RJHS Newsletter - Term 2, Issue 1

KORERO FROM FRASER

Welcome back to Term 2 everyone. I hope everyone has managed some sort of down time over the term break.

I want to thank everyone for your support at the end of last term for our Teacher Only Day. We had a day of professional learning focused on literacy across the curriculum which is a major learning focus for us as a staff. Literacy in general has been a major discussion point nationally in recent months with the release of a report entitled, ‘Now I Don’t Know My ABC’ and subsequently the release of the ‘Literacy and Communication and Maths Strategy 2022’ by the Ministry of Education.

As a school, while our reading and writing progress is above national norms, we know this is an area we can do even better in by ensuring all of our staff are effective teachers of literacy and that this task isn’t just left to our English teachers. There are opportunities in all areas for literacy skills and knowledge to be developed and we want to take advantage of these. This is a major undertaking for us but we know it is worth it. Alongside developing staff capacity, we will support staff by ensuring we have a clear schoolwide structure for communicating how and what we teach in the area of literacy.

We are excited about the opportunity for students in Year 9 and 10 to be able to achieve their NCEA literacy and numeracy credits from next year. While our reasons for focusing on literacy across the curriculum are broader than this, we are certainly preparing ourselves to support our current Year 9 students to achieve their literacy and numeracy credits next year. This is one of the significant changes in the NCEA system following the nationwide review in 2018-19 and to achieve these credits students will sit a one off assessment when they are ready to achieve the standards set. We are confident most of our students will start their SHS journey in 2024 with these credits under their belt. More important than the credits is of course the fact that students will be equipped with literacy and numeracy capabilities that will help them succeed in all their learning areas.

Last term we sent out a survey in regard to our reporting processes. A big thank you to those of you who offered feedback on the information you receive in regard to your child/ren's progress and achievement. We are making some changes based on this feedback and will inform you of these changes in our next eNews.