Balmoral School Newsletter - 6 September 2024

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Te Tumuaki / Principal

Kia ora e te whānau

Education Theory (What is Good Teaching?)

Currently, the government is speedily rewriting the NZ Curriculum, which is causing much angst within the education community. With this rewrite, we often hear the word 'structured' in terms such as 'structured literacy' and 'structured maths' as the new silver bullet to raise educational achievement in New Zealand.

I, for one, believe there are no education silver bullets. A skilled teacher has to have a toolbox or kete that they draw out when needed to respond to individual learners' needs. It is is a thoughtful, challenging, and complex role to be an effective teacher. Below, Professor Guy Claxton expertly lays out the complexity schools and educators face.

It follows that there is no such thing as ‘good teaching’, only teaching that is good for certain purposes or outcomes. For example, if all you are concerned about is scores on relatively superficial tests of reading ability, mathematical computation or factual retention, then there is a good deal of research that shows that explicit or didactic teaching – that which maximises Explanation (by teachers) and minimises opportunities for Exploration (by students) on the grounds of ‘efficiency’ – is perfectly good.

If, however, you also value (note: in addition to, not instead of, ‘knowledge’) the cultivation of character strengths such as curiosity, independence, imagination, critique, collaboration or intellectual humility, then different kinds of teaching are needed. Indeed, relentless ‘explicit teaching’ may well stunt the development of the very strengths that are often espoused by recent curriculum reforms in many countries.

Any kind of teaching can be done ‘badly’. Explicit teaching can be dull and disengaging, just as inquiry-based teaching can be unfocused or pitched inappropriately. It is intellectually lazy to promote a ‘good’ version of one by attacking a ‘weak’ or caricatured version of the other. In reality, the craft of teaching mostly involves a judicious and dynamic mixture of both explanation and exploration, depending on a whole variety of factors (prior knowledge, subject, purpose, age, aptitude, mood etc) to which good teachers are sensitive and responsive (see John Hattie’s work). To try to enforce a single template is bad education and bad science. ( https://www.guyclaxton.net/blog )

Structured Literacy Training

As part of its speedy curriculum overhaul, the government is mandating Year 0-3 teachers to be trained in Structured Literacy approaches. This happens on Tuesday and Wednesday next week for our school. Every Year, 0-3 kiako (4 for us because of the composite classes) will be off-site for two days. Katy, Jacqui and Don will also attend.

As with any professional development, we will enter the programme with curiosity. We are interested in how our literacy programmes, which are already full of structure and rigour, including phonics and drawing on vast research about how children learn best, can be further strengthened. Click here to see a relevant theory on what skilled readers need to be able to master both what the words are and what they mean.

Ngā mihi Malcolm

The whakatauki  from Rangitāne. “Kia mau ki tō mana tuku iho.” Hold fast to the prestige you have inherited.

MoE Attendance Advice 

Parents are legally required to enrol their children and make sure they attend school every day. 

• Parents play a big role in helping their children do well in school. You can do this by making sure your child goes to school every day and letting the school know if they're sick.
• If your child is unable to attend school you must let the school know the reason why. 
• Family holidays or taking time off for recreational activities are not acceptable reasons for being absent. 
• You are responsible for letting the school know if your children are moving schools and you need to make sure you enrol your children in their next school right away. 
• https://parents.education.govt.nz/essential-information/attendance-every-day-matters/ 

Library News

Library staff are always grateful to be at a school where the literacy programme is well supported by a good budget for our Library books.  Thanks to our PTA who fundraise so we can make great purchases.

The Scholastic Book Fair will be on site from Monday 16 until Thursday 19^th September.  Of course it is not compulsory for the the children to make purchases;  we also welcome suggestions from them for our own purchasing.

Primary School News

News from Hiringa 

It's hard to believe that Winter is already over and that we are now in Spring. The warm change this week has been nice as has the field drying out for students to play on. In school this week it's been all go with Artzfest well and truly underway across the school. There have been some great projects underway which you will get to see on exhibition night in week 9.

This term in inquiry we have embarked on a journey into a country town which has been shocked by the arrival of two green children. From this initial starting point, students have shared their wonderings about how they have arrived, who they are, and why they are green amongst many other questions. Students then got to create their own families consisting of 3 generations that reside in the town. From this we explored how a small town reacts to the arrival of “different people” with the children taking on a number of different roles in short skits that they prepared. A great start to exploring reasons for migration and how it can change communities through drama.

Bike skills took place over the course of last week with Bigfoot Adventures coming onsite to deliver some great learnings for our young cyclists. It was great to see students that hadn't had the opportunity to learn to ride a bike build their confidence and even ride small distances by the end of the second session. For those that could already ride, they gained some valuable training on how to ride a bike on the road taking into account the road rules and traffic.

In maths, we have moved on from decimals where students learnt to add and subtract decimals and use place value houses to work with decimals. In their group work they got to discuss different strategies when working with decimals to test their understanding. We have now moved on to geometry with a focus on shape and space for the rest of the term.

It was great to connect with so many whanau during conferences earlier this term so that your children could share their work with you all and show the growth they have achieved over the year so far. It was great to see the support our students have towards their learning from home.

Eden Albert Netball 

 On Thursday 22nd August Balmoral Mawhero, Whero, Kikorangi, Kakariki and Kowhai (Boys) netball teams went to the Eden Albert Zones Netball tournament. Balmoral had a lot of teams, a big shout out to all of them! We went on to the bus thinking that one of us would win. When we got there it was packed with teams. Our team was warming up when Emma, Harry's mum, came over to tell us that we had our first game in ten minutes. As we walked onto the court and eyed our opponents we figured out they were from Kohia School. The nerves built up when the whistle blew, and the game had started. We got the ball and whipped the ball down to the attackers and scored the first point of the game. The final score was 16-1 (we had won are first game 🤯 but it was not over yet) to make a long story short the results were: Mawhero came 2nd in the Y5 A grade, Whero came 2nd in the Y6 A grade, and the boys team came 1st in their competition. 🥳🥳. All of the teams played excellently and showed amazing sportsmanship. 

By Iggy Morris and Harry Standen

Netball Year 1 & 2 

Auckland Netball is coming to school to run a free Year 1 & 2 taster netball session. This is an opportunity to try netball by run by their coaches.

Auckland Netball follows Netball New Zealand’s Official Junior Netball programme called futureFERNS. The programme encourages the development of skills and provides a progressive introduction to Netball. The children play modified sport formats to enjoy more fun, passes, play, and shots, with a strong focus on skill development. Year 1&2 players play 4v4 in one third of a netball court, with lower netball hoops or hula hoops. This modified game results in more engaged players and more decision-making opportunities, which is a proven way to improve skills and increase enjoyment.

This session will require parents to be present with their children on the sideline. 

Date: Wednesday 25^th September

Venue: Balmoral School netball courts

Time: 3:00pm - 3:40pm

Cost: FREE

If your child is interested in giving netball a go, please sign up via my form(click on the below link) so I can get an idea of numbers. We will run several games at the same time if we have lots of interest.

https://forms.gle/THmGTeb7T9bUyarD9

Meredith Hughes

Sports League Coordinator

Intermediate School News

Balmoral at Bandquest

Last Monday Tīwaiwaka and Black Lightning travelled to the Bruce Mason Centre to compete in the Central Auckland round of the Bandquest competition, along with 14 other bands. It was an incredible experience for both bands to play on such a large stage, to such a large audience. They both performed amazingly, with Tīwaiwaka raising the roof of the centre with their rendition of the Ghostbusters theme, and Black Lightning being the only band in the competition to perform an original song. Special congratulations to Lio Browne who won a coveted vocalist award. Our huge thanks to Leo Spykerman who has been working with the bands at school in Alex's absence. We look forward to hearing all our bands perform next term.

Community News