A Message from the Principal

Fridays are now house T-shirt days 

As part of our school-wide focus on building a culture of well-being where everyone has a place to belong we are wanting to do more in our house groups across the school. From this week we will be having a house whānau time slot every Friday from  10.50 to 11.20. All children will go to their designated house spaces

Heathcote - Autaha (2&3, 1 if required)

Burfield - Hall

Rapaki - meet in Hāwai 8 (can use Hāwai 6&7)

Takahē - 16 & 17 (and 18 if required)

Senior students from each house will collect and guide the children in Timatanga to their house spaces. To add to a sense of togetherness and belonging children arere encouraged to wear their house T-shirts on Fridays. This option is for house T-shirts only, not mufti or similar coloured T-shirts. If children aren't it in a house T-shirt then they wear the normal school uniform on a Friday. The PTA has good stocks of house T-shirts at the moment if you need to purchase one for your child.

House whānau time provides many opportunities for older children to support and work with the younger children in a variety of different activities, like learning new haka, songs, games, and reading together. We believe that enabling a sense of belonging to different groups across the school helps well-being to flourish and as such, well-being is identified as one of the five key areas in our strategic plan. To read this plan more easily click on the image at the bottom of this article. This strategic plan guides the direction of learning contexts and will shape our school culture over the next three years. A hard copy of this plan will go home to each school family next week.

Themes emerging from our Home Learning policy review 

The main intent of this review was to find out if parents were happy with the stance that the school takes on Home Learning. 

The majority of responses agree with the policy as it stands i.e. Home Learning is mainly to support learning that happens at school especially in reading and basic facts. 

Some of you commented on a lack of alignment between what the policy states should be happening in each team and what is actually happening. 

While we continue to gather this data our next steps going forward are to ensure age-appropriate reading books, spelling words, and basic facts are sent home for children more consistently and that there are online options for parents to access to support Tuakana children.

Ngā mihi nui

Christine Harris
Tumuaki te Kura o Huriawa Thorrington

The school at the bend in the river