Kia ora ngaa whaanau o Cambridge East kura 

While it was nice to have some downtime and recharge the batteries after almost 20 years as a Principal, you cannot believe how happy I am to be back at school around the table and having the opportunity to interact with our fantastic students and staff. It has been a wonderful return, and I look forward to catching up with everyone over time. My highlight during my sabbatical was certainly the International Leaders Conference that I attended in Banff, Canada, along with around 180 other New Zealand Principals and Senior Leaders. This was only possible with the Principal Wellbeing and Professional Development Grant that was given to all schools throughout New Zealand. Again, I’m very fortunate with the timing of all these events. 

One of my welcome back koha (gifts) was our Mid-Year Data. I know this has already been shared with the community, but this data doesn’t come about by chance. It comes about from everyone's hard work and partnership, including the hard work of our committed staff, both Teachers and Learning Assistants. It comes about from your hours of reading at home, connecting with your child around home learning experiences, and trying to connect your household and whaanau (family) experiences to learning. 

We also know many households invest in programmes outside of school to promote learning. We acknowledge this and appreciate your commitment to your child/children's learning.
 

Below we have included a snapshot of our Mid-Year Data results, which you and your children can be very proud of:

Please note: We increased all of our targets 18 months ago and are pleased with our results so far. The target for reading, in particular, was moved from 85-90% to 90-95%, and we are working hard to raise achievement in this area. This can be reinforced at home by regularly reading with your child - any reading counts, i.e. newspapers, comics, chapter books like Dragon Defenders are awesome (and are available in our school library along with many other options!). Check out our new Library website page by clicking here!

We have entered the next phase of our partnership with whaanau, which is our Mid-Year Goal Setting Learning Conferences, where we come together to celebrate the first six months' report, reflect on the original goals from the beginning of the year, and then identify the next learning steps and goals for the remainder of the year. We really appreciate having our whaanau involved in this process. We enjoy the feedback and comments that you leave inside the portfolios and cherish the opportunity to expand on all these aspects in our Learning Conferences. If you haven’t already booked, or if our times don’t work for your household, please let us know to arrange an alternative time/way of catching up. Thank you to everyone for their time and commitment to this process. 

As always, we encourage you to have your child present at these Learning Conferences. This means we have the opportunity to share all aspects of their learning. They get to hear the positive things happening, and be part of the conversation when we are looking for aspects of improvement, we hear their voice, and they share in your celebrations as well. If you do not wish to bring your child/ren to these Conferences, that is ok. We would recommend however that they do come along and you simply ask to speak to your child’s teacher alone towards the end of their Learning Conference. This will provide an opportunity for whaanau to ask any questions. Alternatively, you are welcome to organise a follow-up meeting with your child’s teacher at another time if you have any concerns - please email your child's teacher to do so. We want these conferences to be about celebrating successes and co-constructing next steps and future learning goals, we want to focus on the learning! 

Again, if you would like to book a Conference with your child's teacher, click here - there is still time!

One of the things that drives our learning at Cambridge East School is our Learning Progressions. While we have worked on our Learning Progressions for more than ten years, you will hear that Learning Progressions have been part of the conversation in the media about the Curriculum Refresh that is currently happening across Aotearoa, New Zealand.  These are a critical part of our Learning Ethos document, which you can access by clicking here. 

Our Learning Progressions are what our teachers use to inform teaching and learning, they are used to assess our learners, to identify learning gaps and next learning steps, and form a big part of our Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJs). These are extremely important to our school setting but where do they come from?

These are formed using past and present curriculum documents, along with Literacy and Mathematics (Numeracy) Progressions that have been developed in the past, along with National Standards and are formed into year groups. They come from our experience of when we need to start introducing some key concepts in reading, writing, and mathematics, because if we don’t introduce them early, our learners struggle when they move to a new level within the curriculum. 

Like many aspects of teaching and learning in Aotearoa, New Zealand, it is currently under review and our Learning Progressions have been, and will continue to be, reviewed to align with new expectations. 

One of the changes that has come about from the change in government has been the mandate for Structured Literacy. This has been a huge talking point over the years for our kura (school) as we applied to be one of the pilot schools back in 2021, along with some of the other schools within the Te Oko Horoi (Cambridge) area. Unfortunately, due to our decile rating, our location and size, along with our fantastic student achievement data, we were unsuccessful in being able to access the Better Start Literacy Professional Learning to help implement the programme. These barriers have now been removed with all schools being able to access the training. We have five classroom teachers currently completing online training, along with Miss Kate Findlay (our Junior Assistant Principal and Literacy Leader Teacher) training as a Facilitator for this programme. Kate has just returned from two days of initial training in Christchurch for this programme.

We look forward to seeing what impact this will have on our junior students and how this integrates into our teaching and learning approach. We know we will be reviewing our junior programmes as a result of this work. 

Whilst our recent Board meeting included our Mid-Year Data, we also had the opportunity to explore the Term dates for 2025. We know that some whaanau are trying to organise next year's plans, be it overseas trips and adventures, and they require our Term dates. First and foremost, I would like to thank our community for their responses when they are planning family trips. 

The dates we have set as a Board are outlined below. We have gone for a start date which allows us to have an end of year finishing date that is not too early in December. One of the possible scenarios had us finishing on Friday, 12th December, which was seen by the Board as too early. 

The other dates to note are that we again have our Fieldays Friday Professional Learning Day for our Kaahui Ako out at Kaariapo, which takes place on Friday, 13th June. As a Board, we will be requesting that our Kaahui Ako reconsider this date, due to there being three closed days in Term 2, with King’s Birthday on Monday, June 2nd, and Matariki on Friday, June 20th.  

We will again be closed for instruction on Monday, 25th August (Week 6, Term 3). We have looked to break-up Term 3 with a long weekend for both the community to take advantage of, but also to give our staff a mid-term long weekend as well. 

You have no doubt discovered by reading this newsletter that we have updated our website, including the format of our newsletters moving forward. These will always be posted directly onto our website and available to refer back to at any time.

Whilst the website looks new and has what we call a “new skin”, there are many new features that we are now looking to utilise (like this newsletter function!). The most useful has been the ability to fill in online forms, especially permission forms for trips and activities. 

We encourage you to refer to the website when you’re looking for a form or can’t remember what is coming up. The website is fast becoming a one-stop shop for all vital information for whaanau. 

A big thank you to Rhi and Jo for their hard work in transitioning our website to work more efficiently.

Next Wednesday, 7 August, our Year 6’s and Eco-Warriors are off to help plant our Trees for Survival seedlings. Our Year 6’s planted out these seedlings last year as Year 5’s, under the watchful eye of Mrs Monica Williams. It is always a great day when we get to give back to our local iwi, Ngaiti Kooriki Kahu Kura by helping restore the Mangeroa Gully. The plan is to link the awa (Waikato River) back to the Maunga (Mountain, in this case, Maungatautari) with walkways to be established in the future. This is a legacy project and will be many years in the making, but every year, we get to return and see our previous years' hard work. This is our third year of planting in the same area. 

We look forward to working with Kathryn Bourne from Trees for Survival and Poto Davis from Maungatautari Marae.
 

If you haven’t already given your Year 6 or Eco-Warriors child permission to attend the Tree Planting trip please click here to complete the permission form (please do not complete this form if your child is not a Year 6 or in the Eco-Warrior group).

Our kura will be celebrating Maths Week, established by the New Zealand Association of Mathematics, from the 12th August to 16th August, during which we will be diving into a world of numbers, shapes, and problem-solving, celebrating all things maths. Whether you're a maths enthusiast or just beginning to explore the wonders of mathematics, there's something for everyone!

Maths Week provides resources for teachers and students to support the mathematics and statistics curriculum. Last year, 5555 teachers and 248 900 students throughout New Zealand registered for Maths Week.

Parents and caregivers, you play a crucial role in fostering a love for maths at home. Here are some ideas to support your child’s mathematical journey and celebrate the week:

All the resource material and games will become live on the website over the course of the week for you to access free of charge  - https://www.mathsweek.co.nz/.

Olympic Day - Friday, 9 August - Next Friday, 9 August we are having an Olympic Day!! In celebration of the Paris Olympics we’re dressing up in Olympic themed outfits and having some fun getting in behind our favourite athletes! No donation is requested, let’s just have a great day!

School Closed - Monday, 26 August - As per our email sent on Tuesday, 30 July our school will be closed on Monday, 26 August, and we ask that you please make alternative arrangements for your child on this day. Our onsite Out of School Provider, Journey Kids, is open for bookings on this day. Please click here to go to their website to book your child/ren in.

Tough Guy & Gal - Thursday, 29 August
A very popular day for our Year 3-6 learners is the Junior Tough Guy & Gal Challenge held in Rotorua towards the end of this month. If your Year 3-6 child/ren is/are interested in taking part in this muddy, wet, challenging and most importantly FUN day, please click here for more information and to fill out the permission form as soon as possible!

Cross Country - Thursday, 5 September
Another event that many of our learners look forward to is our annual Whole School Cross Country. This will be held on Thursday, 5 September this year, with the Year 3-6 Cross Country Walk-Through happening on the afternoon of Friday, 9 August - please click here to give permission for your Year 3-6 child to attend the Cross Country Walk-Through as soon as possible!

Breakfast Club Parent Volunteers Needed - Cambridge East School is part of the Kickstart Breakfast scheme in conjunction with Sanitarium and Fonterra who donate weetbix and milk to our school for our Breakfast Club. We invite all children along to have a weetbix breakfast in the school function room between 8.30am and 8.55am - it doesn’t matter if you’ve already had breakfast at home, you’re welcome to have some more!
WE NEED YOU!! We desperately need parent helpers for Tuesday and Friday mornings - are you able to help out on both or just one morning? Please contact Casey in the office (office@cambridgeeast.school.nz) to have your name added to the roster! We really appreciate your support - without parent helpers we wouldn’t be able to successfully run this programme - thank you!!

Lost Property - Please remember to regularly check our lost property shed if your child is missing any items of clothing. We are still finding many clothing items are unnamed, which makes it very difficult for us to return them to their rightful owners. The lost property shed is located just past the school office and has bright green doors (Andy has such great taste!).

Matariki Food Containers - several kai (food) containers have been left behind by whaanau after our Matariki shared kai last term. If you’re missing a container/dish please call in at the school office to see if we have it!

Hole Digger (Auger) - we are seeking the use of a handheld motorised hole digger to help us with digging over 700 sapling holes during our Year 6 and Eco-Warrior Tree Planting Trip next Wednesday, 7 August. Of course it will only be in the hands of a responsible adult through the day. If you are able to loan us one for the day we’d really appreciate it! Please email us at office@cambridgeeast.school.nz or pop in and see us. Thank you!

Scholastic Book Club Orders - if you would like to place a Scholastic Book Club order for your child please do so urgently by clicking here. Orders close tomorrow, Friday, 2 August at 3pm.

Pizza Lunches - the PTA hold a Pizza Lunch each fortnight on a Friday. Tomorrow’s pizza lunch orders have now closed, but keep an eye on your emails or our website calendar for the next Pizza Lunch due to be held on Friday, 16 August. Orders always close on the Wednesday before the Pizza Lunch.

Entertainment Book - Grab your Entertainment Book online at www.entertainmentnz.com and choose Cambridge East School as your fundraiser - 20% of your purchase goes directly to support our school!

PTA Meeting - the next PTA meeting will be held on Monday, 5 August at 7pm in the school staffroom. If you would like to come along we’d love to see you! We’re always looking for more volunteers to help us with our fundraising efforts. You can also email us at: pta@cambridgeeast.school.nz if you’d like to get in touch.

Open Day - Friday, 9 August - next Friday, 9 August Cambridge Middle School are holding an Open Day for Parents and Caregivers to go along to. We understand that some Parents/Caregivers like to take their Year 6 child along with them on this day. Please ensure you let us know through the usual absentee methods if your child is going to attend either the morning or the afternoon session with you at CMS so we can mark their absence appropriately.

Year 6 CMS Orientation Day - Wednesday, 4 September - our Year 6 teachers will be accompanying our Year 6 learners along to the Cambridge Middle School Orientation Day on Wednesday, 4 September. This is another great opportunity for our Year 6’s to have a look at CMS and all it has to offer. Parents/Caregivers won’t be able to attend on this day, so please head along to the Open Day on 9 August to have a look instead.

CMS Production - Seussical the Musical Jr - the CMS production will be taking place from Tuesday, 27 August through to Thursday, 29 August in the CMS school hall. They are holding an 11am matinee show along with a 7pm show on each of these day. Please click here for more information and to book tickets!

CMS Enrolments - last week our Year 6 learners were each given a CMS Prospectus to take home for you to have a look at. CMS have asked that all their enrolment applications are made online. Please click here to enrol your Year 6 child at CMS for 2025 (if they are attending). 2025 enrolments need to be in to CMS by 12noon on Wednesday, 21 August.

 Koru 1  

Koru 3  

Koru 4 

 Room 10 

Room 11 

Room 12 

Room 13 

Room 14 

Room 15 

Auaha M