Week 8 Update...

Community Connection with School

This week I want to briefly highlight the varied approaches that our school uses to connect with our parent community and what we are working at to improve these lines of communication.  This is an ongoing process and something that we take seriously. Please browse the list below and let me know if you have any ideas to improve some of the systems we have.

Some ongoing examples are:

• School wide newsletter - delivered to the email address that you provide to the office every week. This contains my updates, class news from around the school and community notices to help keep you informed about what is going on.
• Team newsletters - relevant to the class your child/s are in. Our teams communicate every one or two weeks to keep you up-to-date with what is going on in their learning environment.
• Team Assemblies - these are held every week or two and are a chance for our different teams to connect across the learning groups that make them up. These are also a chance to celebrate some of the learning that has been going on with you.
• Facebook - the school facebook wall is a place where learning highlights and upcoming  events are shared with you  - both from school staff and our Friends of the School group.
• School App - this is another place that we are trying to use to make it easier to access information about upcoming events - both school wide and at the relevant team level that your child/ren are in - straight to the app on your smartphone. The use of this is a developing habit for our team leaders so please keep an eye out for those notifications!
• Community Calendar - This is connected on both the website and through the school app. Relevant events from the staff calendar are copied across to again keep you informed about important upcoming dates.

Some meeting examples are:

• Board meetings - The Governance group for our school generally meet around the start of each month. Our new board held a 'transition hui' last night with our exiting board members. It was a great way to give respect to the work and effort of the board members that were finishing after three or more years on the board, and to the hopes and aspirations of the new board members. The first full board meeting of the new board will be held in Week 1 of Term 3.
• Friends of the School Meetings - These too are held at the start of every month and are a great way to be involved in the life of the school. This group is about strengthening community connection as well as working at raising funds for our school. Their most recent initiative is the Quiz night on Friday 24 June which should be a blast! Keep an eye out in the newsletter and on the calendar for when the next meeting is being held.
• Whanau Hui - The next meeting of this group is next week on Thursday June 30 @ 5.30pm. These meetings are generally held twice a term and are an informal opportunity to get together over some kai and discuss a range of topics that people are interested in. This is an opportunity for all our whanau!
• School and Team Information Evenings - These are held at different points throughout the term and can be either school wide, team specific, or, a combination of both. One recent example was the evening we held earlier this term on the changes to our teaching and learning structure across the school which involved an overall introduction and then presentations and discussion with all teaching teams. The second example, from this week, is the New Entrant new parent evening where the teaching team present and discuss the philosophy and framework of how learning is introduced and supported for our new learners and their families.