Week 4

I hope that everyone has handed in their times for parent / teacher interviews for next Tuesday.

Please note that school will be finishing at 12.30 on Tuesday for the interviews.

Attached to the newsletter is an Athletics sheet that shows you the times etc for the school athletics day on Wednesday 29 Feb. It also has a sausage sizzle form for you to fill out if you want sausages for lunch with your children. We do this to get an indication how what we need to purchase for the day.

There is an opening for another elected BOT member so if you are keen please put your name forward for election. Being on the BOT is not about having to do lots of jobs or extra work around the school. It is setting policy for the school and ensuring that the way we do things is in line with these policies. It also gives you a better insight into how the school is run and what makes it tick. So take up the challenge and be a part of our children's futures.

We have had a great start to the year and all is humming along nicely. The children are in full swing with their water safety topic so question them about water safety when they get home!!

Don’t forget that reading, writing and maths forms the backbone of everything that we do. So practice these with the children at home,. Make it fun and let your children see you enjoying reading, writing and doing maths.

Keep Safe

Rick :)

Week 3

Please note the changes to our school athletics and swimming days. Athletics is now on Wednesday

29th February and swimming is now on Wednesday 14th March.

Our school swimming is a time for children to showcase what they have learned in relation to water

safety. Our aim is to ensure that the children are confident in the water, that they know how to stay

afloat and how to keep afloat until help arrives. Once our children can do this they are then taught

swimming skills. During our swimming day we will be using this time to show the skills that the children

have learned. We will also have swimming races for the children that are capable of swimming in race

events. From this we will choose the children to go to the interschool swimming event held in Opunake.

Just a reminder about the bus for the children that get picked up and dropped off at Kapuni and

Stuart Road. If there is no one to pick up the children at these points they will remain on the bus and

return to school. You may have noticed the bus is a little behind schedule at times . This is due mainly

because of road works along Hastings Road again. These road works have been continuing for the last

four years so hopefully they get it right this time and we don't have to put up with it year after year!

Keep Safe, Rick ☺

PS Have you checked out page 6 in the Hawera Star???

Welcome Back

WOW it’s great to be back for 2012. A big welcome to everyone and to all of our new students and their families, great to have with us at Matapu School.
We have some really cool things happening this year. Firstly we have developed Matapu Achievement Progress Booklets (MAP Book) for the children. Each child will have their own MAP Booklet and will use this to track their Reading, Writing, Math’s and Key Competencies. We have developed the MAP Booklets to give the children more responsibility for their own learning. They will now know where they are with their learning journey and their next steps to learning with documented proof. These MAP Booklets will be used next year in our Parent/Teacher/Student interviews, as the children will be running these next year. I will shortly have copies of these booklets on our web page and the teachers will be showing you them during the Feb 28 Parent/teacher interviews.
Our topic studies this year are:
Term 1: Water Safety. Term 2: Native flora and fauna.
Term 3 Olympics and Production. Term 4: Individual investigations
The production will be held on the evenings of 26/27 September keep these dates free!!
Interviews will be held on 28th Feb and 25th July please feel free to come and talk to us at any other time.
Reports will be out on 29th Jun and 7th Dec
Subway orders on 22 Feb and 21 Mar
Year 7-8 Camp 14-17 Feb
School Athletics 1 Mar Interschool Athletics 8 Mar
School Swimming 15 Mar Interschool Swimming TBA
If any dates change we will inform asap.

A big welcome to Natarsha Hey who is the new front office receptionist. Natarsha is working from 8:15 –12:15 daily.

Please can we have the ALL of the children's clothes named. We have piles of lost property every term that we give to the Op shop. It must be costing you a fortune!!!
Swimming is a part of our curriculum the same as reading, writing and maths. It is school policy to swim every day and we expect the children to have their swimming gear everyday. Generally ,if they are too sick to swim they are too sick to come to school, there are a few exceptions to this . If you think that your child should not be swimming please ring the school and talk with me.

It’s great to be back and look forward to working with everyone on our children’s learning journeys.
Keep safe
Rick