Balmoral School Newsletter - 23 August 2024

Upcoming Events

Te Tumuaki / Principal

Kia ora e te whānau

PISA 2022 Worldwide Ranking (NZ #14)

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the OECD in more than 80 nations of 15-year-old students’ scholastic performance in mathematics, science, and reading.

New Zealand is ranked number 14 in the world.

Rightly so, we all celebrated how fantastic our Olympic teams were early this month for their achievements. According to The Guardian, New Zealand came either 4th, 6th, or 11th in the world, depending on which model you use.

Perhaps it is time we apply this celebration to NZ schoolchildren and our schools. NZ came fourth in the Pisa ratings for creativity and fourteenth in the world in the Pisa Worldwide Ranking (see below).

Imagine if we changed our messaging about school and child failure and turned this into positive messaging. It would further build the confidence of our tamariki and their engagement in a system where they felt valued. 

Ngā mihi Malcolm

Maths at Balmoral

When we evaluate educational practices, it's crucial that we look beyond the surface. A truly effective school and classroom environment is highly structured and it's also flexible, engaging, and student-orientated.

In contrast to the traditional, one-size-fits-all classrooms of the past, we strive to create learning experiences that cater to the individual needs of each student.

For example, in our mathematics programme, we present children with low-floor/high-ceiling problems ("In other words, everyone can get started and everyone can get stuck"). 

High quality education, like our highly trained and talented teachers provide, requires a balance of structure and flexibility, allowing for both planned activities and opportunities for exploration and discovery.

Sickness at School

We are currently experiencing a lot of illness at school.

A number of staff have recently contracted COVID, and it has affected them quite badly. When they are sick, we struggle to find enough relief teachers, which further disrupts the learning of our tamariki.

If your child is sick, please keep them home. This creates a healthier school environment for others.

Ākonga and Whānau Learning Conversations

Over the last two days, we held slightly over 650 learning conferences with whānau and tamariki. These conversations are very helpful for us as we develop ongoing learning programmes for children. We appreciate and love having all of you in school, and we know the children enjoy this, too. 

If you were unable to schedule a time to meet with your child's teacher, please consider emailing to arrange an alternative meeting time. 

Philosophy for Children (P4C) Parent Evening

Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an integral part of the Balmoral teaching and learning. We believe that to create the curious, confident and connected learners that Balmoral values, they need the critical thinking skills that P4C offers. 

We are keen to engage our parent community more in this subject area and invite you to an information evening on the 25th September from 5.30-6.30pm where we can share more information on the skills it offers the ākonga. 

This evening will consist of:-

• A brief talk covering the origins and pedagogy behind P4C
• A little on the explicit skills taught and how they progress throughout the school
• A model lesson, led by Joe Teague & Dr. Vanya Kovach with a few volunteers from the audience!
  

Please register your interest here so we can plan for a great evening.

Learning Support Awareness Day  Thursday 29 August

Learning support is drastically underfunded in New Zealand schools. Our school spends over $250,000 per year from locally raised funds and operations grants to provide staffing like teacher aids, a SENCO and Literacy Support. This also includes release time for teachers to meet parents during school contact hours and programmes like Steps to Literacy, Reading Recovery, Maths Support and other Literacy Support.

On Thursday, educators and parent advocates across the motu want to raise awareness in our community about this underfunding. 

Educators have several solutions, two key ones being centrally funded human resources such as:

• Teacher aide support for all mokopuna that need it.
• Increase the number of learning support specialists working with mokopuna and teachers.

Watch out for further information in the media and what you can do to help raise awareness and support for this need. 

Primary School News

Pānui from Whānau Koru

Learning through Play ~ Inquiry

Searching for signs of Spring at Field School

Things are changing in our orchard and our eagle-eyed and curious Koru children are noticing, sharing observations, thinking and asking questions. Our orchard and beautiful native gardens are full of colour and wonder. Make sure you go for a walk one day.

The children do the talking this week and they also took all the photos.

Eddie - I can tell it's a blossom tree because it has these (lichen) and you can tell because the branches are red.

Goldie - At my home I have a feijoa tree and there’s green blossom on it. 

Charlie - Come and look, I’ve seen a clue in the bamboo. There is literally a clue. See these new baby shoots? The little green ones?

Looking at our citrus trees:

Eliana - those are the flowers starting to grow. They are blossoming. When the flowers grow they will turn into fruit. I’ve seen it on our blueberry bush.

Willow - That’s a bud. Buds change into blossom and blossom changes into fruit.

Milly - The orchard looks dirty but it does make fruit.

At the Kōwhai grove:

Eddie - Baby blossom happens when it's yellow. This is a baby.

Nevaeh - What lives in spring?

Billy looking at kōwhai seeds - That’s interesting. They’re hatching. The bees will come soon.

Arty - the bees come because there is nectar in there and they will pollinate it to make honey. The nectar is inside. See these little things. They make honey.

Nevaeh - What are the little bits on the end of the Kōwhai tree? 

Mushroom talk:

Eliana - mushrooms grow in winter. Why don’t they grow in spring?

Edie - Maybe it’s too sunny for the mushrooms. That must be the only mushroom growing in spring.

Eliana - most mushrooms live on the ground and up high in trees. The sun is starting to get stronger, soon it will be spring. The flowers are blooming.

Balmoral Olympics

The Olympic Games provided an exciting context for play. Connecting home and school, children would arrive in the mornings with news of events they had watched with whānau. This transferred into their play. Elliot F. shared his full collection of medals while the 100 metre sprints were in action. Silver and Bronze went to Finland and Gold…to New Zealand!!

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Eden Albert Rugby

On Tuesday the 6th of August, three teams went out to compete at the Eden/Albert Rugby tournament. We took one team of boys tackle and two teams of girls rippa. Everyone was so excited they were singing songs on the bus ride there. 

We couldn’t have asked for a better day weather wise, as the sun was shining bright for most of the day. We faced some adversity early on, but all of our teams bounced back and got better as the day went on. When one team wasn’t playing, we made sure to show our Balmoral school spirit and go cheer our other teams on! The blue rippa team placed 4th overall, the red team got 10th, and the boys tackle came 5th. 

Everyone showed great sportsmanship and had lots of fun. Wish we could do this more often!

Beau, Henry, Antonia, & Josh

Intermediate School News

Mathex Competition

Mathex 2024 was a great opportunity to have fun and compete doing maths. Once the event started there were literally hundreds of kids running down the track trying to get their answers in as quickly as possible. The prizes for the winners were a Westfield gift card and a CALCULATOR. As soon as we saw the calculator we knew we had to win. We worked our hardest for 30 minutes straight and as a team we managed to answer 9/20 questions correctly. It was an amazing time to meet other insanely good mathematicians. Overall we worked great as a team. Here are our quotes: 

Joe: My highlight was the biscoff donut and the maths I guess that part was alright 😄

Harrison: I’ve never seen that many Asian relatives in one room before 我的堂兄妹! 🤔

Leo: We may have lost, but the true biggest loss that night was not winning the CALCULATOR😢 Bucklands Beach was suspiciously good🤔

George: Our real reasons we lost were: we were too cold, too hungry, shoes too slippery, too thirsty, too hot, the paper was green, we were tired, we were sore, and we didn't win

#FORTHECALCULATOR

By Harrison, Joe, Leo, George

Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e Lea Faka-Tonga

This week some of our students have celebrated Tongan Language Week by teaching classes all about ngatu, including how it is made and some of the ways that ngatu are used. Mālō 'aupito to everyone who who helped us learn more about this very special treasure.

Art with Liz

We have been very lucky to have Liz teach art as part of the Specialist rotation while Alex has been away. She has focused on working with colour, line and shape, using Van Gogh's Starry Night as inspiration. The children have also worked on digital pieces, continuing with the focus on these elements of art. We are enjoying seeing the results of all this hard work displayed in and around the hubs.

Community News