learning Areas

Wider Curriculum Learning Areas are Science, The Arts (Dance, Drama, Visual Arts), Health and Wellbeing, Physical Education, Technology and Digital Technology, SOLO (Thinking skills) and Social Studies are reported on at the end of each school year. Assessment criteria:

• Consistently means independently and on demand

• Developing means working within expectation but cannot apply independently and/or regularly.

• Beginning means has started achieving this expectation but requires support.

Extra Curricular Opportunities

Student participation in our extra curricular opportunities are updated twice a year: mid year and end of year.

School Attendance

Student attendance is recorded as a radial and a percentage.

Mid Year Learning Conferences and Reporting: At this time of the year the reporting is about progress. Where a student is ‘At’ in reference to the curriculum levels and Q-Competency expectations. Extra curricular activities and attendance are also included in the mid year reporting. It is expected that students attend the learning conferences.

End of Year Reporting:At this time of the year the digital report is updated for the core curriculum levels, extra curricular activities and attendance. Added to the end of year report is the reporting on the wider curriculum learning areas as well as a general comment from the classroom teachers.

Please note: Parents can always meet teachers during the school year. For students receiving differentiated and supported learning interventions we have meetings between teachers, students and parents earlier than the mid-year learning conferences. Follow up meetings are scheduled as appropriate.

This diagram shows how curriculum levels typically relate to years at school. Many students do not, however, fit this pattern. They include those with learning support, those who are gifted, those who enrol later in the school year and those who come from non English speaking backgrounds.

Each curriculum band stretches across a number of year levels. It is common for some students to make uneven progress i.e. progress can be rapid for a time and then appear to plateau for a while before picking up again.

This diagram shows how curriculum levels typically relate to years at school. Many students do not, however, fit this pattern. They include those with learning support, those who are gifted, those who enrol later in the school year and those who come from non English speaking backgrounds.

Each curriculum band stretches across a number of year levels. It is common for some students to make uneven progress i.e. progress can be rapid for a time and then appear to plateau for a while before picking up again.

Literacy and Numeracy learning progressions do not take the same amount of time to learn and perform. As a student moves through the curriculum levels, learning progressions and stages become more complex and can take longer in time to achieve.

The New Zealand Curriculum is not set on an even linear scale. It is not specific to the ages of students. Some curriculum levels are broken down into stages which are 2 year programmes and will cover a couple of curriculum levels.

The New Zealand Curriculum is a developmental curriculum. A developmental curriculum is more complex and is based on linking skills, knowledge and learning needs at the time learning takes place. A developmental curriculum allows students to revisit previous skills and knowledge learnt and add more complex understandings and abilities to those skills and knowledge. A student can achieve at different levels of the core curriculum.

Please note:

The Other Curriculum Fundamental Skills and Attitudes table is not reported on until the end of the year which is the usual process. However the current graphic format has extra columns. This table contains the reporting on the essential elements of each of the other curriculum areas: The Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Physical Education, Science, Social Science, Technology, Digital Technology and SOLO (Thinking Skills.)

Printing Reports: a student’s full HERO report can be printed from your log-in page. Some high schools are still requiring a printed report with applications. This can be actioned by parents.

Accessing HERO: To set your password and log into Hero for the first time:

1. Download the Hero by LINC-ED app from the app store

Note: use the keywords Hero LINC-ED when searching for the app

2. Using a computer then open your browser and enter go.linc-ed.com

School Camps 2022 and outstanding accounts

This week we have been sending out information for school camps and other outdoor activities planned for term 1 next year. In these notices we are giving you a “ heads up “ of the costs concerned so that you can plan for this. 

 We have noticed in recent years that more and more families are choosing not to pay for these activities and the school consequently bears this cost. We can not continue to sustain this situation. The cost of the senior camp is the equivalent to the cost of a pair of good quality running shoes of which many of our senior children are wearing. Sadly we may have to look at whether we pursue outdoor education camp pursuits in the future. We would like these costs met prior to the children participating. Please contact us if you need to come to a payment arrangement with us.

We would appreciate it if you could please check on your school account and clear before the end of the year. Thank you for this.

Children Visiting 2022 Classes

Tomorrow the children will visit their 2022 learning groups where they will meet their teachers for next year. This is a time for children to become familiar with teacher expectations and to meet the students they will be working and collaborating with next year. Important information will come home from this visit. Please ask your child about this as you will need to read it carefully and some notices will have to be signed and returned to school. This information will be in a brown paper bag. Please check school bags for this.

Overall Cup for Academic Excellence.

This year the Academic Excellence Award goes to.... Ben Swift

Ben has achieved outstanding results in Literacy, Mathematics, The Arts, Community and Contribution as well as various leadership roles. He has been part of the senior choir, PALs, wet day duty, road patrol, music lessons, marimba, conchestra, ukulele, Rock Band and has taken part in LEAP performances. Ben has received his 2nd Gold Hillary Award and was selected to represent Queenspark School at the Cantamaths and Lit Quiz competitions. He was also involved in the extension maths programme. Ben had a major role in our school production in Term 2. He has been a member of the Christchurch Primary School orchestra and received a special service medal for his involvement in the Christchurch Music Festival for the past 4 years. He was recently a recipient of the Rotary Award and has secured both academic and music scholarships for Shirley Boys in 2022. A long list of achievements!

Congratulations Ben. We are all very proud of you.

Keeping our school safe over the holidays

We encourage you to call in on your way past and have a quick walk around our school during the holiday period. We would like lots eyes on our school during this period as this presence helps minimise damage and unwanted vandalism.

City Mission Fundraiser:

Thank you to all our families for your support with this fund raiser. We had a really fun Xmas dress up day and all these food items will go directly to the City Mission. Well done QPS!

Final words

Thank you for your support in 2021. At Queenspark School we have amazing children who have a love of learning and who are curious and creative, great staff who bring their learning expertise and passion for our children and parents who support us in all of this. What a team!

Have a relaxing holiday with your family. Let's hope we get some good weather so that we can all safely make the most of the outdoors this summer holiday in our shorts, sunhats, and jandals! We look forward to hearing of the children’s holiday adventures and we look forward to seeing you all in 2022.

Remember, our first day back is TUESDAY 1st FEBRUARY 2022.

Ka Kite ano - Meri Kirihimete

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Ross Willocks

Principal

Queenspark School