PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
John Goulstone
Kia ora koutou
We are on the count down to the end of term 3. We managed to get a full round of both netball and miniball for those that played as well as getting the various cross country events in this term. The Māori and Pacific Island Festival went ahead in its entirety and Chelsey is busy organising the senior athletics for the first week back next term. This is as close to normal as school has been in the last two and half years. Long may this last.
The Otago Rugby Union sent a few players (male and female) along to school last Friday to mix and mingle with a group of year 3-6 students. They ran a couple of games and some drills. I am sure we were the inspiration for the men’s team win over Waikato on Sunday. Thank you to the rugby union for doing this, it is much appreciated.
Both Jan Fleming and myself will be at a finance seminar on Tuesday so the office will be unmanned. You can leave a message on the answer machine or send an email to [email protected]. Lisa Lyell is the go to person on this day if something is urgent. You can still text to the school cell number and the message can be passed on.
Hopefully everyone has managed to connect with the online newsletter. Going digital saves paper and Jan's time and reduces the photocopy bill as well which can be tasked to other uses.
We have our celebration of learning next Thursday, 6-7pm. We'll open it with a karakia (a way to signal the start of the proceedings), followed by a short speech (korero) about what we have been up to and then the children will sing a couple of waiata. After this depending on numbers we'll show a video that the children created showing their version of the Kai Tahu creation narrative. Then you will be free to wander the classrooms looking at the children's work/mahi under the concept of creativity. We used the Kai Tahu creation story as a catalyst for ceativity utilising The Arts Curriculum. Some of the essential questions we were trying to answer were:
What is creativity?
What inspires creativity?
How does creativity affect the way cultural narratives are shared and valued?
Next term we are focusing on the concept of legacy, both in a personal sense and as a school. Our idea is to explore it using our values and traditions so our essential questions are:
What is legacy?
How can legacy be influenced by values and actions?
I have just received Katie Herbert's resignation. Katie has been on maternity leave and she has decided that with two children under two that trying to cope with teaching on top of that was not going to work very well. We are sad that she is going however understand the demands of parenthood. I am sure that Katie will come back to teaching once the children are older. In the meantime we will be advertising her position in the term break and hope to be able to announce her replacement early in November.
