Kia ora students, whanau and community
It has been a very busy week at Oamaru Intermediate this week. This week we have opened up our school for over 250 visitors: future or prospective students and their whanau. I am very proud of the values our students have demonstrated during all of our Open Week tours. We saw in abundance during our six open day/evening tours this week, students and visitors Engaging with Mana.
This year, instead of having one Open Evening, we split into six tours, four tours during a ‘normal’ school day, and the other two tours, after hours on Wednesday. I must say, it certainly was a great experience being able to connect with more people during these tours as there wasn’t the mass in previous years. There have been so many positive comments about how our students interacted with the future students and their whanau. A big THANK YOU to all of those people that were involved in our Open Week particularly our staff and students who worked very hard and stayed for extra hours for this to be successful. It is so great seeing the excitement, and apprehension in future students' faces, and this year was certainly no different!
This week we have also had…
Our Cross Country on Monday. What a fabulous event this was. Students had a great time at the WBHS fields and running or walking around the track. Well done to all of those that went with the ethos of this event and participated. The points were close but Kowhai House was the winning house at the end of the day. On a side note here, the points race for our House Shield at the end of the year is very close - still anyone’s game!
We also had on Monday, Ange Rathbone and Marcelle Nader-Turner from Dunedin delivering a resilience and wellbeing workshop to our children, and then a seminar to our teachers after school. At night, the ladies delivered another session to the parents of our community. Some great strategies discussed with the children to support them with feelings of uncertainty and worry.
Monday was also the start of two ladies from the NMSSA - National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement working with some students. They worked with 27 Year 8 students on assessments in Mathematics and Physical Education Curriculums. The ladies were very impressed with how our students lived our values, engaged their thinking and kept them entertained. It was very humbling to hear how our students display our values when around adults from others places.
On Tuesday we had two netball teams compete in the Otago Netty Festival for Year 7 and 8 students. What a wonderful day they had to compete against other schools.
Wednesday was basketball finals night at the Rec Centre which saw the OIS Sparks win the Girls Intermediate Final and the OIS Breakers win the Boys Intermediate Final. Congratulations to all those that participated in basketball this season, there was a lot of fierce competition.
We are a PB4L school - Positive Behaviour for Learning. Our Purpose Statement is... PB4L is about considering and/or changing the environment, systems and practices that we have in place to support students to make positive behaviour choices.
This means displaying our values and behavioural aspirations of I
- Dare to Succeed
- Engage with Mana
- Act with Respect
- Learning with Purpose
It also means that our teachers are constantly reflecting on their environments and asking how they can, or what can they do, to create the most effective learning environment possible for your tamariki to succeed. In a nutshell, it means we ask ourselves “what can I do to best help the kids?” “what can I change to support the kids?” “what support do I need from whanau to achieve these goals?”.
We would also like you to be a part of this thinking. If you have any concerns or comments about your child’s learning or life at OIS, please don’t hesitate to contact your child’s teacher. They are the ‘school expert’ on your child and we really want the best for them.
Hei konā rā,
Belinda Hirst
Deputy Principal, Oamaru Intermediate School