Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Kia ora, Hello, Talofa, Mālō e lelei, Bula, Hola, Fakaalofa atu, As Salam Alaykom, こんにちは, Hallo, Hoy, હ લ ો, Hē leu, Mauri, न म त, Ola , Chum reap suor, Kumusta, Nihao, Xin chào

A lot has been happening recently and I thought I would go through some of the highlights quickly:

• A visit from a facilitator from Digital Ignitions, who took lessons to give teachers and learners an idea of what would be in the new digital technologies curriculum.

• A visit from the New Zealand Warriors Rugby League team, who ran a session on healthy living - including the importance of sleep, good nutrition and mental health.

• Winter sport has started at Hagley and we currently have two netball teams and one football team. We also have a basketball team that plays in a Friday night competition at both Middleton Grange and Wharenui Schools.

• Our Filipino learners celebrated their Independence Day at Riccarton High School. They had a shared lunch with the High School students.

• We celebrated Samoan language week with our junior Pasifika group performing at St Allisa Lifecare. This provided a great service opportunity and community connection for our learners.

• We have been celebrating Matariki with a series of activities being offered to learners during lunchtimes. Some classes have participating in learning activities facilitated by the Riccarton library.

• We currently have five interns from the Graduate School of Education in the school. They have been here from week 4 and will continue until the end of week 9.

• Our Club Captains attended the National Young Leaders' Conference held in Christchurch.

It is fantastic to see the wide range of activities that are happening at Riccarton and the way that our learners get a wide variety of learning experiences.

Paid Union Meeting

Just a reminder that school will effectively close next Tuesday 26th June at 12.45pm, as the teachers are attending a Paid Union Meeting. Please take note of previous information regarding letting us know if your child needs supervision.

Privacy and Children’s Learning and Behaviour

I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little about some restrictions we as schools have when it comes to our operations in regards to children’s behaviour and privacy.

From time to time we have issues with a child's or childrens' behaviour at school, that some parents may perceive as naughty and that nothing is being done about it. Generally when this is the case, you are seeing only the very tip of the iceberg of what is going on for that child or children, when generally there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. Just like we can’t give away your telephone number due to privacy we can’t comment on what is happening behind the scenes for other children to protect their privacy, and rightly so. We can’t talk about support plans we have in place, agencies we are working with, conditions and diagnosis that the child may have and the agreements and communications we have with parents and whānau.

Our staff are incredibly proactive and actually you would be amazed at the number of individual learning plans we are working on and supporting. We spend a significant amount of time at every staff meeting talking about our children, their needs and how we can help them. Not just academically but as a whole child. And we cannot share information about this with anyone but their own parents. Not all children are the same and what will work for one child won’t always work for others in terms of learning and behaviour (if it was that easy there would never be any issues!). So, please be assured that we are always doing our level best to create Respectful, Responsible Real Learners at RPS and that we are constantly looking at ways of supporting our learners to demonstrate this.

School Policy Reviews

As part of our Reporting to Parent Policy review, we have updated the policy to read as follows; Reporting to Parents Policy. Please read as an update of our current reporting to parent procedures.

Ngā mihi nui,

Paul Irving