Kuratau Kōrero - Week 1, Term 4

Welcome to Term 4.

Kia ora koutou

Welcome back to Term 4! It's been fantastic this week to see everyone return, ready for what is shaping up to be a busy and exciting final term of the 2024 school year.

Next week, four of our teachers will head to Taupō for three days of Ministry of Education professional learning focused on Structured Literacy. Now in our second year of Structured Literacy PLD, we are seeing significant positive shifts in our students' literacy progress. This Ministry-provided opportunity will allow our teachers to further deepen their knowledge and continue building on the gains we've already made in this important area of learning.

Our staff are also continuing with Mathematics PLD this term, strengthening their teaching skills to ensure alignment with current teaching practises and the revised New Zealand Curriculum.

Welcome to Our New Students
This term, we are thrilled to welcome nine new students to our school. It’s been fantastic to meet our new whānau, and we look forward to getting to know you and your child better as they settle into our school community.

Reminder:
We have a Teacher Only Day next Friday, 25th October. School will be closed for instruction while staff work together to unpack the new curriculum documents.

Next Wednesday, we’re excited to welcome St John in Schools to Kuratau School. All classes will spend time learning about first aid. Check out the picture below to see what your child will be learning!

On Thursday, 24th October, we’ll be participating in ShakeOut Day to learn how to stay safe during an earthquake.

Athletics:
With our school Athletics Day coming up in Week 4, we are full steam ahead with daily training and practicing (weather permitting). We warmly invite, and encourage, whānau to come along and support our tamariki at Athletics Day on Wednesday, 6th November, as they run, jump, and throw their way around the athletics rotations.

Noho Marae Trip:
Can you help with the hāngī preparation at our upcoming Noho Marae trip to Pūkawa? If you can offer support on Tuesday, 3rd December, please get in touch with Shirley - shirleyb@kuratau.school.nz . Closer to the time we will send home more details about this whole school trip and ask whānau for vegetable and meat donations for the hangi.

Attendance Matters:
School attendance remains a hot topic, both in the media and within the Ministry of Education. Check out our Term 3 attendance statistics below for more details.

As we look forward to the term ahead, with warmer weather and longer days, Kuratau School is certainly a fantastic place to be. We are excited about all the opportunities this term will bring and look forward to seeing you at our upcoming Athletics Day. Make sure you check out the calendar dates at the end of the newsletter to find out more about what's coming up this term.

Ngā mihi,

Shirley

Term 3 Attendance Data.

Congratulations to the 42 students who attended school regularly during Term 3. This means these students attended school 90% of the time, which means they had less than 5 days absent during the term. These students enjoyed a hot chocolate, chocolate fish and cookie with me at the end of Term 3. In term 2 we had 39 students attending regularly, so yahoo a slight improvement in Term 3. Well done!

Lets continue to work together to raise our 'regular' attendance rates.

Reminders:

Did you know ... if a student misses one day of school every two weeks, they miss more than a whole year of school by 16 years of age. As a parent or caregiver, you, alongside our school, play a key role in building strong habits of regular school attendance.

All students are legally required to attend school every day and it is a shared responsibility to make sure students attend and engage in learning from when they first start school.

You must let the school know if your child is going to be absent or intends to be absent for a portion of the school term for whatever reason, like a tangi or medical procedure. Family holidays, or taking time off for extracurricular activities (not organised by school), are not acceptable reasons for being absent. While we understand that family holidays during term time are a popular choice due to reduced costs and availability etc. we encourage you to keep these to a minimum where possible.

If you do not notify us of your child's absences, and we cannot get hold of you to check the whereabouts of your child, we record your child as Truant. Please ensure you either ring school, or use the Edge App to record your child's absence. Repeated unjustified absences, truancy or recurring medical absences may result in us taking further action - eg. sending attendance letters home, or informing our local attendance officers.

The Ministry of Education's goal is to have 80% of all tamariki attending school 90% of the time. This means missing fewer than 5 days across a term. Below is a screenshot of our Term 3 attendance summary.

Join with us and help our tamariki Go Five For Five!

As you can see, we currently only have 44% of our tamariki regularly attending school (90% of the time). Let's improve this together. If we can get our whole school (Year to Date) data to 70% of our students attending regularly by the end of the year we will organise a celebration day at school in Term 4. School will shout a delicious lunch, and provide some awesome fun activities to celebrate meeting our target.

If your child reaches 90% regular attendance at the end of each term (Term 2, 3 & 4), they will be invited to a special morning tea with me (Shirley). I'll put my baking skills to the test (or visit the supermarket) and shout our kids that GO FIVE FOR FIVE a hot chocolate and a morning tea treat.