Russell Street School

Congratulations Russell Street School for all your hard work and support for Bikeabout and Child’s Dream.  With all the physical activity you did and the sponsorship you raised, we managed to raise a total of $459 to give to Child’s Dream.  The money you raised will go towards helping underpriviledged children in South East Asia.  If you want to find out more about Child’s Dream and the projects they are involved in go to www.childsdream.org or if you want to check on Chris and Liz’s progress as they cycle from New Zealand back to England go to www.bikeabout.co.uk.  They are currently in Thailand volunteering in Tomato Village, a project run by Child’s Dream.
Thanks to all those people who helped out during the event and my apologies for not sharing the total amount raised sooner.

Well done to our year 5 and 6 teams who both finished fourth at last week’s regional Mathex competition. Well done to you all.  On combined results, RSS finished top out of all the schools for year 5/6 -a great achievement.

The children in The Wizards of Oz have been very busy creating claymation movies based on a legend.  This was not an easy process; in fact it took a lot of time, patience, team work and persistence.  Once the children had picked their legend storyboards needed to be planned, characters created, background and props made, filming needed to be done (some movies have more than 1000 photo’s!) and lastly, voices, sounds and titles had to be added.  Here is just one claymation movie, created by Cam, Finn, Callum, Sam and Oli.  The rest can be viewed on our class blog (link on right side of this page).

We are delighted to have Nic Mason join the Russell Street community. We were even more excited to have a group from his previous school, Coley Street School in Foxton, come and ‘hand’ him over to us at a Powhiri on Monday morning. As an extra treat their Kapahaka group also sang for us before they left. Ka mau te wehi Coley Street, what an awesome experience!

Planning for the future requires ‘taking stock’ of our present performance as a school, considering how well we are achieving national goals, as well as those detailed in our local charter.

While the Board has plenty of high-quality information about student achievement we also need to recognize that there are other characteristics of the school that impact on student achievement such as facilities, values, health and safety, teaching strengths and weaknesses, and the home-school partnership.  This survey seeks your feedback on these and other areas.

Your responses are valued. They will assist in the process of thinking and planning for further school improvement and will support the revision of our school charter. Please return the survey even if you are only able to respond to parts of it.

A copy of the survey can be completed on-line here Click here to take survey Or a copy can be downloaded here if you wish to complete a paper version.  Please complete or return this survey by Friday, 27 August.  Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey.  Dan Gardiner (Board of Trustees) and David Reardon (Principal)

Get in The Know is a series of three workshops for interested parents about Reading. Research shows parental encouragement and support for learning activities at home, and parental involvement in schools and classrooms, have a positive impact on children’s learning. You know this –we know this. Generally speaking, RSS parents are very interested in their child’s education and value every opportunity to be involved.

This series of three workshops is an opportunity for you to extend your understanding of reading as a process, to gain ideas about how to support your child’s development as a reader, and to seek answers to any questions you might have. We welcome your attendance.

For planning purposes we need to know numbers attending. You needn’t attend all three, though links will be made between each of the sessions. Please return the tear-off slip (click below) to the office by Friday, July 30.

Click here for full registration form.

On Thursday the 1st of July we (Shalini and Hem) had a Big Sale. As part of our learning into life in Cambodia we decided to hold a stall after school one day. The food we sold was butter chicken, vege puffs, fudge and muffins. We also had clothes and heaps and heaps of books. We would like to thank our mothers, James and Miriam for helping us and giving us so many good ideas.Without you guys it wouldn’t have been possible. We would also like to thank the people who bought things, the people that helped us out with setting up and helping us at the stall (Jazz and Laura). Lastly, thank you Dean for making it look a bit more snazzy with all the decorations for the disco you really made it look awesome.

In total we made over $200 for the LEAF project, which helps educate children in poor areas of Cambodia.

With another upcoming round of Student Led Conferences (SLCs) and our first written report on ‘National Standards’ we thought it was appropriate to re-publish some of the information we provided (prior to the last round of SLCs) and develop supporting information prior to reports being handed out.  Below are a range of resources that are coded for ease-anything starting with a:

(1) is new in June and refers to the upcoming round of reports on national standards in reading;

(2) is for parents of children in digital classrooms only (and is re-published as a reminder of the intent/nature of SLC’s); or

(3) is for all other parents (and is re-published as a reminder of the intent/nature of SLC’s).

All new information is being sent out in an envelope in paper form in the second to last week of term.

(1) National Standards/Reporting Letter to Parents

(1) Guide to Reading a Report -all

(1) Example -Junior report

(1) Example -Y4 -6 Report

(1) Frequently Asked Questions about National Standards/Our Reports

(2) Digital Class Parents – Booking Your Student Led Conference Information

(2) Digital Class Parents -Term 1 letter about SLC’s

(2) Digital Class Parents -Portfolio Insert

(3) Parents -Booking Your Student Led Conference

(3) Parents -Term 1 Letter About SLC’s

(3) Parents -Portfolio Insert

The following dates have been confirmed for 2011 for Russell Street School:

Note:

*Russell Street School will be taking a Teacher Only Day in 2011, most likely in term two.  The date of this will be advised once confirmed.

Other Notes:

The usual length of each school term has been adjusted for 2011.  Terms 1 and 2 are slightly longer than usual, and term four is two weeks shorter.  The adjustment has been made to align the October Term holiday with the final stages of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Parents of other schools should always find out the calendar for their own school.  The guidelines allow for some variation.

390 half days in total

Waitangi Day –falls on a Sunday (Feb 6)

Easter –falls within school holidays

Anzac Day –falls within school holidays

Queens Birthday –June 6

Labour Day –October 24 (falls within break)

We won the competition to challenge MoreFM and Mitre 10 MEGA’s Levi at a tug-of-war. The challenge takes place at 2.30pm this afternoon. Listen to our radio broadcast below…photo’s coming soon!

Here are the images from the battle…. CONGRATULATIONS WIZARDS – YOU WON!!!