News in Brief 2

Another quick round up of the week that's been.

Anchor Milk Presentation:

Three students (Luke Walmsley, Joshua Clark and Grace Hilton) were selected by their Hubs to represent the school and accept a cheque from Anchor Milk. The special promotion was intended to encourage the purchase of Anchor milk, while at the same time provide an opportunity to give back to the community. Three schools were chosen by New World to share in $3500 donated by Fonterra. People who purchased Anchor Milk were given a token which they then placed in the container - choosing to support Churton Park School, Amesbury School or St Brigid's School. We received a very welcome cheque for $1050.00 which we will put towards the purchase of equipment that will be available for the community to use.

A very BIG thanks to Churton Park New World, Anchor Milk and Fonterra for their support of local schools. And thanks to all those school families and wider community members who supported Amesbury School.

Farewell to Judy:
We were sad to say goodbye on Monday to Judy, our Monday music teacher, who introduced our children to a variety of instruments. Her teaching stint with us is finished and we wish her all the best.

Learning Celebration and SuperHero Day

These are taking place this Friday - last day of term! The Learning Celebration will take place in the hall at 1.45pm. All whanau welcome. Koru students and teachers are invited to think about what their Super Powers are and dress up as SuperHeroes. I am looking forward to having a school full of SuperHeroes on Friday. Hold on....we have a school full of SuperHeroes every day. Go Amesbury!

The Great Pizza Day

Last Friday the Harakeke Food Technology Group made pizza for about 70 people. It was a huge undertaking but the end result was really worth it because the pizza was delicious! The pizza base was made on Tuesday and left in the fridge to mature for several day (made the place smell very yeasty at times!) and then it took all day to make the pizzas, serve them and then clean up. I had a hawaiian pizza and it was outstanding. A BIG thanks to our Food Technology Group and the parents and teachers who helped them. I hope you do it again!

Ignite Evening

We had our Ignite Evening last Thursday. About 50 teachers from around the Greater Wellington area and even from as far away as Te Karaka (Gisborne) came together for food, fellowship and sharing of ideas. Eleven teachers (seven of them from Amesbury) did ignite talks. These talks are five minutes long, with 20 powerpoint slides, automtically set to change very 15 seconds. So you have to keep up. We were all pretty breathless by the end! There was a wide array of topics and all of the talks were really interesting. The talks were videoed and they will be put online soon. When they are available, we will let you know because you may like to go and have a look. We thought it was a pretty good effort for our first Ignite Evening. The Auckland Ignite Evening was happening at the same time and there were lots of Tweets going back and forth.

Games in the Library

I was excited to go into the library yesterday lunchtime to see technology off the menu for a day and board games on the menu. Board games are pretty big in our house (as is technology) and it was great to see the children socialising in different ways while exploring problem solving strategies. I also loved the fact that older students were assisting younger students. A big thanks to our students librarians who made this happen. I am told the games will be out regularly.

Innovative Schools

David Waters (Board Chair) and Lesley were involved in an innovative schools' day with other principals and teachers from around Wellington earlier this week. Amesbury School was invited to join this group because of the innovative practices it is implementing. The plan is for schools with innovative approaches to work together to assist and support each other with their innovation and to draw out some common understandings about innovative practices that improve student learning. Following the formal meeting, the attendees came out to Amesbury School to have a look around and to talk about our learning approaches.

Visitors

We have continued to have visitors. Since I last wrote News in Brief we have hosted visitors from the following schools/institutions:

Learning Media - Innovator Schools

Porirua College - Teachers from the PLD Inquiry Group

ICTPD Cluster - 20 plus principals and teachers working together to develop the use of ICT in their schools

St Josephs School

Scots College