Tēnā koutou katoa,
It is hard to believe that we are almost a month into school! Our recent year 7 camp to Whakanewha was a standout highlight of the first month with staff and students alike taking this opportunity to build whanaungatanga. A major thank you goes to all of our parent helpers and especially to our prefect team; our student leaders took centre stage in making this camp a real success. Alongside this, today’s athletics day has been a resounding success and it has been great to see everyone in their house colours, competing to their best ability to kick off the yearly house competition with style. Next Friday we follow this up with beach sports at Oneroa Beach and whānau are welcome to pop in throughout the day to say hello.
I want to thank all of our parents and caregivers who attended our “meet the teachers” evening this Tuesday. The event was absolutely bustling and our staff were excited to meet so many new parents and make early learning connections with their new students.
Research shows that engagement from whānau is a key determinant of student success so it was pleasing to see these relationships begin to flourish.
If you were unable to make it this week, we have two further opportunities in the coming weeks with our parent information evening in a fortnight and whānau learning hui the following week. It would be great to see as many of you as possible as we build strong learning focused connections as early as possible.
The parent information evening is a new initiative we are trialling this year designed to create a space for connecting specifically with parents around their tauira’s education journey. While schools do a good job of keeping students up to date with all of the nuts and bolts of education, this is often a grey area for parents and we want to demystify this space.
More information around this event is to follow but key topics for our first iteration will include an overview of our strategic direction, information on CAAs (common assessment activities) for literacy and numeracy, understanding NCEA requirements, Q&A with current students, and space for general questions with members of the senior leadership team. We are aiming to have one of these per term with each built around a different focus on how the school operates with a chance to connect directly with school leadership.
Ngā mihi mahana,
Cameron Flude
