There has been some interesting research done on Dads and the impact they have on their child’s reading.  The research showed that Dads are not spending enough time reading with their children. The big concern is our boys.  Boys are overrepresented in remedial reading classes such as Reading Recovery. It makes sense that Dads make more effort to read with their boys. The simple act of Dad reading states that ‘reading is important, it is fun and worthwhile’. I have attached the link (QR code on next page) to this article in the NZ Herald. Have a read and it may convince some of our Dads out there to make a bit more time to read with their children. We know you are busy but this is important stuff.

We had an awesome Maori consultation meeting. Some very exciting ideas that will benefit all our students, capturing our unique culture and identity in our learning is essential for all our tamariki.. The wisdom in the room was a privilege to listen to. Our notes from this meeting are in this newsletter.

It is great to see so much happening at Mangonui School on the gardening front. Linda Caples, Whaea Turi, Tanya Kelly, Josh and a group of students (The Garden Squad) are leading the charge to develop gardens at school. A plan has been developed with Trudy Crerar which focuses on the whole concept of healthy, organic community gardens. It is a major project that is offers a ‘hands on’ and fun approach to learning outside the classroom.  There already has been amazing support from Coastal Homes to build the structure of the gardens with local businesses Far North ITM and Mangonui Haulage among others contributing to materials. We have had Scott Morgan offer to house honey bee hives on site which is another really exciting development. This project is fantastic and will provide rich authentic learning opportunities for our students.  The Garden Squad team are organising a good old working bee on Sat. 19th September from 10am-2pm. It would be great to see this project supported by our school whanau. Come along with your spade! There will be a sausage sizzle for lunch.

We had no one turn up for the consultation on ‘Community of Learners’ which hopefully indicates most of our school whanau feel informed about the potential changes that could take place if we were to join a cluster of schools. Update on COL - At this stage the NZEI are negotiating with the Ministry of Education over changes they would like to see in the model.  I have attended a meeting recently at Taipa Area School to investigate the possibility of an East Coast Cluster. We are waiting  to get a feasibility report back from the Ministry to if we have enough teachers and interested schools to form a cluster.

Last week we had a Learning Change Network (LCN) staff meeting. We do this each term with our eleven schools. Lead teachers from our schools meet for a day to plan for the staff meeting. The focus was writing assessment and ensuring that we are all on the same page when assessing student work. You have guidelines on how to assess writing but a teacher must have good content knowledge to be able to achieve this accurately. There are also issues (and debates) over these guidelines, it comes back to how a school interprets them.  Recently a school published their 2014 student data and compared it with all the other Far North schools. They looked very good. BUT…. was it fair to compare this data with other schools? My answer is ‘No’.  Not unless you have worked through the process we are doing as a cluster of schools. The meeting was another huge success. Lots and lots of rich discussion. Teachers from the same age groups sat together, shared writing samples, shared opinions and started to develop shared understandings. They identified trends,  areas of concern and areas of strength. One thing that stood out was that we have some brilliant teachers in the Far North that are scattered across all of our schools. Listening to their korero was a privilege and just showed the depth of quality we have in the North. Lots of people love giving the Far North a kick but what they do not realise is that because we are (as teachers)  presented with many challenges we become better for that, stronger and more skilled than the unchallenged. This is why the best teachers are found in the North. This collaboration is such a positive thing for Mangonui School and all the other schools in our cluster. The question will be ‘does a COL offer the same as a LCN?’  

Next Week is ‘Keep NZ Beautiful Week’. We will be setting out on Wednesday (weather dependent) to pick up rubbish from around the Mangonui area. If any of our school whanau are available to help out – haere mai!!