Congratulations to the staff representative, Leanne Brookes and 5 parent representatives Andy Bradley, Rory McGeown, Rebecca Meek, Carl Herbst and Sharni Cunningham who made themselves available for election to our Board. They now form our St Joseph’s Board along with Jan Pleiger and Father Wayne our Proprietor's Reps, and Lorraine our Principal. This new board took effect from the 31st May.
Our constitution currently requires us to have 7 parent trustees but this is difficult for us to attain and it t is the boards intention to make a decision about reducing the number of parent trustees to five at our next meeting. Most schools of our size have 5 parent trustees.
I would also like to extend sincere thanks to Michael Plieger and Rose Davies. They are no longer on our BOT but have been committed parent trustees dedicated to their role of ensuring that St Joseph’s School provides the best possible, faith-filled, learning environment for our students.
Teacher Only Day Reminder
School is closed on Friday 9th August for a teacher only day
The first notice of this was in our start of year letter.
Confirmation
Congratulations to our children who received the Sacrament of Confirmation on Sunday. It was great to see the Church packed out and many families participating. The atmosphere was very reverent.
 |
Early Words
Michelle Fatafehi has been trained in the Early Words system and has been taking our our new entrants and year 1s through the Early Words program. This helps them to get ready for reading to take off.
Reading Recovery
We are extremely lucky this year that our Board has pulled out the stops in order to enable two of our teachers to get trained in Reading Recovery. This means that 8-12 of our children will benefit from this intense one to one reading pick up. It is also very high level professional development in reading for our teachers which transfers into the classroom. It makes it very hard for our junior school as they have to keep to tight timetables and teachers have to work very closely together. We are very proud of our junior school for managing this amazing opportunity. Leanne Brookes is already Reading Recovery trained and this year Tua Misiloi and Danique McRae are training.
 |
| Mrs McRae with a Reading Recovery student today |
Absences
I hear our office staff making phone calls each morning chasing up families who have not phoned in or texted their absences. Please let us know if your child is absent and the reason for the absence. If we have no reason we have no choice but to put it down as truant. If our office staff have to make several phone calls and by some chance something bad had happened to a child, following up un-notified absences would delay our ability to call for help.
Attendance
I urge parents to make all necessary arrangements to keep children in school. Holidays and other activities should be planned in holiday breaks as far as possible. The only justified absence is sickness or bereavement involving a close family member. Any child with 90% attendance is in danger of falling behind in learning. This is not just their present learning but learning in the future as they will have gaps and this will slow them down. This is particularly the case for maths throughout the school and also for getting reading going in our younger students.
Our reports this time will show you your child's percentage attendance.
I hear our office staff making phone calls each morning chasing up families who have not phoned in or texted their absences. Please let us know if your child is absent and the reason for the absence. If we have no reason we have no choice but to put it down as truant. If our office staff have to make several phone calls and by some chance something bad had happened to a child, following up un-notified absences would delay our ability to call for help.
Attendance
I urge parents to make all necessary arrangements to keep children in school. Holidays and other activities should be planned in holiday breaks as far as possible. The only justified absence is sickness or bereavement involving a close family member. Any child with 90% attendance is in danger of falling behind in learning. This is not just their present learning but learning in the future as they will have gaps and this will slow them down. This is particularly the case for maths throughout the school and also for getting reading going in our younger students.
Our reports this time will show you your child's percentage attendance.
Church Strand Teaching
We are presently learning about Church in RE. We have changed our RE teaching schedule this year to fit in with our overall inquiry. Earlier this term we did our main learning about God the Father and Creator. This was when we looked at our school environment and considered the environment as a whole. We have now moved on to thinking about what we can do about the environment. That means we have a responsibility as the hands and mouth of Christ on Earth as a Church gathered together we need to do something about the environment. If you would like an adult overview about what we teach about Church, have a look here.
God Bless and Aroha
Lorraine Frances-Rees
No comments:
Post a Comment