Matau School

There is a green car in the tall shed.
There is a slow car in the old shed.
There is a fast car in the tiny shed.
There is a new car in the holey
shed.
There is a fast car in the good shed.
By Alan

I reckon Anna is good at playing soccer.
Anna is trying to get the ball off another girl.

Matau School Newsletter

AGM Wednesday June 1st – followed by ordinary meeting.


Firstly I must apologise for not sending out a newsletter for such a long time. So what ‘s happening at the school? Well for administration we are basically reviewing everything over the next two years. This review focuses on what we think is important and we wont be wasting any time on things we regard as peripheral.


In the class the main focus has been on maths. Currently New Zealand schools are doing a complete overhaul of the maths programme. The first stage involved the junior school. This year it spreads into the seniors and then to the high schools. The optimistic side thinks it’s a great move. The pessimist in me says I’ll believe it when I see it. We are continuing to develop our ICT and we now have the latest I-Mac and broadband. The kids weblogs have been great and our next step is to build an interactive website. This should be running by the end of this term. We have had the current website for a year and there has been 5 000 visitors to the site. It’s a bit clunky but it’s certainly done the job.
The address is www.matauschool.co.nz

Feijoas for sale – contact Purangi Orchards.

Upcoming Events
May 12th School photos – but open to others – contact the school.
16th Jones Cup Practice Day – Marco
20th Vaccinations at Toko School.
26th – 27th Life Education at Huiakama.
30th Jones Cup at Toko.

June 6th Queens Birthday.
8th – 10th Rural Principals Conference in Wellington.
20th – 23rd ERO audit.

July 1st Second vaccination jab at Toko
8th End of term two.Reports and progress books go out.

Cheers
Richard

Principals Report
April BOT Meeting.

Roll - 8

Staffing - Unchanged


Curriculum
Term one ended well with the Action Learning unit on waste disposal being completed. It was a close thing however and perhaps reflects the rather crammed approach. We also completed our art unit and these are on display on the back wall.

Staff Development
I have completed the Action Learning unit. I decided not to submit the final assignment as I didn’t think it was worth the effort. While I gained some ideas from the unit it was mainly a collection of ideas I worked on in the eighties. It was very good to revisit them but I’m not convinced it is a very good way to incorporate ICT skills into the classroom.

The senior maths component of NUMPA started with an afternoon course in Inglewood. This is even more intensive than the junior part. I now feel that in order to do this justice I need to put more focus on it’s implementation . In many ways we did not achieve full depth first time around with the juniors and this is a goal for this year. At the same time the middle school children are steadily mov ing towards the senior goals and the two senior boys are working on a plan of their own. This makes our daily 45 minute maths lesson a complex operation with constant changes to planning and methods of implementation.

Administration.
Todays course on Principal Appraisal showed that it is in some ways more complex than I had thought. As part of our review of NAG 3 I suggest we implement a three year cycle of Principal Appraisal. As we also have an ERO review this year it could be an idceal time. The basic plan is:
Year One - use ERO report, BOT consultation and Ross Uttons classroom observations to form the basis of this years appraisal and to provide data for both next years agreement and the setting of new school goals at the end of this year.
Year Two – use Ross or another local Principal to carry out the appraisal.
Year Three – use an independent consultant to carry out the appraisal.

Upcoming Events
Today DOC to talk about 1080 and cyanide drop in forest block. Richard to Maths course in Inglewood 3:30 – 5:00
May 12th School photos EOTC course Stratford 1:00 – 6:00pm
16th Jones Cup practice at Marco 18th Traffic safety course in NP 20th MenB Vacs. at Toko, 26th -27th Life Ed at Huiakama. 30th Jones Cup at Toko

When the phone went at 7:15 this morning it was my neighbour Val asking me if we were being flooded yet. When I looked out the kitchen window all I could see was the river. It was up to our back fence. The highest flood since the 1991 floods. There are slips across all three access roads and only one family could get to school this morning. It has been amazing to watch the river level going up and down with the rainfall. We have also watched a slip coming down the hill across the road.

On the first day of school ther was a flood. The pigs pen was almost covered in water. Our family was the only one that got to school.