Newsletter - Term 3 Week 8

Eva hosting our annual speech competition

Almost Spring greetings!

Greetings and salutations to our wonderful Wairau Valley School community.

Our school Speech competition was a huge success yesterday with some awesome whānau support. Everyone in their classes had delivered their best effort and going through to our finals we had Linkyn Kahu, Ryan Boon, Penny Eaton, Grace Howard (Phase 1 - NE-Y3), Gus Fowler, Caia Bingham, Beau Beattie, Declan Wolland (Phase 2 - Y4-6) and Xanthe Neville, Kobe Hoult, Valentina Leov & Kyan Hoogeveen (Phase 3 - Y7-8). Our judges John Burnett and Debbie Stanger (BIG THANK YOU to them!) had the hard job of whittling down a winner for each category.

After some careful deliberation, Penny Eaton won the Phase 1 category, Gus Fowler won the Phase 2 category and Kobe Hoult won the Phase 3 category. Gus and Kobe will go on to represent Wairau Valley School at the Rural Schools Speech Competition, held in our own Wairau Valley Community Hall (if you're available that day!) on Wednesday 23rd September starting at 11 AM.

The School Board resolved to reduce the number of parent-elected members from 5 to 4, and has therefore engaged Susan Fox as the Returning Officer to hold a by-election for two parent-elected positons. More information will be supplied in due course by Susan, and we have two parents ready to submit their candidacy applications. Here's hoping the process runs smoothly and we have a fully operational board as soon as possible!

Planning has begun for Year 5-8 Camp next year, which is planned to be held at Teapot Valley in Brightwater. It is a fantastic camp with excellent facilities and access to Abel Tasman National Park. An initial indication of cost will be between $150 - $200. It's worth planning for that now - at $5 per week, there are more than enough weeks between now and the proposed dates: Tuesday May 25th - Friday May 28th 2027. More information and a call for parent help will be in 2027. We appreciate for some whānau that camp can be a big cost, so please come and have a chat with Adam or Katie if this is a barrier.

We are also deep into planning Pets Day. This year, it is Thursday 22nd October (Week 2, the Thursday before Labour Day). As usual, we will be looking for donations for the grocery hamper and having our annual cake auction. If you are able to help in any way, please let Lisa in the Office know.

Today, we carried out a trial fire evacuation. We did a lunchtime one, and the kids were awesome, moving to the Tennis Courts quickly and sensibly and all being accounted for in 1 minute and 47 seconds. This was a 32 second improvement on last time! We know that for some kids, when the alarm goes off it can be quite scary and loud. It's hard to explain that it's just a normal part of life (hard considering how often alarms go off) but they're there to tell us to get to safety and to keep us safe. If your child comes home talking about it, reassure them that they were great today and did exactly what was required!

Robotics with MOTAT

On Monday of Week 7, we had an awesome hands-on learning experience with Hamish from MOTAT – Museum of Transport and Technology.

The children explored innovation, technology and design thinking while learning how to code and control their own robots. They discovered how coding gives a robot instructions and then had the chance to test, adjust and improve their ideas.

Next came the creative part! The Wairau students used coloured squares to feed their robot instructions and make it follow a path. The Fishtail students designed additions for their robots, adding arms, legs and other features before putting them to the test.

We finished the session with the Wairau Valley Derby, where the robots battled it out to see whose design would come out on top!

Congratulations to The Monsters – Dakota and Declan, who took out the win!

It was a fantastic session filled with problem-solving, creativity, teamwork and plenty of fun.

A big thank you to Hamish and MOTAT for giving Fishtail Room such an engaging experience and inspiring our young innovators! If you would like to watch a wee montage of the day, you can see it here.

Our Values Focus this Fortnight

For the rest of this term, we are focusing on our R.I.V.E.R. value of Integrity | Pono. Through discussions, activities and real-life examples, students are exploring what it means to tell the truth, own their actions, follow instructions the first time and manage themselves. We are learning that integrity is not about being perfect. It is about making good choices, taking responsibility when things do not go to plan, and getting back on course. By strengthening integrity, we are building a school culture where trust runs deep and everyone can thrive.

Alongside our values work, staff also participated in professional learning with Paul Johnstone from the Ministry of Education last Thursday. Paul brings extensive expertise in school culture, behaviour support, and creating positive learning environments.

One of the key areas we are exploring as we implement our new vision and values is how we respond when students fall short of our expectations. For many people, accountability has traditionally been associated with punishment. However, current research and educational practice increasingly point towards a different understanding of accountability: helping young people recognise the impact of their actions, repair any harm caused, and learn what to do differently next time.

At Wairau Valley School, we believe behaviour is a form of communication. When challenging behaviour occurs, our role is not simply to impose a consequence, but to understand what skills, knowledge, or support a student may be missing. This does not mean lowering expectations. In fact, accountability remains a critical part of the process. Students are expected to take responsibility for their choices and work towards making things right.

We know that punishment can sometimes achieve short-term compliance, but our goal is lasting change. We want students to develop the skills, self-awareness, and sense of responsibility needed to make positive choices long after they leave our school.

As part of our professional learning, staff were provided with Alfie Kohn's article Why Do We Punish Children?, which explores research questioning the effectiveness of punishment as a tool for behaviour change.

Congratulations, Superstars!

Beau Beattie: Beau, this award recognises the huge progress you have made in your learning this year. You are becoming more confident at getting started, staying focused, managing your time, working through tricky moments and, most importantly, using feedback to improve your work – something you showed brilliantly when creating your funny and well-structured speech. Be proud of how far you have come, Beau – keep it up!
Finny Callanan: For outstanding all-round effort across all areas of learning. You consistently demonstrate our school values and show a positive attitude towards your learning. Your tremendous effort and commitment in both Speech and Cricket have been impressive. Tino pai — keep up the fantastic work!
Gus Fowler: Gus, I see you trying really hard to show our R.I.V.E.R. values every day in your interactions with peers, adults and visitors to our kura. You're showing integrity while playing games and not letting others determine the fun and your success. Keep being the role model and leader you are in the Wairau class!

Cricket Taster with James

James from Marlborough Cricket came to school last Friday to give the kids a taster session on Cricket. It was a great wee session, where the kids got to learn some skills and have a fun game. Information about signing up for Cricket went home with children on Monday, or is available here.

Wairau Room

Cricket Taster

We were very lucky to have James visit our school for a cricket session. Our tamariki were amazing and thoroughly enjoyed learning new skills, playing games, and giving cricket a go. Who knows, we may have some budding Black Caps in our school!

MOTAT Experience

MOTAT was a fantastic learning experience, and the tamariki were highly engaged from beginning to end. The juniors particularly enjoyed the interactive activities, where they had to work out which coloured mat had the correct instruction to follow a pathway and make the car move.

It was wonderful to see how quickly many of our tamariki remembered which colour represented each instruction. They used their memory, problem-solving and logical thinking skills to successfully program the car and navigate the path. What a fantastic hands-on learning experience!

Gathering Data and Creating Graphs-Maths

Our tamariki are developing their ability to ask questions, gather information and collect data that can be represented in graphs. They are learning how to organize and interpret their data and explain what their graphs are telling them.

Some tamariki are also learning how to use Google Sheets to create graphs, remembering to include appropriate titles, labels and headings. We are becoming confident data detectives!

Narrative Writing

Narrative writing is our focus for the remainder of the term. We are learning how to create interesting characters, settings and events and how to structure our stories so that they capture the reader's attention.

There are some fantastic stories developing in the Wairau Room, and we are looking forward to publishing and sharing our wonderful writing with you soon.

Johnny, Gracie, Cullen and Lilly delivering their speeches

Writing from the Fishtail Class

The Fishtail Class really dived deep into Marlborough Sounds Whaling and produced some excellent writing as a result. You can view a higher resolution version here. We have also shared these with the Picton Heritage & Whaling Museum so our mahi can help educate visitors to the museum and hopefully be read by tourists from all over the world!

Celebrating Daffodil Day

The kids really bloomed a couple of Fridays ago for Daffodil Day. It was great to see the kids who turned up in yellow to support such a good cause that is so dear to many peoples' hearts. It wasn't just the kids of Wairau Valley School who dressed up though! We were joined by the Playgroup for the morning to share learning, play games, sing waiata and get to know one another a bit more. Fostering the connection between pre-school and school is so important and we love having the Playgroup here.

All up, Wairau Valley School raised $64 in donations - well done whānau!