SCHOOL NEWSLETTER: 5th June 2025

IMPORTANT DATES AND EVENTS

Torbay School Learning Powers – RIC

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

Staff Only day

Thankyou for your support of our staff only day last week. We hosted over 160 educators from across the North Shore and Greater Auckland at Torbay School on Friday the 23^rd May. International speaker, child psychologist and author Dr Ross Greene spent the day introducing and unpacking his Collaborative Proactive Solutions model. This model designed to be used with children who are displaying concerning behaviours and provides a method for Teachers and parents to work at the root causes or underlying reasons for the behaviour.

The day was inspiring and has provided us with a programme to help us manage children and improve their opportunities to learn. The programme will take time to implement due to the hefty programme of PLD in other areas that we are currently undertaking.

Dr Greene’s books are worth a read should you be looking for direction on parenting or alternatively visit his organisations website, explicitly set up for the New Zealand setting: Lives in the Balance Aotearoa. Ross’ books are widely available at many online book stores and will provide you with great parenting strategies.

Staff Only Day Monday 25^th Aug

Our final Staff Only day for the year will be held on Monday the 25^th of August. This is the second of our Mathematics PLD Days allocated to us by the government to facilitate the implementation of the refreshed Maths Curriculum. This is an important day as we round off an intensive period of professional development as we have unpacked the new curriculum document.

We thank you for making alternative arrangements for the care of your children on that day.

Assessment

As we introduce the new curriculums to our classrooms new assessment processes are being developed so that we can assess our children against the new curriculum documents. The Board and Management of Torbay School have decided to assess our children against the existing New Zealand Curriculum.

We are doing this for a range of reasons:

The new assessment tools have not yet been developed meaning that we would have to improvise using assessment processes designed for the existing NZ Curriculum creating inconsistencies in overall teacher Judgements.
We want to wait until the new tools are available next year so that they have been embedded and are calibrated to the new curriculums and its phases.
We are also in a transition year and our staff are still familiarizing themselves with the content and the delivery of the refreshed curriculum and are not in a position yet to accurately assess against it.
We also want to assess our children against the same standards as last year to help inform us about the effectiveness of the professional development that we are undertaking.

By the start of 2026 we will have gained a better understanding of the new curriculums and hopefully new assessment tools will be available so that we can transition fully to new assessment processes that match the new curriculum content and benchmarks.

Jump Jam

Over the past few years Torbay School has been heavily involved in Jump Jam. This has involved a large number of our staff giving up significant amounts of personal time to get our teams to a consistently high standard.

Unfortunately, with the significantly increased workload faced by our staff this year, due to the new curriculum changes and our already very busy programme we have decided that we will not be entering teams into the annual Jump Jam competitions in 2025.

Book Week

Our school is buzzing this week as we work through all the events and activities associated with our Book Week celebrating reading, writing and literature. I look forward to our book character parade tomorrow and the disco on Friday night. Our Readathon fundraising effort is going really well, thank you for your support. Thank you also to the PTA for their work to help make this possible and a very special thankyou to Sarah Kilkolly for all her work in orchestrating all of the school-based activities and our staff for their support and enthusiasm. All funds raised from our Readathon will go towards the upgrading of our school library

Trees

We continue to develop our grounds and after having to remove the large tree adjacent to the garden and “Hollies Bench” as it was dying we have replaced it with a lovely Jacaranda tree. I would like to thank Chanel McConchie and her partner Steve for giving up time over the long weekend to plant this fine specimen and five other liquid amber trees at each end of the new rooms 7 – 10 classroom block. I look forward to these trees maturing and providing much needed shade in the years ahead.

Important dates for the remainder of term 2 include:

Book Week Tues 3^rd – Fri 6^th June

School Disco Fri. 6^th June

Pie Day Fri. June 6^th

Board Meeting Wed. 18^th June

Kahui Ako Matariki Festival Thurs 19^th June

Matariki Holiday Fri 20^th June

End of Term 2 Fri. 27^th June

I thank you for your continued support of all we do here at Torbay School. Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss any matter.

Nga mihi nui

Gary O’Brien

Principal

gobrien@torbay.school.nz

ACOMPLISHMENTS

CONGRATULATIONS to the following tamariki who received certificates from their class teachers:

Phoenix, Harriette C, Annebelle, Levi, Rm 3 & 4, Avnaz, Korbyn, Niklaas & Scarlett Room 5 & 6, Jamie, Ava Gay, Harrison & Stevie Rm 7 & 8, Kenzie, Haoyuan, Arthur, Diana & Lilah Rm 9 & 10, Willow & Cole Rm 11 & 12, Levi, Beau, Riley & Daniel Rm 13 & 14, Madison, Jake, Henry & Liam S Rm 15 & 16, Piper, Liam C, Ness, Jaxon, Maddy & Viyan 17 & 18, Rosa, Joel, Anna & Adi Rm19 & 20, Handre, Leo, Nami & Imogen Rm 21 & 22, Emma, Jimin, George M & Alina Rm 23 & 24, Jacinth, Bronson Rm 25 & 26, Jackson, Gus, Shirley & Abhi Rm 27 & 28 Well done!!

RICC REWARDS, for displaying our C.A.R.E Values – Lienke Rm 25, Lydia Rm 4, Madison Rm 3, Liam Rm 18, Yvonne Rm 24, Brayden Rm 5, Eliza Rm 16, Amelia Rm 6, Ka pai!

PRINCIPALS AWARDS for services of the school – Coby Cadwallader Rm 9