Education Renewal Plan Launch

Today Dianne MacCormick (Chairperson, BOT) and I attended a meeting in which Minister Hekia Parata released the Education Renewal Plan for ChCh. 

The extent of damage to EC centres and schools and the relocation of people means the education network will be renewed or changed. You may be aware the MOE has worked with geotechnical and structural engineers to assess the land and buildings on school sites. This information along with roll change has lead to the potential re-shaping of education in ChCh, including the proposal of school closures and mergers.

The proposal for our school is to remain OPEN and recapitate as a Year 1-8 school. 

It is important to understand that the information shared today was in proposal form only and schools will now consult with their communities. 

We will indeed be meeting with, and supporting,  schools in our local learning community cluster, many of whom have been greatly affected by the plan.

I will continue to update you but please check out http://shapingeducation.minedu.govt.nz/guiding-the-process-of-renewal 

Check us out, a very proud Shirley Primary Moment...

Dear Sylvia,

On Friday of last week 30 of your ESOL students visited the Air Force Museum for an Education Programme, accompanied by Ali Ward.  This is just a quick note to say how absolutely wonderful they were!  The students were engaged, polite, displayed great manners, and they had infectiously positive attitudes.  I only wish that all visiting school groups showed this many encouraging attributes.

Well done to you and you team.
We look forward to further visits from your school students.

Kind Regards,
*Chris Davey*    /Education Officer
www.airforcemuseum.co.nz
*AIR** FORCE MUSEUM OF NEW ZEALAND *

Student-Led Conferences

We hope you found these valuable. The children were very excited about the opportunity to talk about their learning and were very proud of themselves. According to world-respected educational researcher John Hattie a major aim for teachers is to "get students to learn the skills of teaching themselves - to learn to self-regulate their learning" (Visible Learning, 2009). The more confident our students are at talking about the learning process the more opportunities they have at understanding how they learn which optimises their ability to learn.

Staff Professional Learning in the Holidays

Today all of our teaching staff worked with Danny from etime developing our own skills and knowledge for teaching our students to be digital citizens.

We developed skills rubrics, explored new apps on our ipods and even made some movies using imovie on our new ipads. All in all a thoroughly exciting and beneficial way to spend the first day of the holidays!

Great news

I was so delighted with the news that the Government has retracted their policy to increase class sizes. While I appreciate they have done this as a result of 'parent voice' I sincerely hope they recognise the pitfalls of larger class sizes, and the fact that teaching has changed this century and teachers provide individualised teaching for students in their classes. We all understand that ineffective teachers will not be successful even if they are teaching a class of 10 but I can reassure you that we provide quality teaching at Shirley Primary School and implement a robust performance management programme in which our teachers strive, and learn, to be even more effective:)

Anniversary date approaches..

Just a reminder that you are welcome to collect your child early tomorrow to attend the civic memorial service at 12.00 at North Hagley Park tomorrow. We will observe two minutes silence in classes at 12.51p.m. but otherwise will proceed with a normal school day for the children.

My thoughts are with you and your family as we remember back to a very difficult and challenging time.

PS Room 4, 9 and 6 loved swimming in the pool today:)

Meet the teacher

Thanks to all of our families who were able to attend the 'meet the teacher/fish n chip' night tonight. Everyone did well to squeeze into the library with the sudden downpour of rain. Check out the newsletter and website calendar for more school events scheduled during the term. We appreciate your support.

School starts

Time for early nights now because school starts this week.

Wednesday 1 February 2012 - classes open from 8.30 a.m., the bell will ring at 8.55 a.m.

See you there:)

Kick-it kids

Don't forget there is a free kick-it kids football session for Shirley Primary children this Wednesday 24 January. Junior children Y0-3 from 10.00-11.30 and senior children Y4-6 from 12.00-1.30. Please bring a water bottle, a snack and make sure you have sun-block on. Register on the day on the school field with the coach, Paul Bateson.

School checked

I am pleased to report that the school has been thoroughly checked by DD Architects and it all looks good, with just a couple of minor fix-ups; a basin in the boys toilets becoming loose and some repairs to the walkway roof outside the admin block. So that is fantastic news.

Unfortunately there have been a couple of vandalism issues these holidays with deliberate vandalism to our internal pedestrian gate latches (one incident where I caught  four teenage girls deliberately smashing them!), some tagging and a small case of arson.

So, thanks to our neighbours who keep a good look out for us and to many of our families who also come down and check things out. School is already busy though with teachers getting organised for 2012, and of course Mr McKenzie is there everyday and Mary, our cleaner.

Happy New Year

I returned to school after a lovely short new year's break in Sefton, feeling a little jittery after our wee spate of shakes only to be completely 'blown away' and delighted by the efforts of the staff of Tom Thumb Logistics - Aaron Cooper (owner and one of our parents), Lisa Wisse (manager and very talented local artist), Mike McClintock, Mitch Lauder and Noel Garner. Why? because they have donated all of their holiday time over the past week to:

• repair our pool - YES, fix it!                   and
• replace our poolside crumbled block wall with a new wooden fence WITH an awesome hand-painted mural (wow, Lisa!)                                and
• put topsoil all over our field ready for re-sowing

What an awesome surprise......

THANKS SO MUCH TO TOM THUMB LOGISTICS.....Looks like we will be swimming in 2012!!