Thursday 26 November 2009

Future Learning Survey

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We have put a special survey on the school web site that is aimed at gaining your thoughts on what is great about our school, what you feel needs to be strengthened, plus your ideas for what our children's future learning environment needs to include. Thank you to those parents who have taken the time to respond and share their ideas already - we need more! 

Everything we do in our school is part of the 'curriculum' in one way or another, so it is important that everyone has a say in this process. We plan on giving children more of say in the design of how they learn in future, and one way we are starting this is to allow children to nominate others for showing excellence.

WANTED: Someone to connect up our Rain Water System!

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From Blog Photos
If you have the skills to connect a downpipe to a barrel and install a tap, then we'd love to hear from you. Hannah from Room 5 is showing you what we need. If you know someone who could help with this small project, please tap them on the shoulder and get them in touch with us.

Monday 16 November 2009

Assembly Item - Setting Goals

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At today's assembly I shared a story about a visit to Room 5. I went into Room 5 today and was inspired by the conversation they were having about goal setting. We talked about the importance of knowing why you are setting goals.
My challenge to everyone is to set themselves a goal every day and to think carefully about why it is important to them.
Do you think it is important to understand why you have a goal?


One really easy way to start children thinking about how to set goals is through what I call a GLP - this stands for Grateful, Learned and Promise. A GLP is an easy to use way to establish the type of thinking that can lead to goals further down the track. Try it at the dinner table!

Week 6 Awards

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Here is a shot of our assembly awards for this week. Congratulations to everyone who is always saying 'I can' and making a difference to their learning!

Policy Review - Achievement of Māori

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We are in the process of reviewing the policy for the achievement of Māori students. This is an important part of our cycle of review and we want to encourage as many families as possible to give us feedback on the wording of the policy, but also the implementation of it.

Follow these steps to log in and review our policy:

  1. Click this link to go to the policy called 'Improve Educational Outcomes for Māori Students'
  2. This will take you to the policy under review on our schooldocs site, then have a read of the policy.
  3. Once you've read the policy, click the button at the top right called 'Policy Review' (like the picture to the right) and a window will pop up.
  4. Choose parent/caregiver, put your name and password 'pin'. 
  5. Rate the policy and write any comments to give us feedback on both the wording and how well you think it implemented.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Water off - School Staying Open

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Dear parents/whanau of Burnham School,

At 2pm today Fulton Hogan are turning the camp and surrounding housing area water supply off. This means the school will have no water supply between 2pm and 3pm. We have decided to keep the school open this afternoon and to manage the risks associated with having no water supply. We've made this decision because we believe the disruption to the community and learning outweighs managing the situation.

These are taking these steps to manage this:
  1. Prior to going out to lunch, all children will fill their drink bottles so they have a water supply for the afternoon.
  2. Children have been reminded to go to the toilet before the end of lunchtime. Those who need to be reminded at the start of the afternoon session (1.30pm) will be reminded by their teacher. Anyone who needs the toilet will obviously be able to use it.
  3. We will fill some buckets with water for the sick bay and in case we require water.
We have emailed the Burnham Regional Support Centre on the camp who will forward this communication to all military staff who may be parents/caregivers. This will also be put onto the Principal blog, which appears on the home page of the school web site. This message will go onto the school answer phone.

Should water supply remain disrupted tomorrow morning, a decision will be made by 7.45am and communicated using the same methods.

Monday 9 November 2009

What is feedback and how does it help learning?

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Did you know that great feedback is one of the things that can really make a difference to student learning? Auckland University researchers have found that quality feedback is one of the factors that can potentially have the largest impact on student learning. They believe that ‘feedback' includes telling students:
  1. what they have done well (positive reinforcement), and 
  2. what they need to do to improve (corrective work, targets etc), 
  3. but it also includes clarifying goals.

When you get quality feedback you can make improvements. Teachers give feedback all the time as part of their job. One good example of teachers giving our students feedback is when they give class certificates out at each assembly (photo to the right of this week's recipients). Students can also give feedback to others to improve their learning. 


Did you know that by merely using the word 'because' you can make the feedback more effective? For example: Your writing is much better than before because...


How can you give someone feedback that will help their learning?
What is feedback? How does it help learning?
Write your thoughts as comments to this blog post. Discuss them with your class and come up with some ideas for how your class can use feedback to improve learning. The seniors are going to get some practise at giving feedback by helping with the decision for who may get the leadership cup at the end of the year.

What makes great leadership

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Today I was approached by the Selwyn Council to give them a decision of who is to receive the cup for outstanding leadership at Burnham School. This led me to wonder what the children think. I spent some time in Room 6 talking about leadership with our Year 7 and 8 students and they had some great ideas.

Please write your ideas about what makes great leadership as comments to this blog post.

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Samoan Day Celebrations

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Wow - what an amazing group of seniors we've got who organised today's Samoan fundraiser to raise awareness and gain some cash for the Samoan tsunami victims! I enjoyed refereeing some of our talented touch rugby players as a part of this day!

Thank you for a great event team - here are some photos:

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Class awards this week

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Well done everyone who has said to themselves 'I can' over the last
week! Here is a shot of the people who worked hard in their learning over the last week. Keep up the great work!

Monday 2 November 2009

Assembly Item - Always Try Your Best

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During Friday's athletics sports I was inspired by our students and staff. This event was a wonderful chance for our students to show their talents and passion for achieving and striving to be their best. I was also impressed with how well our students supported one another during the events. There is nothing quite like an entire school cheering each other on!

Below are some photos of Burnham School students trying their best to achieve during our athletics sports:




This led me to wondering, what is the relationship between how hard you try for something, and the chances you have for achieving it? I did a web search and found some really useful quotes about the importance of trying your best and being motivated. Here is a quote for you to consider, please put your own ideas as comments to this post below:
"Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is."  by Vince Lombardi from Inspirational-Quotes.info 


What does this mean for your learning and how can you use this to help you?


(Click here to view more shots from athletics...)