E ngā reo, e ngā mana, rau rangatira mā, ngā matā waka, tēnei te mihi nui atu ki ā koutou katoa. Ko te wawata me te tumanako ka noho ora mai koutou katoa.

To all parents, caregivers and the community,

As we wind up towards the end of Term 2, it's important to reflect on some of the things that are going on at the school at the moment. We really encourage you to attend the school production of Back to the 80s. This is a student-led production. We had the honour of inviting some of our contributing Intermediate and Primary School students to the matinee on Monday. This was really well received, and gave the students the opportunity to test themselves to their first audience, and this was reflected in the first show on Tuesday night which was a huge success. There are tickets available for the production on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, with Saturday being the last show. What's really encouraging is the number of students who have been engaged, either backstage or onstage. Their commitment to this production and to each other proves how wonderful our students are. I would like to acknowledge our staff team of Cherise Stone, Gail Zonneveld, Adam Warner, Teresa Hoskins, Shae McLean, Jared Cochrane and Anne Nillesen, who have all supported this in a variety of ways to ensure a wonderful experience for our students and community.

The recent sporting results have been a highlight that prove that sport at WHS is growing and our students are being exposed to a whole range of opportunities across the region in a variety of sports. In particular, our 1st XV being promoted into the 1st division in WaiBOP. They've been able to prove to themselves that they are able to compete to the highest level with a recent win over Rotorua Colts. Our football teams continue to perform well and our Boys A and Boys 1st XI look to be promoted into Division 1 in due course. So too our hockey A team, had a recent 7-0 victory over Rotorua Girls High School and they are being promoted into the top division in WaiBOP.

In the region, our basketball team triumphed over Trident recently to prove that basketball is a thriving and growing sport in our school. You can see this by the number of students practising at interval, lunchtimes, before school and after school, on our new courts.

Positive behaviours for learning

As we wind up toward the end of Term 2, it's important to reflect on some of our learnings over the course of the last few weeks. Two positive behaviours for learning we want our young people to work on are lateness and being ready for learning.

Lateness

Importantly, one of the things that our student support network is noticing is the number of students that are arriving at school late. Unfortunately we've had some poor weather of late, and it is a bit difficult for students to come to school in the rain, however, what we've also noticed is that some young people need to really develop their self-management skills, in particular, making sure they have a restful night's sleep and that they have time to unwind at home. This will help them come to school refreshed and on time.

Lateness is an issue, especially when it comes to learning. In particular, it does put students on the back foot, as when they arrive to class late, they have often missed important bits of learning, and those little bits of the jigsaw puzzle of learning all add up. If you think about being late to school, or late to classes, five minutes for each class during a day equates to 25 minutes of learning time lost. Over the course of a Term, that's a significant amount of time. Over the course of a year, that's days of learning time lost that could support students to achieve success. Please encourage your young person to come to school on time.

Being ready for learning

Another important element of learning that supports students in their self-management is to remind them to be prepared for learning by bringing their chromebooks charged and/or bringing chromebook charging cables. This is important so that students are able to access their online learning that is available in class and that enables the opportunity for students to engage in course materials quicker. We do have a limited number of chromebooks available in the Library, but as we've noticed, the number of students arriving without chromebooks has impacted on the availability of daily loans of chromebooks. Also, I would encourage you too, if your child has had a loan chromebook, and not returned it to the Library, please ensure that they do so. Our Deans and Senior Leadership Team will be in contact with families if that is the case.

Achievement

Again, achievement is a key focus of Student Mentoring. Currently, our Student Mentors of Year 11, 12 and 13 are working hard to ensure that students understand where they are in terms of their credits, what learning is coming up and what support students need. These will be added to their Student Mentoring Interviews under their Student Profile which will be available on Kamar Portal as and when those goal-setting meetings take place. We build up to Term 3 with important work with NCEA Assessments. In Week 9 of Term 3 we have our Senior Exam Week, and all students should use Term 3 as a real key stepping stone to ensure they are ready for their external assessments, but also to make sure they complete their required work and assessments to work toward achieving their goals. Whether that is passing Level 1, 2 or 3, or working towards Merit or Excellence Endorsement.

Our current analysis shows us that the position where our young people are, relative to years before, is much better, in terms of where they are within their NCEA qualification. We believe this is a bi-product of improved conversations, tracking and monitoring during Student Mentoring time.

Health services provided FREE in school:

• School Nurse: daily except Wednesday morning
• School Doctor: Tuesdays P2
• Nutritionist/Dietitian: Weekly on Wednesday morning

Visit the Student Office to make an appointment.