Week 3 newsletter for term 4!

Welcome back after what has been a lovely long weekend.  We hope you all enjoyed the extra day off and managed to make the most of the lovely weather, it almost felt like summer!

Term 4 is both busy and really exciting with a lot of time dedicated to planning for the year to come while also being focussed on the many activities and events that occur in a very busy final term for the year.  As a school we undergo a great deal of review to support continued improvement.  The community survey, teacher survey, student input, and school data all support planning decisions, and it is always exciting putting possibilities on the table and seeing how we can plan opportunities for our school and community.  Our big picture focus for 2017 is “Connect” so we will be looking to link our curriculum planning to this context.

We are also heavily focussed on assessment at this time of the year with lots of data being gathered to support teacher decisions regarding the progress and achievement of our students.  This data is used to support written reports which will be coming home at the end of the term.  We also use data right throughout the year to help us support our learners, providing lessons and workshops that meet their learning needs. We also use data to inform the kinds of development we provide for our teachers to help them support our children and their learning.  There are lots of ways we collect data and these vary dependant on the ages of children as they move through school.  From Year 4 and up children begin to use more formal “tests” such as what they can expect at both Intermediate and College.  A part of our job is to help prepare them to be able to participate in these kinds of assessments and be successful.

It was lovely to see some sunshine last week and teachers made the most of the opportunity to get outside and train for athletics, which is coming up later in the term.  It’s great to see our students outside and active.

Welcome Bay and Selwyn Ridge Schools combined Choir Success!!!

Last week we had a large group of students from our senior choir attended a competition in Hamilton.  This was a collaboration with Selwyn Ridge School and the combined choir have been practicing after school under the tutelage of Wha

New Security System

The Board of Trustees (and Mr Martin) are very excited to be investing in a new, HD, security camera system to ensure that our school site is really safe during and after hours.  We have a huge amount of resource on our school site and want to make sure that our children and community are safe when using our resources, and also that we do not have to fix things, or unnecessarily spend money due to vandalism.  While this has not been a major concern in recent years, we want to ensure that all who enter our grounds know that their choices are visible, and we want our school to be respected.

Pool Key meeting

As mentioned last week we have planned a meeting for all of those families wishing to utilise our school pool for the summer.  This meeting will be at 5pm on Wednesday 23rd November. It is the expectation of the Board of Trustees that if you would like a Pool Key you must attend this meeting.  Pool keys are leased out to our school community members for $55 each.

PTA Meeting  

Remember to share with everyone you know about the newsletter format, we had a 50% open rate last week from 149 families and it would be great to grow this each week.  Remember you can access the newsletter via an email link or directly through our website via the “Our school information” drop down menu.

Have a great week.

Kindest regards,

Nik House – Principal