Skills and Attitudes of a Lead Learner- Our Community speak!

    It was fantastic to have over 200 people participating in our Parent Consultation evenings in terms 2 and 3 this year. The parents and staff discussed the vision, values and principles of the NZ Curriculum, the Key Competencies and recently the learning areas. Their feedback and input is critical to the development of the Windsor Way Curriculum as a vibrant, meaningful and effective curriculum for our children. You can see the skills an attitudes that we as community (but especially our parents and grand parents) believe are "top of the list" for a lead learner at Windsor. 

These concepts will be weaved into our curriculum for 2010 onward! 

Thank you to the many who contributed to this. We would also love our parents to remember to contribute to our online survey as we continue to "Learn together with PRIDE"

Parent Survey

Our Parent survey is now online (See "Our Learning")

Please go and have your see re learning, behaviour, communication and much more. This survey also follows up on the parent consultation nights so we need you to have your say.

Be part of the "Windsor Way" Curriculum that is emerging!

Parent Consultation Evening

It was fantastic to have another 50 parents and grandparents turn out for our curriculum consultation and information evening on Wednesday night.

These community members added to the 130 that attended in term 2 giving us nearly 200 people who have contributed to the Windsor School Curriculum and the definition of a lead learner at Windsor. They also had the opportunity to update their knowledge and skills regarding 21 Century reading and mathematics practices and develop their understanding of what Integrated Learning is all about.

Our online survey will be up and running next week- please join them in developing our school curriculum.

Learning Conferences

Thank you to all the parents who took the time to meet with your children at our learning conferences. It was wonderful to hear the feedback from staff and to see them buzzing about the experience. Thank you also to the children who voted on the learning conferences. It is great to see 86% saying that the experience was either somewhat or totally enjoyable.

We look forward to seeing many of you at our parent consultation night on Wednesday 2nd September.

A new way of working!

At the beginning of this term I made the decision to get into classrooms more. The plain and simple reason is that as the instructional leader of the school I need to se the teaching and learning in action. This allows me to sharpen my pencil and see where the needs are, the interactions that are happening between teacher and child as well as child to child and I can also see the learning that is taking place.

So two days a week I will be in the classrooms. This will mean if you need to meet with me or talk on the phone you will need to speak with Kim Hillson and she will ensure I set aside time for you.

So far I have seen some fantastic interactions as well as some that I have explored further. I have seen classrooms full of PRIDE and exciting learning and children who are really motivated to lead their learning (CHILL Factor- CHIldren Leading their Learning).

Watch this space as I share about the exciting things going on at Windsor School!

For the children!

What do you think about the Learning Conferences? Do you enjoy sharing your learning with your parents?

Mr O'Reilly

Reports , Reports, Reports...

Last week we sent home our written reports for Term 1 & 2. These reflect the learning in numeracy and literacy and the Key Competencies (through our PRIDE Programme) so far this year. Critical to us is the discussion that follows at the Learning Conference. The report is such a small snap shot in time and is simply part of the process that we have to communicate a child's learning. 

Learning conferences were seen as a wee bit of PC nonsense by some in the past. As the years have progressed and more and more families are involved very few would return to the practice of excluding children from discussion regarding their learning. You certainly want them to practice talking about their learning because once they hit those magic teenage years getting you son or daughter to talk about their learning at school can be like getting water from a stone!

Do these conferences really help? 

What do you think?

Neill