Principals Report

STAFF REPRESENTATIVE REPORT
ST. MICHAEL'S BOARD OF TRUSTEES
AUGUST 1, 2006

This term our unit of study is Ancient Egypt. This unit has an emphasis on Social Studies and Technology as the main curriculum areas of study.

As we are studying the Jesus Strand in Religious Education, it is very easy to integrate this into our topic work.

Two of the Maths units of study are Algebra emphasising patterning, and measurement with the emphasis on money. Our teaching has more impact if we can integrate curriculum areas, especially into our daily life as will be the situation with the money, as the new coins have just been released.

Staff have attended Professional Development courses already this term. Dale and I attended an Inservice Day for Religious Education where we worked on the Sacrament and Communion of Saints strands.

Information Technology has been prominent this term as Linda and Adrianne have attended 2 sessions on the use of the School Master program with another session tomorrow.
Lynne and Bernadette Hanify attended an I.T. session on 'Creating web pages'.

We will be hosting a Home and School partnership training day here next Tuesday 8th. These sessions have an emphasis on Numeracy.

The Teacher aides will have had 2 afternoons of Inservice this term. Their topic is Behaviour Management. One session was held yesterday and the other is next Monday.

Our Kapahaka group has been invited to participate in a Kapahaka festival at St. Brendans on August 9th.

We also have been involved in N.Z.E.I. meetings this term. The support staff attended a paid meeting last week, while the teaching staff attended a meeting after school. The teachers will be having a paid meeting sometime next term.

The Waterpolo, Flipperball and Netball teams are playing each week with a variety of results.

We had intended to go to the Air Force Band concert at he Michael Fowler Centre last week, but due to unavailability of buses we cancelled that trip.

BERNADETTE McVEY

ST MICHAEL'S SCHOOL BOARD OF TRUSTEES
PRINCIPALS REPORT
JUNE 20, 2006

Current roll 143

The majority of the Principal's Report for this meeting is made up of separate reports. These are attached and need to be read before the Board Meeting

Attendance Report

Virtues Programme

Parent Survey Summary Sheet

Education Act Changes

IT Upgrade Proposal

Survey for Catholic Community (for your information only - this has already been sent out to families)

Financial - The Government Budget stated that 'from January 2007 all components of operational funding will be increased by 3.0% All state and state integrated schools will receive additional funding as a result of this initiative. The extra funding is ongoing.

I would like to request that the Board give approval to apply for grants within a set criteria. This would mean that when necessary grants could be applied for between meetings. I would like to put the following motion

"that applications for grants may be made, until the end of the school year, by staff with the knowledge and approval of the Principal within the following areas - educational trips, camps, sporting events or uniforms, curriculum purchases and cultural events"

Personnel - During the last four weeks we have had two trainee teachers working in the school. Both spent some of their time as sole charge.

Property - The plans have apparently gone out to tender and as long as the tenders come in within budget things will get started in term 3!

Linda Birch

ST MICHAEL'S SCHOOL
BOARD OF TRUSTEES

PRINCIPAL'S REPORT - JULY 2004

ROLL - 136. Two children moved to the Hawkes Bay in the last week of school. There were three new enrolments on Monday (2 senior students and 1 new entrant)

FUNDING - Due to an increase in numbers funding for this quarter has been adjusted and we now have some additional funding. The budget will be reviewed before the next Board meeting and any changes will be presented.

STAFFING - An increase in staffing has been confirmed, allowing us to transfer some of the staffing that we have been supporting from bulk grant over to teacher salaries. We will still be supporting staffing by .4 (this is a reduction from 1.4) The additional unit has been allocated until the end of the year.

ERO - The school has been notified that ERO will be reviewing the school during the last week of this term (the week of Monday September 13). It is necessary for the Board to select the focus areas that we wish the review team to examine. There are a list of required documents that need to be put together to send to them prior to the visit. The Board will need to be available during this time to talk to reviewers.

STUDY SUPPORT CENTRE - Nicolle has prepared a brief report on the study support centre that is attached to this report. I have also collated data in reading, spelling and basic facts belonging to study support centre students to give a base line from which to measure achievement. The question is will children attending the study support centre show a greater level of improvement at the end of the year than other students.

TRANS TASMAN PRINCIPAL'S CONFERENCE - This was attended by 1300 Principals from Australia and New Zealand. It was a very inspiring and rejuvenating experience. The conference was broken into three parts - Values, Creativity and Thinking. Most of the keynote addresses were highly motivational and gave us a lot to think about. They included leaders in the field of future innovations, teaching children how to think, computer technologies and the need to develop opportunities for children to express their creativity. There were also a number of smaller workshops that had more of a practical and participatory aspect to them.
I would like to thank the Board for allowing me the opportunity to attend this exciting and worthwhile event.

CURRICULUM - Attached is an achievement report on Social Studies

Linda Birch

ST MICHAEL'S BOARD OF TRUSTEES
PRINCIPALS REPORT - MARCH 18, 2003

ROLL - 107

CURRICULUM
An achievement report on basic facts and a curriculum report on reading are attached to this report.
Teachers are moving on to the second half of the integrated unit which has a greater focus on the social studies achievement objectives. Teachers will be reviewing the unit in two weeks time and feedback will be given to the Board.
A parent / teacher evening was held at the end of February. Whilst attendance was a little down parents who attended were very interested and supported the changes proposed in reporting.
Pacific Island School/Community/Parent Liaison (PISCPL)
Our Pacific Island Fono was held in early March. Once again whilst there were not that many parents there those who attended were enthusiastic and supportive. A committee has been set up with a chair and secretary and the date of April 1, has already been set for the next meeting. Parents expressed interest in setting up a homework centre at the school that would be open twice a week and would give support not only to children but to parents as well. They would also like to see how Pacific Island children compare with other children in the school in the areas of numeracy and literacy. Aspects of the Home/School partnership were also discussed, in particular the workshops held for parents so they were better informed about how they can help their children at school.
Students
School swimming sports were held on March 6. Children enjoyed the day as did the large number of parents that came along. An incident occurred where a junior child slipped through the divider and into deep water. Parents were very quick to jump in and pull him out - pool staff stood and watched. The boy was shaken but unhurt and continued in the shallow pool with his class.
Year 7 and 8 students have been involved in interschool swimming and athletic meetings. Students did particularly well in the athletic sports
SES behavioural specialist is involved with two students in the school. He has introduced a behaviour accountability programme for one boy and may look at providing teacher aide time for the other.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT-
Lynne has attended a Roadsense training session which focuses on road safety through language based programmes
Bernadette, Dale, Adrianne and myself have had our first ICT session with LEA - Adrianne and I will be setting up a data base for administration purposes.
Maureen attended a Religious Education day on the year 7/8 curriculum
PERSONNEL
Eleanor would like to thank the Board for allowing her to compete in th e national Indoor Netball Championships in Auckland. Unfortunately their team was not out in the quarter finals
HEALTH AND SAFETY
Immunisation for year 7's has been completed
Vision and Hearing tests have been carried out on all children identified as needing to be tested
GENERAL
" Asphalt completed - a few things need to be fixed before the account is settled
" Variety Bash visited the school
" Kahurangi Theatre performed for the whole school on Thursday March 13
" The Board's AGM must be held between April 1 and the 3rd Tuesday in May

ST MICHAEL'S SCHOOL, TAITA

CURRICULUM REPORT - READING

MARCH, 2003

St Michael's School identified reading as being a concern in the report on reading collated at the end of 2002. It has therefore been seen as a priority for professional development, resourcing and parental involvement.

DELIVERY ACROSS THE SCHOOL
Reading is taught as a separate subject across the whole school. The skills of reading are practiced and extended in all other curriculum areas throughout the day.

Junior School - The junior school spend the majority of the morning on reading and literacy related tasks. An extra literacy teacher is employed for three hours a morning, four times a week to ensure that numbers are kept very small in the junior classes. The new entrant class has a 1 to 8 ratio, the year 2 class is 1 to 12, and the year 3 class is 1 to 15

Reading usually starts with shared reading where the whole class discuss, read and share ideas about a story (this is often in the form of a Big Book) This enables children who are emerging readers to participate in the reading process in a supportive manner and allows the teacher to use the shared book for teaching points for the whole class
Children are ability grouped (usually in groups of 3 to 6). Teachers endeavour to work with each group each day. This means that children who are not working with the teacher need to be focussed on independent activities relating to the reading programme. Children also have their 'independent' boxes containing material they are familiar with and are able to read on their own. These boxes are used during the day for silent reading.
Reading to the children is also a big component of the reading programme, giving opportunities to introduce new vocab, ideas, sentence structure (rich text)
Reading books that children are familiar and confident with are sent home so that children can practice their reading with family.

Senior School - Reading in the senior school has a greater emphasis on using reading strategies to gather information, develop concepts on plot, character, setting etc and to explore a wider variety of genre, eg)fiction, non fiction, biographical

Senior school reading is also done in the morning, the optimum learning time for most children, though it does not take up as much of the morning as it does in the junior school.

Teachers in the senior classes are in the process of introducing more shared reading into their programme by using multiple copies of novels, photocopying relevant pages and using the non fiction Big Books in the school. There is also an emphasis on reading to the children, broadening their experiences of the world and encouraging them to read for pleasure.

OTHER SCHOOL READING PROGRAMMES
Reading Recovery takes place each morning between 9 and 10.30 and caters for three children who are between 6 and 7 years old and who have not made the expected progress with their reading.

A Tape Assisted Reading Programme (TARP) is run by a teacher aide three times a week. This caters for children in rooms 1 and 2 who need a boost with their reading. With this programme children listen to a story on a tape while following the text. They then discuss their understandings of the story with the Teacher Aide

A community volunteer also comes in one morning a week to work with senior students who need 'reading mileage'

The Resource Teacher of Literacy (Tess Joseph) is running a reading programme three afternoons a week (for this term) to help develop and consolidate reading for three boys aged 8, 9 and 10.Their progress is being carefully monitored and class teachers are given regular feedback.

One child is working on Third Chance, a very specialised and intensive programme for children who have failed at reading recovery. This runs for forty minutes a day, five days a week, 20 weeks and is one to one..

Learning Support Teacher , Deborah Conning, works with small groups of children who have been identified as being at risk of not continuing to progress with reading.

The school is in the process of introducing a new reading programme, Rainbow Reading. This also uses a series of tapes levelled at different reading ages. With this programme children practise independently with a tape and book until they feel ready to read it to the teacher aide, unassisted, They have as long as they need to master the story and there are around 15 stories at each level, so the child can become very confident before moving on. There are activities supporting each book. This programme is being loned to us to trial and will replace TARP which is currently run

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
First Chance - Last year two teachers attended Professional Development on First Chance. This is a current method of organising, grouping and teaching literacy for children starting school. Research is showing that this is improving outcomes for children, with less children needing reading recovery later on. A third teacher is taking part in this development, this year. The programme is being implemented in the 3 junior literacy classes.

Whole School Literacy Development - It was identified last year in the Reading Achievement Report that many of our children failed to understand text they were reading. In the action plan developed it was decided to focus on reading as whole school professional development. The staff are working with Wellington College of Education English Advisor, Jan Baynes. A number of after school work shops are being run on shared and guided reading, with 'in school' opportunities to trial and feedback with staff what is happening in individual classes. The focus for the first term is Shared Reading. Term two will be Guided Reading.

RESOURCES
Learning Media provide a number of free readers (ministry funded) for junior children. School journals which cater for children from 7 through to 13 are free and provide a great deal of culturally appropriate material.
Learning media also produce a range of other reading resources that are free to schools.
The school also has a wide range of material suitable for older children that has been purchased over the years. This includes sets of fictional material, non fiction high interest books, historical and science themes and classic children's stories.
The junior school also have a wide range of recognised materials, in multi sets, that have been purchased over the years.
School and Public Libraries are well used ,as are computer programmes and the internet. The National Library also provide reading resources to support programmes of work

PROGRESS MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT
A number of tools are used to monitor children's progress in reading. These include
Running Records - taken daily, weekly, monthly, termly and twice a year - depending on where children are with reading (these are used to identify students at risk and to provide appropriate programmes)
School Entry Assessment - a way to assess what a child has acquired in the first six weeks of school
Six Year Nett - an in depth literacy and numeracy 'test' that gathers data on the progress children have made in the first year at school (it also helps identify children for reading recovery)
PAT Reading Comprehension and Vocab tests which enable schools to see where students are placed in a national picture.

Information on where children are at in reading is presented in the Assessment and Achievement Books that form the bases of reporting to parents.

OTHER
" The PISCPL project will enable greater participation and understanding of the reading process for families whom English is the second language
" Pamphlets emphasising the importance of reading are included in enrolment packs in a variety of languages
" Parents are always welcome into the school to assist with reading in the school or to observe reading being taught to their child
" ESOL programme compliments reading programmes across the school

St Michael's Catholic Primary School
3 Cooper St, Taita, Lower Hutt City, New Zealand.
Ph (04) 567 1514