Week 9 NEWSLETTER

from the principal

Our Vision: Together we Nurture, Explore and Create for a Better Future

I’ve spent the term writing about the ‘Learning Pit’, a visual model to help explain the learning process to children (and us as adults!). Every day there are lots of stories I could share to illustrate the Pit, but I have two in particular to share this week.

Last week DJ was working with Mr Harkness and the Core Belief team, using Makey Makey to create circuits.

The aim was to make an object with switches, that could control a piano on the laptop. This was not easy…and immediately the whole class was in the Learning Pit. DJ found it a challenge as well, but persevered and used good strategies, such as asking questions of the teacher, and across the lesson built his object with switches that could control the piano. He was immensely proud to have climbed out of the pit to enjoy the ‘eureka’ moment of learning success, and took great joy in telling his homeclass teacher how smart he is! Great stuff DJ.

The other story is about an Auckland mathematics teacher who runs a YouTube channel helping students get through NCEA maths and has been named Local Hero of the Year as part of the KiwiBank New Zealander of the Year awards. The article on him is a good read, but I love his message for students that they should be comfortable making mistakes.

"I think what happens with maths is most people think that 'I need to get the answer correct and if I don't get it correct I'm not good at maths' and I think the attitude needs to change where we're going, actually there's more than one way to get to this answer, just keep persevering," he said.
"I tell the kids never leave any questions empty, give me an answer and we will try and figure out how you got the wrong answer and then how we get to the right answer, and I think that really helps the kids move forward in maths."

What he is directly talking about is jumping into the Pit with maths, giving it a go, and working your way forward through the mistakes. Mistakes are NOT the enemy of learning, rather they are a key, central part of HOW we learn. An excellent message, from an excellent teacher, helping NZ children get excellent maths results.

Learning Conversations - Bookings Open

Our Learning Conversations are not too far away now, Monday and Tuesday of Week 11 (April 7th and 8th). Bookings open today for these in HERO, and just like last year they are super easy to do. On your sidebar you will see a ‘School Bookings’ area, and inside that you can manage the bookings for your child/ren.

Attendance

Always a topic that crops up in the media from time to time, successive governments have had targets in place to try and lift school attendance back to pre-COVID levels. The current target is to have 80% of school children ‘attend regularly’ which means they are at school 90% of the time. To meet this target children can only be away from school less than 5 days each term. On the surface this seems easy enough, not that much…but even missing 5 days a term adds up quickly. 20 days a year, that is a month of missing learning. Play that out over the 6 years children attend DPS…and that is half a year of missed learning. Consider now a child’s school journey until year 12, and that is a year lost.

So how does Douglas Park’s attendance look? We were tracking at over 80% of children ‘attending regularly’ until just recently, and have dipped down to 72%. Hopefully we can maintain this over the last part of the term. Term 1 in 2024 we finished at 65% of children ‘attending regularly’...so if we finish above this it is a step in the right direction.

How do I know what my child's attendance rate is? You can use your HERO app to see how your child's attendance is looking. Open the app, tap on the ‘2025 Report’ for your child and the attendance information is displayed. The % under the ‘Present’ column is what to look for. Ideally this will be over 90%...which means they are on track to finish the term with less than 5 days away, meeting the target set by the government.

While I mention HERO…big thanks also for making use of the Absence reporting feature inside HERO…it really streamlines our work in the AM chasing up absences

Out of Zone Enrolments for Terms 3 & 4

The process for Out of Zone enrolments for Term 3 and 4 this year will start soon. In the last week of term applications will open, closing in the first week of Term 2. If you live out of zone, and have a child starting later this year…are we aware? The application process is very easy, but if we do not know about your 4 year old…they may miss out on a place. Flick an email to office@douglaspark.school.nz

Stationery - Thank you to everyone who has already paid.

We are very lucky to have the BOT subsidise our stationery for the year. This really keeps costs down and once again we ask that all learners pay $15 as soon as possible. The easiest way to pay is online, our bank details are ASB 12-3290-0064275-00 please put your child's name as a reference. You can also call into the office and pay by eftpos or send cash to the office in a named envelope if you prefer. Please pay promptly as it saves us following up but any problems at all please see the office.