Week 9 NEWSLETTER

from the principal

Our Vision: Together we Nurture, Explore and Create for a Better Future

Getting close to that time of the term when our Learning Conversations will take place, Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th April. These parent-teacher-student hui are an important part of our school DNA, and have been in place for nearly 20 years. They are a key way in which the ‘Together We’ part of the school vision happens…Together We will celebrate the cool learning your child has done, show what class learning looks like, together we will talk about where your child is academically, where to next and together we will celebrate your child as a developing young human. Your child is the key part of this process, they are a part of the conversation because…they are the ones who need to know most in terms of how they are going, and where to next.

The new government is talking a lot about ‘assessment’...having standardised assessments for children starting in Year 2…’tests’ in other words. Our school does a number of these standardised assessments as part of our teaching and learning already (and has for years), but I fear that the government's focus has lost the original intent of assessment. The word assess comes from the Latin word assidere which means to ‘sit beside’. In an educational context, the process of observing learning; describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about a student's learning. Assessing a child should be about figuring out where they are, and mapping a plan forward for where to next. It should not be a black/white judgement tool. Tests are a part of this…they do provide rich information that can be used to plan forward…, but not the only method as you can see…and the idea of ‘sitting beside’ a child, seeing what they are capable of and having them in the conversation…that is at risk of being lost. A test tells a story…but not the whole story.

In Week 11 when you ‘sit beside’ your child in the Learning Conversation, when they share their writing with you, when you celebrate their maths skills, when they share the maker/play learning that they are proud of, and when you speak with the teacher (and your child) about where they are and where to next…that is the real assessment story. Sitting beside, Together We.

One Size Fits All?

And, speaking of the new government…there have been some media stories over the last week (here and here for example) where our Education Minister has responded with her thoughts that a ‘one size fits all’ approach will ‘fix’ some of the issues in education (behaviour, equity, learning results). While our sector does have pressures/issues we need to work through, a ‘one size fits all’ approach will not work…not even remotely. Those of you with more than one child will know this intuitively…children are unique and different, and what works for one may not work for another. This is true in teaching as well…our classes are full of wonderful, diverse, unique children…they are all different, all have differing needs and the way we have built learning at this school caters for that, even the way we have built our classrooms (the open, flexible learning spaces) caters for this diversity.

I won’t get on too much of a rant…I will write about it another time…but I will leave this TED Talk for you to have a look at. Even if you just watch the first 6 minutes you’ll see why one size doesn’t fit all, one size fits none.

Tapu Ae

Douglas Park represented themselves with PRIDE at the local Tapu Ae tournament on Monday. Tapu Ae is a traditional Māori ball sport, and we’ve taken part in the local competition over the last few years. Lakeview School bring some of their students each year to us to run through some training which is awesome, building connections across our schools. And…great result this year with our team coming second! Well done guys!

No School Easter Tuesday - April 2nd

A HERO post went out about this as well…but a reminder that Easter Tuesday is actually a school holiday, all schools across the country close. This only happens on the years that Easter falls into term time which last happened in 2021.

I promise we aren’t making it up!