Newsletter 6, Term 2 Week 9 2020

18 Padnell Crescent Newlands Wellington 6037

P: 04 939 0186 | E: office@rewarewa.school.nz

rewarewa.school.nz

Newsletter 6, Term 2 Week 9 2020

Wednesday 10 June 2020

Thank you to everyone in our community for helping us to implement the Lockdown Level 2 protocols so seamlessly. Our students have also been amazing at taking changes in their stride, such as using hand sanitiser upon entering their rooms, each class operating as an individual cell in the playground, toilets and classroom spaces and walking themselves in through the playground. We are very proud of you all! We’ve certainly missed seeing our mums, dads and grandparents though. Last week our teachers noticed that the third week of being back at school was slightly different for some of our students, who seemed tired and a bit scratchy with others. So, we introduced relaxing art, dance and quiet activities to support them during the day.

Level 1 – what will this look like for us at Rewa Rewa School?

All of our school community is now welcome onsite. Just a reminder:

Students should not arrive at school until 8.30 am
Those few children whose parents really need to leave them at school between 8-8.30 am must report to the Hall on arrival and remain there until 8.30 am
End of day pick-ups will revert to 3 pm for all students
Parents are welcome to come into the classroom block
The Adventure Playground can now be used by all students
Visitors to the school must still report to the Office on arrival
There is a Rewa Rewa School QR code posted at every entrance for parents and visitors to use with the Governments personal contact tracing app, should you choose to
At present, hand sanitiser is still in place for those who wish to use it
High-use surfaces, such as tables and desktops will continue to be wiped each day

CURRICULUM

This term’s Big Plan was turned upside down due to the sudden shift from onsite to home learning. Accordingly, the teaching team has reviewed the plan and come up with a more compact version for the second half of term 2. We have tried to keep literacy and numeracy at the core of what we do, whilst we ease students back into school life. Our core RIDE values, key competencies and Bronze/Silver learner skills have been woven throughout each day to bring a sense of order to learning and to socialising. Some of the extracurricular activities that we had planned, such as Life Education Trust, ASB financial literacy, Otago Maths, kapa haka performance training and a magic show have had to be cancelled for now. However, the Easyswim gymnastics programme (paid for with 2020 Activity Fees), is almost ready to be launched and every child in the school will benefit from these lessons. Our Waste Heroes programme will restart in term 3 and Harold the Giraffe from Life Education Trust will visit us in Term 4.

BOARD NEWS

Staffing

Our school roll is really booming – we currently have 111 students, which is fantastic and we are on target to reach 117 by the end of the year. Ideally we would like to reach 125 students by the end of each year, so that we start the following year with 100-110 students, enabling us to increase our number of permanent teachers.

Our largest growth area is in Whero, our junior class. The board is investing in employing additional personnel so that we can continue to give every student the very best start at school. Therefore, as from term 3, there will be an additional teacher working in Whero class daily, initially for 12 hours per week. We will continue to closely monitor the size of our classes as the year proceeds and will respond accordingly with quality support.

Teacher Only Days (TOD)

This year there are 2 TOD in total:

Please note that the last day of this term is Thursday 2 July as on Friday 3 July there will be a Teacher Only Day (TOD) for Learning through Play professional development.

Term 3 will start for students on Tuesday 21 July as Monday 20 July is the 2^nd TOD for DIMC maths.

ERO REPORT 2020

For those who have yet to read our report, key strengths of the school which were identified include:

a clear strategic vision that is meaningfully focused on improving learning and well-being

effectively building professional capability and collective capacity to promote student success
the purposeful range of systems, processes and strategies used to identify, track and address the individual needs of students.

On the basis of the findings of this review, ERO’s overall evaluation judgement of Rewa Rewa School’s performance in achieving valued outcomes for its students is:

Well placed (please refer to the attached matrix to understand what this means). We are thrilled to have achieved this rating, but the work doesn’t stop here – we need to continue to build on all the good work that we have put in place

Download: ERO evaluation matrix.pdf

Mid-Year Reports for Parents

Student reports will be coming home on the last day of term 2 (Thursday 2 July), for all students except those who have been at school for less than 10 weeks. For those families, your child’s teacher will book an interview with you to discuss your child’s goals for the year ahead. The mid-year report format has been adapted due to some curriculum areas not being completed because of the COVID-19 Lockdown disruption to programmes. For parents living at different addresses, if you require a copy of your child’s report to be sent to both parents, please email your child’s class teacher with details so that they can arrange this for you. Interviews will be held early in term 3, so please let us know how we can best support those who would like to attend.

Property Development

We are getting closer to the installation of new fencing around parts of the school. Once this is erected and we have our new July property grant instalment, our next projects will be the Junior Adventure Playground and a Sensory Room for our students with special learning needs.

Al has completed the addition of a slide to our Adventure Playground and students are enjoying using it!

ROAD COURTESY

We are noticing some poor decision-making on the road outside the school gates, generally due to parents/caregivers being in a rush to get elsewhere.

Please DO

Be considerate of other drivers and pedestrians, especially when reversing
Be considerate of the patrol team – if a Patrol Adult asks you to listen, it’s because your decisions are endangering others! We need to look after our volunteer adult patrollers as they are keeping your child safe
Be good role models and teach your children to use the pedestrian crossing to cross the road
Make sure your child disembarks on the footpath side, not directly onto the road
Let those who are dropping off/collecting your child know NOT TO park in the carpark OR walk through the carpark OR turn into the carpark and back out into the pedestrian crossing – thank you

We will publish photos of re-offending cars, if need be – this is not a club that you want to belong to. If you can assist with Road Patrol, either at the start or end of a day, please let us know at the Office or speak to Charlotte Hills. It is only 15 minutes of your time, but is such a huge contribution to our school.