Dear Parents and Whānau,
What a busy term this has been for our students, staff and community, which has included: Disney’s Alice Jr production in the senior school, netball, Dance Festival, Jump Jam competition, speech and poetry finals, soccer and netball tournaments, P.T.N. discos, financial literacy week, and junior school cross country, and we still have our councillors’ stalls day this Friday to look forward to. There is always so much to celebrate as a school. We are fortunate that our students have access to some wonderful learning experiences and events that everyone can find success through.
As we head towards the end of this term, we would like to thank our parent community for their ongoing support. Term 4 will be another busy time for us as a school, and we want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very safe and happy holiday.
New App for parents – eTAP app
We will be moving to using a new app for home/school.communication over the next few weeks. This app is connected to our student management system and will allow parents to log student absences, sign up for teacher conferences, complete permission slips, update personal details for your child/ren, access the school events calendar and website, as well as view current school year reports and access historical reports for your child/ren.
Please check your emails later this week for information on how to download the app and access your child/ren’s information.
Maths Morning / Financial Literacy Week
Thank you to the parents who were able to make this morning’s Maths open morning. Parents were able to engage with students in the classroom, seeing what our maths programme looks like in action. The key messages that we were able to share with parent are:
At Cockle Bay School we are doing a great job teaching maths. At mid year this year 88% of our students were achieving at or above expectation. We are very proud of our results.
We have a really great maths programme and are well placed to support the new maths curriculum. We have a clear maths structure that includes explicit teaching, uses students prior knowledge and enables students to use materials and practise new concepts.
Here are some great ways to engage in fun maths activities at home with your child:
- Be positive about mathematics
- Bake something together
- Measure count record – timer, distance
- Build something together – lego, huts with boxes, real treehouse
- Plan a dinner party
- Play board games – snakes and ladders, chess, card games, checkers, Yahtzee
- Do puzzles – sudoku, logic problems, tangrams
- Basic facts practice
School Grounds
Please be aware that the field will be closed on Monday 30th September to allow for the spraying of weeds. Similarly, on Monday 7th October, and Tuesday 8th October, the field will be closed for coring, fertilising and top dressing. For health reasons, we ask that members of the community do not enter the school site while this is occurring.
We ask that parents help us to look after our school site during the break and keep an eye out for any damage to school property. Should you witness any acts of vandalism when you are visiting, please contact the police.
Ngā mihi
Kimberley Rivett, Acting Principal