Year books are going home on Monday the 14th December. These are yours to keep as a celebration of your childs learning over 2009. ENJOY! Included with year books for students in years 1-5 are class placements for 2010 and stationery lists. Careful placement of children into classrooms has been considered, however not all requests have been able to be met. Thank you for your support.

Room 3 and Room 2 East School children have visited Union Hill in the last two weeks, this has been done under the guidance of Greg Jenks and other NZ Bird and Forest members to see how the control of pests such as possums and rats is going in this area. The children have been involved in setting up and monitoring pest tracking tunnels as well as checking and replenishing bait stations on Union Hill. Here are some photos from Room 3’s trip to Union Hill in week 7 of term 4 2009.

Last opportunity this year. Come and join students, parents and teachers for a fun evening—fun cricket, fine food(a light dinner) and fabulous numeracy games. Thursday 3rd December at school 5.30-7.00pm. RSVP essential (so we have enough food).

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at ULEARN in Christchurch during the holiday break at the end of term 3. Educators from New Zealand and overseas got together for keynote presentations and breakouts on the use of ICT in schools. Below is a short video of some of my experiences at ULEARN.

DK presented to teachers the ideas behind the way social media can be used by schools, see the video below.

Kia ora

We have an exciting week planned for students. Today we celebrated Grandparents at a special Duffy Assembly, tomorrow all children are participating in athletics and Kool Kids afternoon to round off a great day. Over 95% of students received an invite to Kool Kids afternoon. We aim to have 100%  participation at the end of the year.

Information on the National Standards arrived at school this week. The National standards are the achievement expectation in reading, writing and math’s that the government has placed on schools from next year. Their aim is to improve student achievement. How are we addressing National Standards?Students are to be more aware of how they are achieving against the standards and set goals towards these. Year Book reflections will have a stronger ‘child voice’.

• Staff will use Year Books to report on student achievement against the standards in easy to read language e.g. working below/at or above the national standard. Next learning steps will be part of this feed back in Year Books.

• We aim to have a closer relationship between home and school to support children’s learning. In our Year Book samples we will include a tip that you may like to develop at home and interviews will become more regular.

In the table is an example of the National Standard in reading. The standard will be a reading target for children and will be celebrated once achieved. I will send out more information about how we will be developing the National Standards as I  develop them with staff.

Ka kite ano
Emily

There is a tour of the college on Friday 4th December at 9.30am for 1 hour. Transport will be required and parents are welcome. On Tuesday 8th December there will be a parents information evening at 7.30pm in the college library. All completed enrolment forms with a copy of your child’s birth certificate are being collected at the East School office. Please return these as soon as possible.

Derek Weymouth was a keynote presenter at the ICT conference ULEARN 2009 in Christchurch, below is his Slideshare presentation on the way the new curriculum’s key competencies integrate with ICT.

This week’s Habits of Mind continues to be

“Applying Past Knowledge to new situations.”

Successful people learn from past experience.

They use what they know on new challenges.

Mr. Mac is bringing ‘Doug the Digger Road Show’ to our school for a special Duffy Role Model assembly on Tuesday 15th September at 1.30-2.30pm. Parents and Preschoolers welcome.