Kia ora koutou e ngā mātua, e ngā whānau, Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Konichiwa!

Isn’t it great to see the sunshine! What a difference it makes to the day. Driving to work every morning, I see magnificent views of The Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana covered in snow! New Zealand is a beautiful country. I hope you manage to take the time in your busy days to appreciate the simple things life has to offer!

Were you welcomed to the school yesterday by our amazing Strum, Strike, Blow ukelele musicians as they performed at the front entrance? They were off to participate with over 1400 students from Canterbury in this amazing opportunity.

Our amazing band performed at the annual BANDQUEST competition last Monday.  BandQuest is held over 3 nights in Canterbury with 16 bands on each night.  The competition is very high and our students did well.  We are very proud of them and were delighted to see them on stage representing West Melton School.

Welcome

We welcome Kathleen O’Connor in her role as learning assistant working with children across the school.

We also welcome Janette Bowen who is working specifically with the Kōwhai team as the additional teacher due to the growth in our New Entrant community. Janette is working mornings supporting learners with their learning. Janette is an experienced teacher, (working in the Early Childhood sector) with passion, knowledge and skills with ‘Learning through Play’.

Evaluations/Self Review

In the last newsletter, we included a link as well as personal invitations, to members of the community to complete a survey to help boards identify areas where they need to improve their governance practice. As the board’s primary focus is the ongoing improvement of student achievement, the tool uses a set of criteria for identifying the strengths and areas for development in governance. The board will discuss the outcomes at the next board meeting in September. Thank you to those who completed this survey.  

Teachers have recently completed the ‘Teaching and School Practices Survey. It is designed to provide useful information for school inquiry, review, and development. It provides schools with important insights about their teaching practices, processes, and leadership. The items come out of robust research on effective teaching and school practices and effective principal leadership. They are consistent with the New Zealand Curriculum, Education Review Offices School Evaluation Indicators, and the draft Standards for the Teaching Profession. The results will support future decision making.

Our learners in years 4 - 8 have recently completed the Me and My School Survey. This is a unique, research-based student engagement survey designed for New Zealand students in Years 4 to 10. It asks students to report their level of agreement to a series of statements regarding affective, behavioural and cognitive aspects of engagement. It gives us a snapshot of the learning culture in our school, standardised data to track progress over time and a nationally referenced gender, ethnicity, and year level comparison.

On Tuesday 17 September we are looking forward to hearing from our community on your contributions to the next three year strategic plan. This is an interactive workshop run by the board of trustees.

Thank you to the small but insightful parent group who shared teachers’ learning stories about how we teach reading, writing, maths and science to our students, and listened to our pedagogical practices in inquiry and BYOD education.   It was valuable to gather parents’ collective wisdom for future directions for learning for our school. We appreciate the time you have taken to provide  survey answers in Term 2, to decide the night’s focus and then attend the evening in Term 3.