Pub Charity Generosity

Pub Charity Funding-Wellington Camp

I would like to acknowledge the wonderful support of Pub Charities with a $4000 donation towards covering transport costs on our Year 7/8 School Camp to Wellington in December. This has made the trip that much more affordable for all students and adults attending. If you are interested in finding out more or contacting them visit their website: http://www.pubcharity.org.nz/

Numeracy Fun Night

We had a great night yesterday with lots of parents and students turning up for our inaugural Numeracy Fun Evening. It was pleasing to see so many adults having fun learning alongside students. Remember the serious part of the evening too, we need you all to spend time at home on a regular basis improving numeracy knowledge levels. Do this in a fun and laid back way, but make sure you do it!

Click the link to visit our school site for all the resources and information you need to do this:

Swannanoa School Numeracy Website

Here are a few pictures from the evening.

Learning Conferences and Reporting

Learning Conferences and Reporting

I want to try and communicate clearly in regard to our Learning Conferences coming up again in Week 10 of this term. I want to plant the seed early so we can hopefully all be on the same page when it comes to this process. Holding collaborative learning coferences with the children involved is a major shift from the more traditional teacher led parent interviews. The reason for this shift is based on the impact of each approach on children's learning. While parent/teacher interviews were an effective way of reporting, 3-way conferences are effective for reporting for learning. This is not just semantics, in one instance we were telling you what was happening in the other we are trying to establish what is happening and how we can work together to improve your children's learning.

We still want to report assessment results and these will be considered at learning conferences but this is certainly not the purpose of the conferences. In an effort to shift away from this focus we are developing an online 'Parent Portal' that will have all your child's formal assessment results logged onto it each term. We hope by doing this you always have an idea of how your children are achieving at school and there will be even more focus on collaboratively planning next learning steps at learning conferences. If you have concerns do not leave them until conference time!

This collaborative approach is part of our goal to include students and parents actively in the learning process. This is not on a whim in fact there is strong research evidence to suggest that what we are doing will make a difference. John Hattie, formerly of Auckland University published a ground-breaking book, 'Visible Learning' in 2009. In this book he examined evidence from over 800 research studies from around the world and analysed the effect different aspects of education have on student learning outcomes. The scale used to measure the impact of different approaches is called effect sizes, an effect size of 0.40 is seen as a level where an approach or innovation enhances achievement in such a way that we can notice a real-world difference (0-0.39 is still making some difference).

To give you an idea of the sorts of things that you can do to make a difference parental participation in learning is identified as having an effect size of 0.56. However this support when connected with surveillance type participation has a very small effect size of 0.12. Homework supervision has an effect of 0.19. When parental participation is connected to have high aspirations and expectations (in a psoitive and supportive way) there is an effect size of 0.80! By holding 3-way learning conversations we are hoping to cultivate these positive expectations as a team.

Three other results from the research connected to our collaborative approach to conferences are related to setting goals, feedback and self-questioning. Conferences provide a perfect opportunity to set challenging goals and these are noted as having an effect size of 0.56. The conferences and books being sent home (with suggested question prompts) provide the forum for quality feedback to be given to students. Feedback is huge in terms of outcomes for students having an effect size of 0.73. Self-questioning is when students develop the ability to question their own learning (progress and achievement) and again our conferences provide a forum for this. This has an effect size of 0.64.

I hope this explains our approach to learning conferences. I know it is different to what you may have previously experienced but I am confident that if you are committed to being an active participant they will be far more valuable than a 'status report'. We are continuing to develop strategies within our classroom that support students in discussing their own learning and there are some fantastic, innovative ideas within our classrooms relating to student reflection. I hope you see the progress we are making and support us by making sure learning discussions with your children are a regular occurrence in your house.

Rugby World Cup Surprise

Today Zach from R2 got the surprise of his life when the 'Close Up' film crew arrived at assembly with Kerry, the Managing Director of ANZ Retail to announce the winner of their Future Captains competition! Yep, that is right he won it! 33,000 entries and he won the biggest prize of them all. 96 children from around NZ were lucky enough to win the honour of escorting rugby world cup teams onto the field and standing with them as they sing their national anthem. Zach gets to do the final! Not only that but he will escort the All Blacks out if they are there. After this, him and his Mum get some of the best seats in the house for the game. This was just magic to watch!!

After the presentation all the children got a small prize and 'Close Up' spent the afternoon filming with Rachel, Zach and the whole family.

Tune in to tomorrow nights Close Up to see it all. If you are coming to the disco the school will have a disc or make sure you record it.

Go the All Blacks!

Tree Helpers

Our dedicated volunteers were busy getting stuck in this morning potting the 1000 trees we have been donated despite the miserable conditions. We all appreciate the hours our volunteers put in and they need more help next Thursday to finish the job off. Check the newsletter out for details. Thanks again team I know our children will end up benefiting!

Getting Serious About Rubbish

We had Lesley visit us today from the Waimakariri district council to do some work with the student council around reducing, reusing and recycling. What we found out is we spend about $1200 on rubbish each year and we only need to spend a fraction of this. Look at our rubbish analysis below. The only pile we have to get rid of is the plastic wrappers (gladwrap, chip packets, muesli wrappers etc), everything else is recyclable or reusable! Watch this space we are on a mission!

Thanks Westpac!

Last Thursday we had two kind visitors from Westpac came to present a $2000 donation to our school. The donation came from the Canterbury Care Fund set up by Westpac for community organisations following the Christchurch earthquakes. We will use the funds to go towards our learning support team who we partially fund from Swannanoa Country Fair proceeds normally.

You're AWESOME Westpac!!

National Standards Evening Slideshare

This evening I held an information evening for parents and families so everyone had more information about National Standards before we send home our interim report at the end of next week. The slideshow below is a copy of my Keynote presentation. If you did not get along please take 10 minutes to read through the presentation, it will be invaluable when you receive your child's Learning Plan (interim report) next Friday (July 15). Thank you to those who came along.

National Standards and Reporting Info Evening

View more presentations from fraserhill

Number Knowledge Apps

My maths group and I were talking about iPods and iPads last week and I said I would put up screen shots on my blog of some of the Apps I have on my phone that provide great practice for instant recall of number facts from simple addition through to multiplication and division. Here they are:

All the games have a knack of 'tuning in' children in a variety of ways. I have very few problems getting my children to practice now. See if you can beat my speed of 85 kmph in the times table speed test on 'Math Drills'. Record your progress as a comment below. Share any other maths apps you have as comments too.

Peace Day

View the pictures from our Inquiry Action below. It was great to see the children contributing to our own community by helping others and the global community by sending pictures of our Peace Cranes to America where they will view them and donate money to the Japanese earthquake relief fund.

Reporting and National Standards

At the end of next term all parents will receive an interim (mid-year) report that is linked explicitly to the much talked about National Standards (NS). The report format will look very similar to last year's Learning Plan that was constructed at the Learning Conferences but will this time refer explicitly to achievement levels linked to the National Standards. Last week the New Zealand Primary Principal's Federation passed a motion of no confidence in the NS policy so I have a feeling the issue may be in the news again while I am writing this information to you. I thought it was important to reinforce the beliefs about the NS that I hold and the position our BOT has taken in regard to the standards.

As a BOT we are committed to meeting our obligation in regard to the NS. This means we are writing targets in relation to the standards, will report twice a year in relation to the standards and collect student achievement information in relation to the standards. However I do have some serious misgivings about the NS. They have been hurriedly put together by a group of so-called experts (so are questionable in terms of validity) and have the potential to narrow our curriculum substantially.

As a BOT and staff we are committed to ensuring all parents receive accurate achievement information about their children and have developed rigourous systems for collecting and analysing student achievement information over the last two years. This means we are already identifying 'at-risk' students and doing what we can to ensure all students achieve to their potential. I know that the NS will have little to no effect on improving the procedures we have in place for ensuring all children achieve.

It is interesting to note that countries who have had 'standards-based' systems such as the USA and UK are now realising that this pathway is not one that leads to higher student achievement at all. In fact evidence suggests that it is more successful in increasing the number of disengaged students in primary education. Leading performers (Finland, Japan, Canada) in international education assessments such as PISA are now in many cases lowering the amount of external accountability (eg. reporting NS results) processes for schools and giving teachers and schools more autonomy. Incidentally NZ places 7th in reading, 14th in numeracy and 4th in science on these exams.

We are determined to get the best out of what is a questionable education policy. We will ensure the achievement and engagemnet of students in a wide range of curriculum activities remains at the forefront of our decision-making. Whatever we do as a BOT and staff will put the interests of our students and families first and government policy second. Primary school is much more than just reading, writing and maths!

I would really appreciate your feedback on this topic!

Multi-Purpose Hall Opening

Hi Everyone,

Next Wednesday, March 30 at 7pm the Board of Trustees would like to invite all those who have been associated with the building of the new hall facility at school and all school parents along to an official opening. The evening will involve a few brief speeches and a casual wine and cheese celebration inside our hall. Please come and join us.

Regards Fraser and the BOT.

Helping Our Children and Families After the Quake

I wanted to post some helpful information here for any parents who may be feeling like their children have been affected by last weeks earthquake and for families who may be facing an uncertain future for whatever reason. Have a read and visit the websites if it helps your family cope.

When a traumatic event affects your family, the repercussions will be felt long afterwards. Different children within the same family may process things very differently, so be prepared for varied and unusual responses to stress. However, here are some tips which will help every child:

• Be available to talk with them whenever and wherever the opportunity arises - it may be when you least expect it.
• Your child will feel most reassured when you hear the feelings, as well as the words. You don’t have to fix everything, sadly often you can’t. But show them that you understand how the event has made them feel, and they will know that someone bigger and stronger is on their side.

As a school and personally I am also aware that for many families the real challenges are still to come. Many businesses face an uncertain future and this may affect people's employment and income. As a school we want to do as much as we can to help.

These sites have useful tips and information in more detail:

Tips on Supporting Children

Tips on Supporting Toddlers

Tips on Supporting Adults

Helping Families Through Tough Times

Stronger Canterbury Earthquake Recovery (Source of all the information you may need)

Getting Compensation for You or Your Business

Write & Publish a Story

I hope you find this information useful and please keep in touch with us at school if you are facing challenges so we can rally to support you where we can.

Fraser Hill