Kia ora koutou!

Week 3 and the school is humming, our learners are engaged and enjoying being with their friends and teachers. Earlier in the week we had been celebrating how we had managed to dodge Covid at our school so far… but we have now had our first encounter. We thank the family for getting in touch with us so quickly and we are sending them our thoughts.   

During Professional Learning our teaching team has been delving into our school’s Strategic Priorities and planning what actions we will take this year to help us deliver on our School Vision. An area of focus is ‘Assessment for Learning’ which is one of the approaches we use to personalise learning. 

When we think of ‘assessment' it is easy to associate this with just testing, but assessment in a classroom setting is an ongoing process where teachers use a range of approaches to build a picture of the learners’ progress, achievement and next steps. It ranges from observations, learning conversations, providing feedback, taking learning samples as well as the more formal assessments we do over the year. 

The term “Assessment for Learning’ is when that assessment practice is shared with the learner. Teachers design learning so that students also have understanding of what they are trying to learn, have skills to monitor their own progress alongside the teacher, and can set goals and reflect on learning. This approach gives the students ownership over their learning and increases achievement. It’s the difference between being passive consumers of information to being active participants in the learning process. 

“When students self assess regularly and track and share their progress, their confidence as learners grows. Their motivation to do well increases and so does their achievement’ (Stiggins and Chappuis, 2010) 

So as a staff, we have been planning how we can continually improve our impact on learning by creating Assessment Capable Learners and feeding our ideas into our Annual Actions for our school Charter. This will be published soon and presented to the Board. 

This week we have also run our Teacher/ Whaanau Catch Up’s and the teachers have talked about how valuable these conversations have been. We all appreciate the opportunity to connect with families early in the year, particularly during the current climate where we have limited opportunities to meet face to face.

Over the last 2 years we have been planning an Outdoor Classroom project in the heart of the school. We expect to see some transformations happening soon in this area. The P.T.A have been really supportive of this project and see value in the Learning Through Play opportunities this project will create. The P.T.A have kindly donated $10,000 to the school in support of this project. Thank you to the P.T.A for all their efforts to fundraise for the school and help make projects like this happen. 

Lastly, as many of you will already be aware, the Board of Trustees offered me the position of Principal at Puketaha School and I accepted without hesitation. It is a huge honour to be the Principal of such a special school and I am grateful to the Board of Trustees for this opportunity. Thank you so much for the kind and encouraging words from our community also. 

As we move closer to the weekend, I hope you have all had an amazing week and have a lovely weekend. 

Ngaa mihi,

Nyree Olliver