Yesterday our annual Prize Giving was held for the Year 1 & 2 students at 9am and the Year 3 - 8 students at 11am. At both Prize Givings the Tauriko Settler's hall was packed full of our parents and whanau who had come to celebrate the success of our students who received awards and the year that was.
Troy Barnett and Jenny MacKinnon, our head students, both gave speeches which will soon be on their blog for you to read. Both students spoke beautifully and shared wonderful messages about leadership.
We were thrilled to announce that our Head Students for 2018 are Rico Martin and Charlotte MacDonald. Congratulations to both these students. We know that they will lead and represent our school beautifully.
Principal's Address:
Kia
ora koutou katoa, Talofa Lava, Malo e lelei, Ni Hao, Anyoung haseyo, Konichi
wa, Gruetzi, Guten tag, Bonjour, Ola, hello
At
our annual prize-giving it is always a pleasure to speak to you all about
highlights of the school year and aspects of what the future holds for Tauriko
School.
In
speaking to both parents and staff, the range of learning opportunities
students are offered at Tauriko School both in and out of the classroom
continues to be a strength of the school and makes for a very busy but exciting
year for all our students. Every week, in morning tea and lunchtime breaks, our
students can be found taking part in a range of extra-curricula activities.
Students
have represented our school in school cluster and regional sporting events
across a range of sporting codes, learning competitions such as problem solving
and EPro8, and in a wide variety of cultural events - the choir performed in
the annual Tauranga Music Festival, our Kapahaka group performed at Ra
Whakangahou, students achieved success in Speech making, our Year 5 & 6 and
7 & 8 Marimba Bands were involved in the opening of the Gull Station across
the road. Students have taken part in these academic, sporting and cultural opportunities,
representing us with pride and achieving success.
This
year events such as the school production, our hangi, book week, leadership
week, our Maths-a-thon and most recently our Scientrific Spectacular have also
been highlights.
Our
library was refurbished this year and is a wonderfully attractive space for
children to use, for learning to happen for students and staff alike and for
meetings to take place. This is a well utilized learning space and one we are
very proud of.
We
continue to be extremely proud of communication between the school and its
community. The myriad of ways in which this happens is something we are very
proud of and are constantly looking to improve.
Every
year we find, with rapidly changing technologies, that there are increasingly
better ways to communicate with our community. Facebook continues to be a way
to share information quickly with families.
The
weekly email to families that goes out on Sunday night informing you of what
the week ahead holds has been well received by all. I want to thank Athalae
Elliott and Jo Te Whaiti for the wonderful job they do every week on a Sunday
to send this out to you all.
This
year we have also once again revamped our newsletter. A huge thank you to
Natalie van Dijk for her on-going management of this and her support for staff
and community members to enable them to contribute to this. I think you will
agree with me that the newsletter is of a high quality and enables the school
to communicate as it should in a 21st Century environment.
Moving
forward with this, we will revamp our website next year. We get wonderful
comments about our website, but we are aware that there is so much on it now
that it has become a bit of a monster and there is a need to update the look of
this and make careful decisions about the information needed on this.
With
the building of our new Flexible Learning spaces this year, collaborative
teaching spread beyond our Wee Sprouts space. Our Five Year property plan
involves renovating the Wee Sprouts space in 2018 and the Board have engaged a
project manager to begin this process. Gradually, across the school pairs of
teachers will develop collaborative teaching and learning partnerships that
enable them to share their strengths while meeting the needs of their students.
All
staff are continuously developing 21st Century teaching practices
that support our students to be fully engaged in their learning, able to
articulate their learning, why they are learning what they are learning, how
successful they are and what their next learning steps need to be. 21st
Century learning skills, such as problem solving, collaboration, critical
thinking, creativity, innovation and adaptability are woven through our
curriculum.
In
2018 we will need to meet with parents to discuss our reporting formats to
better reflect this. This is timely too with the new Government removing National
Standards. We need to have a conversation together about what this means for us
as a community and what sort of
reporting is important to us all.
Conversations
like this will also support consultation conversations the Board will have with
the community around the strategic direction of the school. 2018 will be
exciting as we look to the past ( in our centennial year), celebrate our
present and dream of the future for our students and us as a school community.
As
a community, we are a team. As a Team we will create the dream and moving
forward “the teamwork will make the dream work”.
I
want to thank the Board of Trustees for their support and deep commitment to
Tauriko School and each and every child who learns here. You represent this
community with integrity, making decisions that support us to deliver high
quality education for all students.
Thank
you to the PTA for all your work to raise funding for the school and to enable the
community to get to know each other. I know Jolene will talk to you about all
their many achievements that support our students to have greater resources
that support their learning.
At
this stage of the year I wish to again thank my amazing staff (teachers, admin
staff and teacher aides) for their passion and commitment to our students and
the school as a whole. I thank them all for their support, it is much valued
and I enjoy working with you all each and every day.
A
special thank you to Lisa, my wonderful Deputy Principal, this year. While I
took a Term’s sabbatical to learn more about growing leadership she stepped in
as Acting Principal and ran the school beautifully in my absence. I am very
grateful for your experience and skill Lisa. I love working with you.
To
the students here today also I wish to say a big thank you for the wonderful
way in which you approach learning so positively every day.
I
want to thank all the many students who have lead in a range of different ways
throughout the year, especially our Tall Poppies. All leaders contributions to
the school support our school to be the great place it is. The skills you learn
in this service for others you will take with you into the future, contributing
to the communities you belong to and making them a better place.
Finally,
I wish each and everyone of a you a safe, peaceful and happy Christmas and
summer holiday. I look forward to seeing you all back rested and ready to make
2018 another wonderful year.
Suzanne
Billington
(Principal)
No comments:
Post a Comment