Tēnā Koutou Katoa

Many of you will be aware of recent media articles and Government educational announcements related to literacy and mathematics achievement.

An announcement stated that only 22 percent of students at Year 8 are at, or above, the curriculum benchmarks for maths.  This is clearly a concern but it is really important to note that the authors of the study (University of Otago and New Zealand Council for Educational Research) also reported “What we’re seeing in mathematics is a change in curriculum and a new benchmarking process rather than a change in achievement.  We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline. We do have a new draft curriculum however, and the provisional benchmarking exercise we carried out indicates it requires a higher level of proficiency than the 2007 curriculum.”

For our school, we are awaiting further information about the new curriculum, policy changes and requirements as these have not been released.

As a school, we have invested heavily over the last 2 years in Maths professional learning. We have been part of a Maths cluster with 8 schools in North Canterbury. The focus on this ‘Learner First Maths’ cluster: Subject pedagogical knowledge, using of instructional materials, implementation of the NZMaths website and resources, pedagogical frameworks, moderation processes, integrate high impact routines, creating an effective blend of teaching styles, inclusive repertoire of tasks.

We have seen steady maths progress across the school and always teach a flexible approach ensuring these core areas are explicitly taught and also integrated throughout our day. Our teachers skilfully use the curriculum to teach in ways that best suit the learning, including the importance of actively involving students, working collaboratively and learning through play. This approach is underpinned by research, and is also evident in the progress being made by our learners.

Drop off and Pick up

It is really important as parents to role model great behaviours to our children when coming or leaving school. Please use the Crossing on School Road or the Traffic light crossing on the Main Road. We’ve had a couple of near misses over the last 2 weeks. We are encouraging everyone to be a great role model.

New Sports tops

A massive thank you to Generation Homes for again sponsoring 80 new sports tops! With the growth of our school roll another 80 tops will help our sports teams.

Whare Manu and Assemblies Term 3 

This term we are again splitting our whare manu afternoons and assemblies. Student can come dressed in their Whare manu colours:  Week 5 Thursday 22nd Aug, Week 8 Friday 13th Sept

Team assemblies will be held on Week 6- Friday 30th Aug, Week 8- Fri 27th sept whole school assembly 

Week 9- Fri 20th Sept Learning Celebration Assemblies, 

School Absences- Record All your absences using Hero-App

Log in and open Hero. Choose "Report an absence" and select the option that best suits the reason. If your child is absent but not sick please provide additional information for the absence, eg: on holiday, offsite activity etc

Ngā mihi, Andrew and the Woodend Team