Kia ora Waitetuna whaanau, it was great to see the students showing off their excellent swimming skills this week during the swimming sports events. They have made great progress with their swimming skills. Thanks to the staff for their efforts with this.
Our middle and junior room students have also completed a selection of PAT - Progressive Achievement tests this week in Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Listening
Comprehension and Punctuation and Grammar. These are standardised tests where our students are compared with New Zealand students of their own age. We use these tests
formatively - meaning we can see where students' next steps are. They also support us with what we are seeing in class, giving us another benchmark for comparison to confirm what
we know about your child’s learning.
Year 7 and 8’s at Waitetuna School
All of the staff at Waitetuna School appreciate the somewhat tumultuous time it can be during these years amazing two years. We also know that a full primary is a wonderful place
for year 7 and 8 students to develop their confidence and knowledge of themselves in all ways. Waitetuna School is a fantastic nurturing environment for this age. I am always delighted to see students after they have headed off to high school and they come back to visit me. They always talk about their special years at a full primary being the oldest and getting the opportunity to develop their confidence and knowing who they are, what they stand for before heading to high school. Being a leader in so many different ways is also part of this. The year 7 and 8 students meet with myself weekly. As our school leaders we discuss a range of things. We look at ways to develop their skills as leaders, communicators and everything in relation to being a great citizen, including the key competencies. It is also a great opportunity to get student voice about ways to make our school a better place.
Career education is also part of the curriculum in our senior room and at the moment the students are looking into various career options, what qualifications they need for this. Here is Danielle investigating her degree in Bachelor of Performing Arts. We are also pleased to note that the “Waikato Institute of Leadership and Sports Studies” are offering Youth Leadership opportunities now that Sports Energize has been disbanded. I will be taking the Year 7 and 8 students to a fun day of leadership activities. Seniors off to camp next week - thanks to the Raglan Four Square for providing us with some breakfast and lunch items. Hopefully levels do not increase. We can attend camp under level 2 guidelines.
Puoatanga - Independent review into how schools are funded.
https://www.puaotanga.org.nz/ - click on this link or type this web address into google and there are only a small number of questions to fill in. This will help to support changes and help to get increases to school funding to support our students' learning.
Thanks for the people who were able to come to the information evening. We have attached a Health consultation form for those people who were unable to make it, as a PDF this time as it didn’t open as a Word document well. Please could you return this consultation form with your thoughts on it to the office.
Newsletter by email - we are currently sending the newsletter out by email in two different ways. We are going to just send the newsletter through the office@waitetuna email address. If you are not receiving the newsletter this way currently, can you let myself or Lorna know please so we can fix this please.
Waitetuna Way this week goes to - Kaia Powell & Isaac Jowers for Confidence - Believe in yourself. Be brave and take risks.
Upcoming events -
Senior room camp - 8/9th March
Inter-school swimming sports - Thursday 18th March
Teacher Only day - Monday 22nd March
Good Friday: 2 April - School Closed
Easter Monday: 5 April - School Closed
Easter Tuesday: 6 April - School Closed - this closure occurs for
NZ schools when Easter falls within term time Teacher Only day and Last Day of Term 1: Friday 16 April
Thank you for your ongoing support as we moved back into level 2. I am sure we will learn more about our Alert level as the coming weekend progresses. Let’s hope we can keep all in New Zealand safe and we move back down alert levels soon. Please take care and stay safe.
He aroha whakato, he aroha puta mai
If kindness is sown then kindness you shall receive.
Ngaa mihi nui,
Amanda and staff