Week 1, Term 3 2024

Principal Message

Welcome back to Term 3 everyone. I am very excited and happy to be back and look forward to working with our children, staff and families.

I would like to thank the Board of Trustees for supporting my sabbatical. I have returned refreshed and committed to carrying out the vision of the Board to make Tinwald School the BEST school for our community.

Thank you to Sue Wakefield for all of the many hours she put into managing and leading the school. The job of Principal is not easy at times and it requires focus and energy. 

Thank you to all of the staff at Tinwald. The have been numerous comments made about how staff stepped up or supported others as the terms unfolded.

My first actions upon return have been to reconnect with students and staff. I have been visiting classrooms and meeting with staff. I am gaining a clear picture of what has been happening and looking for trends emerging that will go into my future plans for the school .

Soon I will present the Board with my plans and bring in some of the learning I gained while visiting other schools.

I hope you have all had a good break and I look forward to catching up with as the year continues.

Regards

Peter Livingstone

Parent/Teacher Interviews - Term 3

Parent/teacher interviews are on Wednesday 31st July and Tuesday 6th August.  Please make the most of the opportunity to meet with your child's teacher at these times.

The school uses an online booking system available with this link or QR code

https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/code/yebje

Mid Canterbury Dance Champs

Miss Gray and Miss Pringle have been having a great time leading our two dance groups competing in the upcoming dance champs. Tickets are available now for the nights the groups are performing, with a link included below.

Our Junior group Funky Feet are performing on Monday 12 August at 5pm.

Our Senior group Bop Swoops are performing on Tuesday 13 August at 6pm.

Please make sure you book the correct date and time. Tickets are $17.50 plus fees. Book now so you don't miss out!

https://asheventcentre.co.nz/event/mid-canterbury-dance-champs-2024/

PTA Tuesday 7pm, 6 August

Our PTA welcome you all back to the new term and invite you to our next meeting On Tuesday 6 August at 7pm. Please contact our chair - Camille Hill on 027 845 6752 for further details.

Board of Trustees Meeting 7pm, Monday 5 August

The Tinwald School Board of Trustees will meet in the Principal's Office on Monday 5 August. The meeting begins at 7pm. Any items for the agenda must be with our Presiding Member Chris Hill by Friday 2 August. Items can be emailed to Chris: TinwaldschoolBOTPM@hotmail.com

Please note Board meetings are held in public but are not public meetings. This means public can attend but do not have speaking or voting rights (speaking rights to agenda items may be granted by the Presiding Member). Public are not able to be present when any items are discussed under Public Excluded Business.

School Lockdown Practice Drill

This is advanced notice the school with practice its lockdown procedures on Monday 5 August at 11am. 

The purpose of the drill is to test all of our systems and improve our practice. This is being communicated to you now so that you are aware and should expect to receive both text and email alerts and information.

The text you will receive, will state that this is a practice. The school needs to test alarm and communication systems. As you can appreciate, a practice allows us to find what is not working or happening to a very high standard.

At the end of the drill, the whole school will come together and be spoken to by myself as to how well we responded and to reassure children that by following staff instructions they are doing their Tinwald BEST. The staff will also conduct a debrief at the Thursday staff meeting.

During a lockdown (including practice drills) parents are not permitted to enter the school site to remove their children.

Regards
Peter Livingstone

Principal

Life Education at Tinwald School

Welcome back to Harold and the team from Life Education who will be at the school from Tuesday 6 to Monday 12 August. All children will visit the Life Education Mobile Classroom at least twice.

Celebration Assembly

Year 5 and 6 Winter Sports

Subway Lunches

If you wish to order Subway for your child's lunch, you can do this through their website www.subwaylunches.co.nz   You must log in and register on-line first and nominate our school for delivery.  Only available Thursdays.  Orders must be placed before 9am. Please remind your child to collect their lunch from the office on the day it is ordered.

Parenting Courses

We just wanted to reach out and connect to share our upcoming parenting programme, Parenting at Your Best which we are about to start facilitating for the wonderful Ashburton community. We thought this programme along with some of our other work may be of support to the parents you and your team work with. So often we hear from parents who wish they got in touch with us sooner, but it can just be so hard to find the organisations who can offer some practical in-person support.

Parenting at Your Best was created by our Real Parents team who have extensive professional backgrounds in psychology, education, and social work to support parents in better understanding their parenting style and what it takes to raise children who are resilient and can manage their big emotions. We designed this programme to be only five hours, which while short still allows for parents who may struggle to commit to a longer course or feel unsure about parenting courses in general to give it a try. All of our team are also trained in Incredible Years (3-8 years), and Incredible Years Toddlers (1-3-years), in addition some of our team having Tuning into Kids, Incredible Years Autism, and Circle of Security training. With a strong understanding of all of these programmes, we try to bring a little of each of them into Parenting at Your Best.

Parenting at Your Best costs $99 for parents to attend, each parent does receive a resource pack with some of our favourite resources and tools which we mention in the sessions. Two workbooks for parents to take away and use to better support their understanding of the content are also included.
These sessions are being facilitated by Anna Mowat. With Anna's extensive background in psychology, along with nearly 20 years of experience in the child wellbeing space, she has contributed to campaigns such as All Right?, serving as the original project lead and creating the majority of content for the first 7 years of Sparklers, and working as a trainer for the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience - NZIWR. One of Anna's latest projects is being a writer and trustee for Manahau, a new non-profit with a focus on creating school-based wellbeing activities with a kaupapa Māori focus. Lastly, as a member of the Real Parents team, Anna is a parent coach and facilitator of the Incredible Years and Incredible Years Autisim programmes. She keeps pretty busy, hey?

Attached are some flyers for the programme, we would love for you and your team to support us in sharing this upcoming programme, whether that be by distributing some of our flyers, emailing this info home, or sharing it across your social media. Hopefully, with enough interest we'll be able to look at other ways we can work in Ashburton to support parents.
https://events.humanitix.com/parenting-at-your-best-ashburton
Lastly, do let us know if you have any questions or would like to chat about our work further. You can also check out our website, realparents.org.nz to see some of the other work we do