Week 2 NEWSLETTER

from the principal

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

The partnership between home and school is a key component of schooling success…when the energies of the student, the whānau and the school are aligned great things can happen. Our vision reflects this, starting with the words ‘Together we’ - educational progress and success isn’t the sole responsibility of anyone, the three spokes of that wheel are student, home and school.

We start our ‘Together we’ journey with our Mihi Whakatau at the start of each term…our way of welcoming all new students and their families into our school whānau. This is always such a positive event…and I love seeing all the connections being formed.

This past weekend the Minister of Education announced a new ‘Parent Portal’, a website intended to help parents support the educational journey of their child/ren. It contains summaries of the new maths and english curricula for each year level, ideas for how to support learning at home and ideas for engaging in ‘parent/teacher interviews’ (our Learning Conversations). I’d encourage you to have a look, and to see what is useful there. It does reinforce the flawed message that children need to learn the same stuff just because they are the same age (which is miles away from reality!), but the site does contain some good information and ideas. I’d be interested in your thoughts if you’d like to share: principal@douglaspark.school.nz

And lastly in this vein of ‘Together we’, a great bit of NZ research popped out at me this week entitled ‘How parents and educators can help kids embrace setbacks and failure’. A short read with some good ideas for both home and school to help students see that mistakes are natural, normal and a part of the learning process. A quote early in the piece really resonated with me “There’s not a single thing in life that we can’t figure out together”...what a great message that ‘Together we’ can be telling our children often.

Digital Creativity

As an Apple Distinguished School we are really keen on the use of technology to enhance learning. While we are not a 1:1 school (we believe in the power of collaboration), we do have plenty of devices and the children have regular opportunities to be creative with them. We’ve been on a journey over the last few years…shifting away from devices being used to ‘consume’ (play games, watch stuff) through to them being used to ‘create’. They now have a broad range of skills to use to share their learning…10 years ago here at school children would just use Google Docs or Slides to share what they may have learnt…but down below are three examples of work that children came to show me yesterday and today. The work is independent (and yes, it may have errors in there), and the children have chosen a digital tool to help them share what they have learnt. This is them as competent digital creators…being able to share something to a wider audience that they have been learning about.

Henry has used Scratch to animate and share Hau-nui-a-Nanaia’s journey to the Wairarapa and the naming of key places. Boston and Lukas have done the same learning, but have created an animation in KeyNote to share. Ivy and Zoey have been learning about Penguins, and have used Book Creator to create a digital book to share what they have learnt.

Pretty awesome if you ask me, and just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what happens around the school daily.

Key Dates

King's Birthday: Monday, June 2nd
Townwide Teacher Only Day: Tuesday, June 3rd
Matariki Public Holiday: Friday, 20th June
Last day of Term: Friday, 27th June

douglas park school disco

Writing - Mrs mcphail's homeclass

This week Mrs McPhail’s writers have been using Freeform on the ipads to plan our writing. We found pictures of the skatepark as our setting and then used emojis and our own stickers to show the characters and plan what was going to happen in the story. We were all very engaged in our writing when we were working on this! Here are some examples ….

SCHOOL LEADERS

School Leaders for Fundraising

We are on the fundraising team for school leaders for 2025.

Our first fundraising is the School Disco on Thursday, May 8th.

Juniors are coming first from 5-5.45pm and then seniors from 6-6.45pm.

We are selling lollies and snacks.

Crazy hair is the theme for the disco and we will decorate the hall first.

Taylor and Lilith

Road Patrol - School Leaders

We have a big group of Year 6 students who help children to cross the road safely.

Last year we did training with constable Julie to learn how to put the sign on and how to do sign out, check, cross now.

The leaders help Mr Harkness to do the rosters.

The crossings for DPS are at Pownall Street and Cole Street.

Road patrollers are there from 8.15-8.45am and after school from 2.55-3.15pm.

Gregory, Mikayla, Ella-Rose. (Absent - Riley T)

Sports

All school teams and draws will be posted on Hero.

Community notices

Numeracy and literacy tutoring - Years 4-8.

Experienced local educator available. If you think your child would benefit from that extra boost in their learning, contact me (Spencer), at pallistertutoring@gmail.com or 027 654 3783 to discuss your child's potential. Flexible times to work around school and other commitments.