We have had a wonderful two weeks, really getting into the swing of our learning for the term. I have personally enjoyed seeing the junior Kikorangi class making the map of their neighbourhood and seeing the big grins as they make progress with their reading. In the senior Kākāriki class I have been blown away by the great coding lessons they have been doing lately.
One of our values is Turangawaewae: a strong sense of place and identity is the foundation for learning. Knowing our diverse backgrounds enables us to feel connected and empowered. Here's a short video of what some of our learners love about Nukumea Primary School so far:
This term our learners have focused on the concept of identity and shared their backgrounds with each other. One activity the Kikorangi class undertook was sharing an "all about me bag". We have also explored our local area with activities like the map of the neighbourhood I described earlier. The Kākāriki class have also been working on the exciting task of developing what our identity as a school is. How would they describe our school to people that haven't been here? At the end of this newsletter is an invitation for our end of term celebration where we look forward to sharing more of the exciting learning that has taken place this term.
There have also been several system developments in the background of the school over the last few weeks. In this newsletter you will find information about registering for our online payments system and an invitation to come along to our Board meetings as we prepare to change from our Establishment to a community Board of Trustees. We have also now been hooked up to a landline phone system to replace our mobile phone we have operated off so far. If you need to contact the school about anything during the day, please now call the new phone number of 09 320 1376.
We are now set up with Kindo for all our online payments. This is a simple, intuitive system that makes it easy to do things like pay school donations, order lunches etc. Your info about school donations will be sent out next week and from 31st March, we are having Friday lunch orders available from Pita Pit. Before we can do this, we need you to register with Kindo through this link: https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/handshake.shtml?shop=Nukumea%20Primary%20School
So far in our school's development we have had an Establishment Board of Trustees that was appointed by the Ministry of Education. The Board meets monthly to discuss the progress of the school and ensure our teaching team are working towards the vision and values of the school.
Now that we are underway, the planning is happening for us to transition to a community based Board of Trustees like other schools have. We are aiming to have this transition complete to a Board of Trustees consisting of people in our community by the start of Term 4. More info will be out shortly about the timeline with nominations and election dates.
If you are interested in helping the school as we develop over our first few years, or just interested in hearing what we discuss, then you are welcome to come along to any of our Board Meetings. The dates for our next few meetings are below:
- Tuesday April 4th
- Tuesday May 2nd
- Tuesday May 30th
- Tuesday June 27th
The meetings are at school and run from 5:30-7:30pm. Please feel free to come along and if you have any questions about this, please talk to Steve at school or email him on stevem@nukumea.school.nz
Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you next week.