The Arts In Focus!

KIA ORA KOUTOU KATOA, TALOFA LAVA, MALO E LELEI, NI HAO, ANYOUNG HASEYO, KONICHI WA, GRUETZI, GUTEN TAG, BONJOUR, OLA, HELLO. 

Welcome back for Term 2 at Tauriko School. This term promises to be an exciting one and one that really does showcase the strength of The Arts at Tauriko School. This term our bi-annual school production will take place. Students will sing, dance and act to bring the Maori myths of Maui to life on stage. Extra curricula opportunities provided by teachers include Jump Jam, Ukelele and Choir and paid lessons on the school site continue to be offered in keyboard, guitar, ukelele, drums and Hip Hop. New this term is the opportunity for parents to enrol their children in Fuse Drumming lessons. The costs and times of this will soon be sent home and will be on our website. If you wish to check this out prior click on this Fuse Drumming link.

Our Senior School students will visit the Tauranga Art Gallery to view the Paradox Inside exhibition showcasing the work of local, national and International artists as part of an exciting exhibition on street art  - which will also involve works outside the gallery. Students will explore and discuss works and create their own art works.

With leadership being a strong focus in our school our "Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow" vision is enacted each and every day by different students from 5 - 13 years old. Supporting students to develop the confidence to lead in a variety of different ways happens throughout students' eight years at Tauriko School in age appropriate ways. Some students take on formal leadership/service roles eg. Dynamos, library monitors, Enviro-schools, class reps, school council, jump jam leaders while others quietly lead in a variety of situations, both inside and outside the classroom. 

This term our Year 7 & 8 Intermediate students will all attend the National Young Leaders Day conference in Rotorua, having the opportunity to listen to a range of motivational New Zealand leaders who will inspire them to lead in their own school and community. The end of Term 2 will see us celebrate leadership during our annual Leadership week. Information about this will come out over the Term and I know this will be a special week for all our students. Leadership is enacted differently by different people and the richness of a variety of leadership styles is something we celebrate and are proud of.

Communication

Tauriko School endeavours to communicate with our community in as many and varied ways as possible. We do this through our website, our facebook page, regular newsletters and notices and this year all Teams send out an email each Sunday informing parents of what the week ahead will hold for the students in their team. The Board also send out an Update to parents regularly and one is included with this newsletter and is well worth a read. We do strive to do our very best around communication, knowing that there are a variety of different mediums (paper and digital) that we try to use to meet the needs of everyone. We appreciate those people who understand that communication is a two way street and support us by letting us know if there is anything further they would like to be informed of. 

All staff have emails and are contactable through the school office also. We endeavour to answer emails and phone calls within 24 hours within the working week. The first port of call for information is always your classroom teacher if you need further information not available through those means discussed above.

At times concerns do arise and there is a clear outline of how these are best handled on our website. 

Contact Information

Our school has contact information provided by all families upon enrolment of their children. Over time these details may change and we ask that if this happens that families ensure information is updated through the school office. It is vital that we are able to contact parents/caregivers if necessary and that alternative contact details are kept up to date also. Any changes to medical information is also important to have.

If you know some information in regards to your child has changed in the last wee while, please feel free to ring, email office@tauriko.school.nz or pop in to have this updated.

Attendance

Recently I shared attendance information with our Board of Trustees. Of interest was the correlation between students who are at risk in their learning and those who have poor attendance and/or regularly arrive late to school. Nationally, the Government and Ministry of Education are also aware of this correlation and require schools to keep data around this.

 To date attendance of our students is as follows:

% of Absence	No of students	% of total students
0 – 8%	278	83%
9 – 14%	29	9%
15 – 19%	12	4%
20+ %	12	4%

 Data relating to the lateness of our students is:

Week	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Total
	No	No	No	No	No	No	%
1		4	8	5	3	20	6%
2	6	2	4	4	6	24	7%
3	13	0	5	7	6	31	9%
4	15	10	5	3	4	37	11%
5	4	9	13	2	8	36	11%
6	2	3	6	5	1	17	5%
7	10	7	7	9	6	39	12%
8	14	11	3	9	9	46	14%
9	4	8	5	2	7	26	8%
Totals	67	54	56	46	50

The school has procedures around attendance in place. Often when we get in touch with parents/caregivers around our developing concerns in this area, there is a real surprise around how the days of non-attendance and/or lateness add up. Discussion often supports parents/caregivers to problem solve how this might improve and the school has a variety of support services it can access to help if necessary. Our focus is to support parents/caregivers to have children at school every day to enable the best possible opportunity for students to achieve success at school. Both the school and parents/caregivers want the same goal and working together can achieve this.

Parking

At the end of last Term a Board representative and I met with the Ministry of Education and TCC to discuss a proposed plan for parking beside the school. I'm pleased to let you know that the Board have approved a parking plan that will work for the school. The Ministry of Education are now discussing this in Wellington and will inform us as to the outcome of this as soon as possible.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, 

...you are a leader.

- Quincy John Adams

Developing Confident, Capable, Resilient Learners

Kia ora koutou katoa, Talofa Lava, Malo e lelei, Ni Hao, Anyoung haseyo, Konichi wa, Gruetzi, Guten tag, Bonjour, Ola, hello

With the arrival of our Year 3 and 4 students back from camp this week, all our students have enjoyed an age appropriate camp experience in the great outdoors this year to date. 

At Tauriko School learning in all areas is progressive in order that we can support students to develop skills, strategies and learning confidence over their eight years at Tauriko School that enable them to experience success.We appreciate the support of parents in attending these Education Outside The Classroom (EOTC) events to enable these to happen, and in the positive conversations they have with students prior to these  experiences that tell the students that they will have a great time, that you believe they can do the many and varied activities and experiences involved in an event like this. Your conversations build belief in your children that they are capable and will achieve success in any challenges they meet with the wonderful support on offer during these experiences. Together we are developing confident, capable, resilient learners and young people.

At Tauriko School the progression of learning around camps is carefully structured over the students' eight years at school:

Year Level	Even Year	Odd Year	Term
Year 1 & 2 – day trips	Outdoors in our Community	Bush – McLaren’s Falls, Te Puna	Term 1
Year 3 & 4 – one night	Beach	Bush - Aongatete	Term 1
Year 5 & 6 – two/three nights	Adventure Camp- Totara Springs	Bush – Okataina Lodge	Term 1
Year 7 & 8 – three/four nights	Leadership Camp  Term 1                Sports Camp  Term 3

We are so lucky in New Zealand that this tradition of "School Camp" is bravely held onto in an ever increasing strict Health and Safety Environment. In many countries these experiences no longer happen. The school has sound Risk and Assessment plans in place for all trips off the school site.  These proactively plan to manage any risks - both thinking of limiting these from happening and managing well any incidents that happen when even the best laid plans can go awry. With all our trips out of school carefully considered ratios of adults to students are part of this plan, and we thank you for your involvement which sees you supporting safety plans and enabling students to further develop great relationships with a wide variety of people. I know those parents that support school trips really enjoy their time with the students and develop a real appreciation for the wonderful work that teachers do.

Year 1 & 2 - Te Puna Quarry:

 

 

Year 3 & 4 - Aongatete:

Year 5 & 6 - Lake Okataina 

Year 7 & 8 - Art and Leadership Camp

A huge thank you to the staff for the many hours of work that go into preparing for these camps, planning for amazing learning experiences for students and for that commitment to and passion for learning that sees you spending time away from your families to enable this to happen. 

Traffic Issues:

Thank you to those many people who keep us informed as to safety risks on a daily basis. We do load these on to the police website. You can also do this directly on the NZ Police website. We are meeting next week with NZTA the TCC and MOE to look at the parking area design proposed and we hope to have timeframes for you from this meeting. Rest assured, this is an on-going piece of work that the Board and I will continue to work  rigorously on.

BOT Update:

Each Term our BOT Chairperson likes to update the community on the work of the Board of Trustees. The latest BOT Update can be found on our website. In this area of the website there are also minutes of past meetings (once these are approved by the Board), my reports to the Board and I will also now load agendas for upcoming meetings. The next BOT meeting is Wednesday 12 April at 6pm. All meetings are held in the school staffroom.

Visitors to School:

Tauriko enjoys hosting the many visitors to school that come for a variety of reasons. All visitors are required to sign in at the school office to ensure that we are aware of all visitors onsite, can inform them of any hazards they may need to be aware of and can look after them should an emergency occur. 

Parents who volunteer in classes each week also need to sign in to ensure we can look after you on site, should the need arise.

This week we have had two schools visit our new learning spaces to consider these as options for their own schools. A big thank you to the students, staff and parents in these rooms on those days for being so welcoming and answering any questions the visitors may have. I'm sure we will have many other visitors over time as these learning spaces are relatively new across the country and available here for local schools to look at should they be experiencing roll growth.