Balmoral School Newsletter 2 December 2022
Principal's Welcome
Tēnā koutou e te whānau
After three years of a pandemic and the rewrite of the New Zealand Curriculum, I believe schooling is at a pivotal point. We have a chance to further enhance the learning environment.
Experts are unanimous (e.g. Nathan Wallis) on calls for play in schools and they all stress that it is essential for children's development. Play has been proven critical for children's emotional, social, and academic health and progress. At the school level, it can be challenging to get buy-in for a play full curriculum from parents worrying about the effectiveness of play and teachers dealing with national testing pressures. However, experts are saying there is a universal need for free play without adult intervention, as well as a need for direct instruction, where teachers set the agenda. At Balmoral, we do both through our playful inquiry curriculum.
We must continue to carefully think about how children learn and strive to create school environments where learners can learn through experiences and where playfulness is seen as a valuable education.
Classrooms where children learn and enjoy it: 6-year-olds huddled in "writing discussion around a whiteboard" before drafting their stories; a Year 5 student pondering in P4C whether stealing is OK in some instances; or an intermediate school student who had never read a book for pleasure, discovering "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas" and asking if there were more books for him to take home.
This is what creates lifelong learners. This is what schools should be about.
What makes for effective learning is when we closely match where the child is at and what we do at school. We need to empower our teachers to make responsive curriculum decisions on evidence; that is where the akonga are at in their learning. Ultimately teachers need the opportunity to problem-solve, collaborate and share expertise to make informed decisions on learning. Lets hope this is what the revised curriculum enables.
You can read an interesting comment on play here in the Hechinger Report which provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education.
2023 Term Dates
Term One: Thursday 2nd February - Thursday 6th April
Term Two: Wednesday 26th April - Friday 30th June
Term Three: Monday 17th July - Friday 22nd September
Term Four: Monday 9th October - Wednesday 20th December
Please note that the first holiday at the end of Term 1 is for 2 and a half weeks. ( 3:00 pm Thursday 6th April until 8:30 am Wednesday 26th April)
Farewell to Madeleine Lifsey
Madeleine has informed the Board that she will return to live in the USA to be closer to her family. We wish Madeleine all the best for her move back to the Northern Hemisphere and acknowledge her work in our community.
Balmoral Way our Behaviour Plan
Recently we have reviewed our school rules. We have developed four rules which we live by at Balmoral. They have been designed so that our school can just work.
They are:
- I am truthful, and I show respect to other people and property
- I am in the right place at the right time
- I do my work and let others do theirs undisturbed
- I do what the staff tell me to do the first time, every time
The diagram below shows how our rules fit with our school values (Mana Tu, Manaaki, Manawaroa, Turangawaewae) and Balmoral Habits. We are happy to receive any comments about these rules, please email the office.
From The Library
Great news – we have fabulous readers in our school. About 3000 books are out with the tamariki and with whānau.
Everything is due back Friday 9 December, especially for children leaving (year eight and year six leavers).
After the 9th of December, we will continue to hound you until the books are back. Tamariki should come and talk to the librarians about truly lost books. We’re not too scary, and we admire and promote personal responsibility!
If the children have no books out, they can start to borrow again in Week 9 for the Summer break. Year 1 and 2 should come after school with parents, but Year 3 up are okay by themselves. All whānau most welcome straight after school.
Thanks, Liz and Nicola
Paid Union Meetings
Over the last few weeks, the teaching staff have attended their Paid Union Meetings. Unfortunately, the offer made to teachers and principals was approximately 2.5%. This offer was well short of inflation (9.6% between Q2 2021 and Q3 2022), especially considering the last wage increase was July 1 2021. However, this offer also fails to address some fundamental issues, such as crucial parity issues between primary and secondary units and staffing levels.
There is much discontent within the sector, and I believe if it is not settled reasonably soon, we may enter a period of disruption in the schooling sector.
Attendance at Balmoral School
Recently the Board viewed a report that showed Balmorals School attendance during Term 2 was better than all schools in the categories of Decile 9, Auckland Area, CoEd and all of New Zealand in every year group except Year 8.
This is hugely positive and a credit to our community, parents, tamariki and staff. However, without further interrogation of the data, I am unsure whether our community's support of mask-wearing at this time of the year also helped with attendance.
There is much misinformation in the media about school attendance in NZ. This comment in The Spinoff explains it accurately. I would encourage you to read it.
Thanks to the PTA, Parents and kind Donors
On Tuesday, the staff were wowed by a beautiful morning tea prepared by the PTA and some kind parents. We all appreciate our community members' efforts at this time of the year. It has been a tough few years at school, and the kindness displayed in sharing beautiful food from our community gave us a big buzz.
PS. The goody bags were a great surprise. Nga mihi.
Home Learning - a Rich Challenge
One of the ways that we aim to help children become curious, confident, connected learners is through our home learning, called Rich Challenge. In Year 8 this term, the theme has been 'Giving Back'. There are many wonderful things happening, including beach clean ups, where the children are using their statistics knowledge to graph what they are finding, bake sales for raise money for the SPCA, and an on-going netball tournament. The children present the term's work to their hubs later this term, and we look forward to seeing what has been done.
This week has seen two great examples of giving back take place. Last night there was a spectacular dance show in the Hall, organised by Reuben as a way to raise money for children who might need support to attend dance lessons at the Dance Studio. In his words:
"A rich challenge is an assignment that lasts the whole term, where we set ourselves an overall task with goals and outcomes. The objective of the rich challenge is to work through the entire process and work out any problems along the way - hopefully the outcome is successful, but it's not all about the end result, it is about the journey and becoming independent learners."
Reuben's show was very successful in a number of ways. The dances included three sets from Jnr ID (hip hop), ballet, contemporary and jazz performances, all of which were appreciated by the sizeable audience. Reuben raised $1758 which is an amazing amount of money, and will go a long way for children who share Reuben's passion for dance to take part in dance lessons.
The second example of giving back that has taken place this week is Kawiti and Ron's Charity Basketball Tournament. The boys have arranged a lunchtime tournament, the first game of which happened on Wednesday, a hotly contested game which ended in a narrow 12-11 win to Team 5, and which was watched by a very enthusiatic set of supporters. Kawiti and Ron have organised the court spaces, the teams, the refs, and teachers to supervise.
Jnr ID performing at Reuben's Dance Show (above)
Kawiti and Ron before their basketball tournament began (right)
Staffing 2023
Primary School News
News from Whānau Whetu
Hub 10 is currently exploring our local school environment. We wondered why we weren’t seeing many insects or native birds around our beautiful grounds and have been creating plans to encourage them back. We also created bird’s eye view maps of the school so that we could think really carefully about where we could place the things we were planning. The photos show some of our maps and us planting some wildflowers. We also did some close looking at native plants and birds and created some detailed art pieces.
Congratulations
We have received the theory exam results held on the 29th October 2022 for New Zealand Modern School of Music. A big congratulations to these student’s achievements in the Grade 1 exam.
Distinction 100/100: Charlie Griffin, Willoughby Riddell
Distinction 99/100: Piper Towns
Honours 93/100: Meina Vogels
Celebration of Learning Morning
It was wonderful to have whānau join Koru and Mahira for their celebration morning. Lots of rich play happening...including by the adults!
The gates have gone...and the grass has appeared! The children have been loving spending time on the grass, enjoying their morning tea and lunch with their friends.
Intermediate School News
Hub 1 - Bird of the Year
Hub 1 have been busy both making models and writing reports about a variety of native birds. This came about from their interest in the recent Bird of the Year competition. Below you can see both their birds and a wonderful report from Lulu about ruru.
