Term 3 Programmes

Inquiry: The concept for the term 3 inquiry is "Living Together Joyfully". The timing of this inquiry is to link with the upcoming Parliamentary Elections. Students will learn about social organisation with a particular emphasis on leadership and the role of leaders in assisting societies to "live together joyfully". A couple of practical applications will be the training of students and implementation of a peer mediation programme and the election of our own student council. Students will then carry out a significant related inquiry of their own which will, hopefully, lead to some real-life outcomes ("changed way of being in the world").

Student Achievement/Bonus Sessions: We have just finished the collection of our student achievement data for term 2. Much of it has already been collated and analysed to assist with planning for term 3. When we have this data, we always analyse it in terms of general achievement percentages across the school, but we also look closely at individual students and the progress each students has made or otherwise. We then identify the students that we consider "at risk of not achieving" and create an individual or group plan for each student.

At the end of term 2, in general our students are progressing well and we continue to have students moving from "at" to "above". However, there are still small numbers of students who have been identified "at risk of not achieving" in maths and reading. Bonus sessions (that is, extra teaching sessions, sometimes one-on-one sessions with teachers like Urs and Angela, and others in very small groups) have been timetabled for each of these students. However, writing continues to be an area of concern. Although the achievement of boys is very similar to girls in reading and maths, there is a considerable discrepency between the achievement of boys and the achievement of girls in writing. In writing there is a larger group of students (mostly boys) who have been identified as "at risk of not achieving [where they are expected to achieve]" and these students will receive considerable focus in term 3. Plans are being developed to provide bonus sessions for these students in a range of ways.

Rotations: After consultation with students, we changed the day of rotations to Thursday (from Monday). Students identified that they really liked rotations but felt it would be better placed later in the week. They preferred to have the first day of the week with their normal hub teachers. They suggested Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday seems to have worked well throughout term 2 so we will continue with it during term 3.

Term 3 rotatations will be as follows:

1. Te Reo Maori with Crisanna
2. Science skills and practices with Fiona
3. Athletics with Merrick
4. Mandarin with Angela, Matt, Demelza and Jenna (native mandarin speaker)
5. Cool Schools Peer Mediation training with Amaria, Michael and Lisa
6. Making Music with Urs, Erica and Helene

Electives: These will take place in the last five weeks of the term and will include Martial Arts with some teachers from the Confucius Institute.