Welcome back to Richmond Road 2009. I hope you all had a great holiday and are all refreshed, relaxed and ready for another year of great learning.
 Thank you to the parents for ensuring that all the students have their complete stationery we have now started in our new books. Malo lava le taumafai.
 It’s that time of year when the Senior School going swimming at Youthtown. Swimming for Seniors are from Weeks 1 – 5, on Thursdays. Ruma 5 leave RRS at 9.40am and return to school at 11am. It costs $40.00 for these five lessons.
 Years 5 & 6 Camp is on this term, Monday 16th March – Friday 20th March, Totara Springs Christian Centre, Matamata. The cost is $250.00 per person (student/parent). There will be a parents’ camp meeting on Tuesday 17th February 2009, 5-6pm in Ruma 5.
 This year our school-wide curriculum focus will be on reading, especially on developing student strategies of making sense of what they read. At the same time we will be enhancing and ensuring that our writing goals developed last year will be improved on this year with assistance from our facilitator Raewyn Allen. In term 1 we will be looking at extend the students understanding of the purpose of recount writing and tying it in with our topic of “Our Grandparents and Elders Generation”. Our numeracy programme will be concentrating on addition, subtraction and the use of place value within these concepts.
As more information comes to hand I will be updating this newsletter with current news of what Ruma 5 are learning, how they are learning this information and how it impacts on their understanding of themselves and the world.

Soifua ma ia manuia
Nerra Lealiifano