This week brings a close to the 3rd term and once again there have been many wonderful events and opportunities for our learners. I’d like to take this moment to thank our parents/whānau for their support this term, particularly the various sports coaches and managers.

Below we have included some achievement information from our midyear report to the Board of Trustees. It contains an overview of our achievement information relating to Reading, Writing and Mathematics. These 3 areas are clearly important, but whereas some schools (and countries) focus very heavily on just these 3 areas, we take a more holistic approach and recognise the importance of our schoolwide values, engagement and wellbeing. We contend that our approach to teaching and learning provides an and/and approach rather than an and/or approach.

Teaching the whole learner doesn’t mean we disregard academic achievement; it just means we refuse to disregard everything else that is important. As a brand new school a huge focus has also been put on our schoolwide values, and establishing relationships and connections (whanaungatanga). Our values were developed from 2018 consultation with our stakeholders at the time (refer to the word cloud below, with the words reflecting the number of respondents mentioning an area).

One just needs to look at the 100s of photos and videos of our learners in action and you can see the “magic that occurs”.

We have a very strong vision for our school, and belief system around how children learn best, backed by considerable experience and research.

Please refer to our Fact Sheets which outline “why we do what we do” http://www.teaomārama.school.nz/63/pages/17-our-way-fact-sheets