October 8, 2010

Tena koutou te whānau o te kura Muritai.
Dear Parents / Caregivers of Muritai School

Teachers are all back at work and the holidays are drawing to a close. I hope you all have had a lovely break and feel refreshed as we head into the final term of 2010.

This short newsletter just helps to inform you of some recent developments on our school website that you may be interested in.

Each month the school presents review papers to the Board of Trustees on key aspects of school life. Some recent papers have been posted on our website to further inform parents of the successes and next steps for the school. The following papers have been uploaded -

Our Muritai curriculum provides the structure around the learning and behavioural ecology at Muritai School. Included in the document is a one page diagram of our learning community, our learning journey from year 1-8, the components of Howie Learn, expected student attributes and how we will know that we succeeded with our teaching and learning.

The science review is an interesting read and follows from a discussion paper formed from last years parent survey. It seeks to understand student achievement in science and also discusses the contexts of science delivery at primary school within the Inquiry model of learning.

The e-learning paper is a progress report against our E-Learning strategy, which the Board receives annual updates on. It reflects on how teachers integrate e-learning alongside the NZ curriculum, discusses the use of hardware and software as well as covering support networks, professional development in ICT and future thinking for education.

The heart of the school paper is a comprehensive review of the school's learning and behavioural ecology. Produced annually it reflects on subtle (and occasionally substantial) changes we make as part of review to our school processes. This report looks at the senior school, catering for children requiring learning interventions - either learning support or extension; reporting student information to parents; using learning environments smarter; teachers using student data to inform learning programmes and next steps for learning; using community resources.

The National Standards report summarises a more comprehensive review of whole school and Maori student achievement from year 3-8. It shows how children's achievement improves as the children get older and have a deeper pool of skills to draw on in using the curriculum. What this paper shows is big picture achievement. It reflects general attainment and a summary of how children are tracking going forward. It is probably a good reflection overall of school wide performance but what is doesn’t offer is specific information of next step development for teaching which was shared with parents at interviews and is required to make a real difference in a personalised learning environment ‒ that comes from specific ‘criteria assessment’.

The Assessment Glossary paper helps parents and the community understand some of the assessment 'language' and tools we use to understand our children's achievement. It is comprehensive and informs those parents wishing to understand more about the systems used.

You can access all these papers by clicking here at our Information and Reporting page. I hope you will find these papers of interest. There is a LOT of information and detail but it all helps to inform you about why we do the things we do. It goes some way to explain about the things that are happening around your children, how we understand how well they are doing, and inform of next steps required to improve our performance.

Also we are required by legislation to let you know when the BoT meetings are each term. The dates are as follows - Monday 11 October at 2.30; Tuesday 26 October at 7.00; Tuesday 19 November at 7.00; Tuesday 7 December at 7.00.

Please enjoy your final weekend and we will see you all next Monday at 8.40 am.

Noho ora mai ra

Andrew Bird
Tumuaki/Principal