From the Principal
All of our children will meet their teacher for 2023 in the next few weeks. Students will have a chance to connect with their new classmates and learn about their new rooms and routines. We have some very excited students moving into next year.
The process has come a long way since my time as a Pigeon Mountain parent- class lists for the coming year would be posted up in the reception windows a week or so before the start of the new academic year. We feel that it is now more supportive for students and families to make the transition process more personal and to allow children to know who their new teachers and classmates are well in advance. It also gives teachers a great opportunity to meet the students and spend some time looking ahead to the next year together. For most students, moving to the next year group is pretty predictable, and they are very familiar with their teacher for next year.
However, for students moving from Year 3 to Year 4, the class placement process is a long one. We seek input from students through our ‘Hand of Friendship’. We also gather a lot of data from teachers and then create draft lists. These lists go back to teams to see what the combinations look like. We then tweak and rework the lists until we have our final Year 4 class groups. We think about children who work well together and those who don’t. We think about having a range of abilities for literacy and numeracy. We look at those who are introverted and those who are extraverted, the list goes on.
No doubt there will be children who may not have their ‘BFF’ in their class, but we have strived to make sure every child has at least one person they named on their ‘Hand of Friendship’. We would never place students or form new classroom groups to leave them without peers with whom they have worked well with during 2022, or who they have identified as a friend. Our teachers are wonderful observers and judges of the relationships in their rooms, and we tap into this expertise when making up class lists.
To our Year 3 parents; We encourage you to be positive about the class placements with your children, they take their cue from you. If they don’t have their closest friend in their class, reassure them! Tell them that everything will be ok and that they will have an opportunity to make many new friends in their new class. Tell them they will still get to play and hang out with their friends. Our children test our reaction to news to gauge how they should react, we need to be the reassurance they need. So be positive, reassure them and show them that you are confident that they will have a good year.
Other than administrative errors- children from the wrong year group appearing on a different class list etc, our class lists are final. If we have made an error of this nature, please let us know!
Any request for change will be met with a “let’s have a chat 6 weeks into next term.”
If you are desperately unhappy about the class placement, do make a time to talk with your child’s classroom teacher before the end of term- they will be able to explain more about the process and give you reassurance about the new class and teacher.
Important Dates
Thursday 8 December 2022 – Junior End of Year Assemblies
9:15am Team Puriri 11:15am Team Manuka 1:30pm Team Pohutakawa
Friday 9 December 2022 Senior End of Year Assemblies
9:15am Team Kauri 11:15am Team Titoki 1:30pm Team Kahikatea
Monday 12 December 2022
1:45 pm Class Transition Second Visit
6:00 pm Year 6 Graduation Evening
Wednesday 14 December 2022 Last day of Term 3pm finish
Friday 27 January 2023 9am to 2pm Office Open
Tuesday 31 January 2023 First Day of Term One
Community Notices
