Month: August 2024

There was a sea of kōwhai (yellow) at our morning hui today as many of our tamariki showed their support for the Cancer Society through Te Rā Daffodil (Daffodil Day). Ngā mihi nui (Big thanks) for donating to our school page that we set up here or to those who brought in coins this morning. Our cumulative count has it at just over $700 that our community has raised - Kei reira koutou! (Awesome everyone) The yellow certainly brightened up everyone's day today. 

Cameron, Meryl, Chris, Ada, Milana, Leo B, Alexa and Ben B and myself have spent the day alongside students from Managweka and Manchester Street Schools engaging in a day of learning in the forest. We learnt how to whittle, make fire using flint and steel, about the local pūrakau of the area and engaged in various tree climbing and bush walking fun as you can see above. It is pretty special to see how natural kids are at making new friends and building that whanaungatanga with two other schools. Mihi atu to Memory (Tumuaki at Mangaweka) for allowing us to come...

Apologies for ‘blowing up your phones’ this week for communicating our Whānau Maths Week challenges that we had every day. It was so great to see kids rushing into school in the morning with their family’s answers to the previous day's challenge to put in our prize box. Our purpose was to engage our tamariki with an estimation activity they completed as a class and then have a problem to solve at home to get kids talking about maths with you all. We hope you have enjoyed engaging in this with your child and haven’t seen it as extra ‘homework.’...

You might have heard on the news that our Prime Minister and Education Minister talked to the ‘shocking state of maths’ and ‘chronic underachievement’ across our country. They claim data from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study (CIPS) shows just 22% of Year 8 students were working at the expected curriculum level for mathematics. However, what they didn’t inform us is the data they are referring to relates to a trial of only 853 Year 8 students across 42 schools who took part in this study. This data is also based on a new curriculum that hasn't even come out yet....

Trusting you’ve all been enjoying all the Olympic action over the week and haven’t been staying up too late getting your ‘fix’. It was great to see our Kiwi Rowing Team making their mark overnight, wasn’t it? Although the Olympics are entertaining to watch, there is so much learning that our kaiako are pulling out and using in their classroom around this event. The Maths, Writing, Artwork, PE links that are made prove to be an amazing learning experience for our ākonga (students). I know I don’t usually promote kids on screens, but please let them have a watch over...