We Win

Today's post is words only, for pictures you need to go to http://www.governorsbay.school.nz/principals-blog.html where I will be doing all of my posting from now on.

Today we had an exciting game of netball against Diamond Harbour which we won 15-2.  It was an exciting game that was well supported by the rest of our school on the sidelines. There was then the  obligatory shared afternoon tea for the teams. Thank you to everyone for bringing a plate and an extra big thank you to Emily for organising this event and umpiring the game. Congratulations to the whole team who did a wonderful job and deserved a win. Finally a thank you to Diamond Harbour for making the trip over and playing so well.

We also had an assembly today where we got to hear about people's work on the Key Competencies over the last week and got a report from our Cross Country representatives. Thank you to everyone that represented the school at the Zones competition and congratulations to Ben, who is going to through to the Canterbury competitions,

Of course there was the bi-weekly sausage sizzle that was as popular as ever.

The school is going so well that I have treated everyone to a day off on Monday. Enjoy! :-)

New Furniture

Sorry, this didn't publish on Wednesday for some reason.

Now that the new website is displaying correctly on my computer at school I will be moving my blog to the principal's area there. For the rest of this week I will post both here and on the web site and from next week it will be on the website only. http://www.governorsbay.school.nz/principals-blog.html


The year 6s spent this morning organising the furniture and computers in their classroom and moving most of it to the room next door. At the end of the day the new furniture arrived to fill the gap they had left. It created much excitement amongst the children and adults alike and everyone who saw it was impressed by both its form and function. Val will work with the class tomorrow to set it up in the way they want. Thanks to Bridget and the senior class for working in makeshift conditions this afternoon while we awaited the furniture's arrival.

Illness

I taught in Rachel's class this afternoon as she went home unwell, so I didn't get to visit classes and take photos.

There is a lot of illness around at the moment so please look after yourselves and if your child is unwell please keep them at home.

Tomorrow I am going with the year 8s to The Young Leaders Day which promises to be a very worthwhile event. I'm looking forward to spending the day with the leaders of our school.

Sam the Scientist

I've spent the last few days this week surrounded by Apple hardware in my office as I work to set up our new devices for the classroom. In between other tasks they are enjoyable and relatively simple to set up. Today I was able to deliver them to the classrooms, much to the delight of the children.

Amongst other things today we had buddies, a volcanic Coke science experiment and an inter-class netball game. The game ended in a draw; a real one, not just a nice PC one to keep everybody happy.

Have a great weekend. I'm going to Disney On Ice and I hear there are a number of others from school looking forward to going too. We couldn't enjoy such things if it wasn't for Walt, his suitcase and his dream!

Library

Yesterday Glenda and Jan from the National Library came to our staff meeting to work with us on the revitalisation of our library. They arrived early and first worked with our Year 8 librarians. They were most impressed with the ideas and enthusiasm of our year eights and told us they were a real credit to the school.

We had a wonderful staff meeting where we discussed ideas and options and had a book cull to bring our collection more in line with what we want. It was one of the longest staff meetings we've had and one of the most enjoyable as we all came across, and shared, our favourites from yesteryear.

I worked with the year 6s after our cooking session this morning to continue the library work and the Yr 8 librarians worked in there this afternoon.

It is important to have this range of involvement across the school as it gives ownership to the area and draws on everyone's skills and abilities.

We are pleased with the progress we have made so far and we look forward to the continuing development of this area, led now by the Year 8 Librarians.

As part of our work with Jan and Glenda there were a few tasks that came up and we would love to hear from anyone in the community who may have the time to do such things as labeling and sorting.

New Board, new fence

Tonight is the first meeting of the newly elected board and I am most appreciative of those who put their name forward.

I am also most appreciative of the work done in the rain in the weekend by Paul Bankier. He has started to repair the fence at the bottom of the field. Thanks also to Andrew Shepherd for donating some of the materials to do the job. This work has saved the school a great deal of money.

As always, the school continues to benefit from the input of parents, from netball to fence posts and everything in between.

Classes were humming again today with everyone bright and breezy and in to it. The field is a little on the muddy side at the moment and we had to stop people from using it today and may have to do so for the rest of the week.

Gardening and Skyping

We The year 6s did a bit more planting today and planned for our cooking session next week. We also Skyped Carol-Anne in California to ensure everything was all in working order for Friday when we will be involved in a skype session with other schools from different countries. We will watch other countries presentations on disasters and we will have our 5 minutes of fame. It starts 1pm Friday and will be streamed live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rock-our-world We are on third, just after a school from Mexico.

Great day

Another wonderful day at the office. I always appreciate the drive to work but today I had to actually stop and take photos it looked so good, with the mist and the reflections on the water.  It was the start to another great day.

I am moving my blog to the school web site very soon, when I do so I will post the link here so you can go straight to it. I say 'very soon' as I meant to do it for the start of this term but habit keeps me posting here.

Busy Friday

As usual there was plenty happening around the school today with buddy time in the morning, languages for the seniors, swimming for the juniors and some food-tech for Rachel's class.
There also may or may not have been some Mothers' Day activities going on but for obvious reasons I am unable to either confirm or deny that at this stage.

Mary, Mary...

Gardening was back on the agenda for the Yr 6s today and they put together their worm farm, thanks to the donation of some tiger worms from Jaqueline, our Harbour gardening expert. We also tided up the gardens in front of the classrooms and next week we will be looking to plant in them.

We also did some work on the Key Competencies and the children were very good at self asessing their abilities and needs accross the range of competencies. Some realised they have a bit of work to do in some areas and are keen to develop their skills and talents to enable them to become confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting some prospective parents. During our tour of the school they continually remarked on the positive feel of the school and they loved what they were seeing in the classrooms. As a result Finn starts in Moira's room on Monday and I'm sure you'll all make him and his family feel very welcome.

A Suitcase and a Dream!

As promised at the end of last term we started this term with a suitcase and a dream. Walt Disney arrived in California with only a suitcase and $40. Today in assembly we discussed the attributes such a man must have had to achieve what he did. We decided that every one of the Key Competencies and Values from the New Zealand Curriculum would have been essential to him. Making connections to ourselves we realised that these are very important for us all to learn in order to be successful in life.

At the end of assembly we got our first example of people using these Key Competencies and Values when there were volunteers asked for from the senior class to be in the junior class over lunchtime. The people who volunteered were demonstrating the key competency of Participating and Contributing and the Value of Community. Well done to those people, I can't wait 'til they open their own theme park, or follow whatever dream it is they have!

Cooking up a storm

This morning the year 6s were busy planning out what they would do next term with the gardens and then worked on finishing up their contribution to the Disaster iBook being created by schools around the world. They need to finish before they go on holiday so the pressure is on.

Kereru were cooking up a storm this afternoon in the staff room thanks to Mrs Mortlock making good use of the tomatoes we have grown. Among other things they made tomato relish, which I haven't had the pleasure of trying as yet but I'm looking forward to some tomorrow.

Maths and Votes

We had Carolyn, the Head of the Mathematics Department at St. Margaret's College,  in today working with some children in Val's class. She was impressed by the way Val had set up her programme and the way in which the children were so focussed and on to it. Carolyn said it is a wonderful example of how an effective maths classroom should run.

We know we have highly skilled teachers here running very effective programmes but it's always nice to hear it from experts in the field.

Chloe and Ruby have made it through to the final of a competition on The Erin Simpson Show and the voting is now open. I've voted so best you do too, it's an easy decision because they really are the best! I didn't even vote for a second or third choice, no need to give points to others. I'll be sharing the link on Facebook and twitter and with my PLN across the world so I suggest you all do the same!

Vote Here Now Please!