This is going to be an incredible event and not to be missed!!

Click HERE for lots of information about all the different things that will be happening.  Mark this on your calendar NOW.

School begins on Tuesday for the children.  Teachers have been here at different times over the break preparing for the new year and setting up classrooms.

The Office will be open later this week for stationery supplies.  Children all received a stationery list at the end of last year but if you need another one just call in to the Office.

I will be at school each day from 10am and look forward to meeting any new families who wish to come and enroll children.  It is much easier to do this earlier than in the busy time on Tuesday morning.

We have a Teachers Only day on Monday and will be getting a lot of things in place for the new school term.

We have a garden club at school.  Any children who want to can be involved in growing, tending, harvesting and then consuming the different vegetables.  The group have tried all sorts of different vegetables, some of which they didn’t know about before

A big thanks to all the adult helpers as well!

We recently appointed two new teachers for our school.  We asked them to write a paragraph or two about themselves ….

1. Angie Young:

Greetings to all staff, students, families and friends of Outram School. My name is Angie Young and I am really excited to be joining your school next year.
I moved into the Outram area, back in July, from Geraldine in South Canterbury. I taught at Geraldine Primary School for over three years, and have most recently been teaching at St Hilda’s Collegiate School in Dunedin. I enjoy cycling, running, skiing, walking my two Labradors, reading, cooking and traveling. I grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Lawrence and have spent a year as a care worker in England. My fiancé Owain and I are currently building a house near the Sinclair Wetlands and we are both looking forward to getting to know the Outram community better. Thank you for welcoming me to your school.

2.  Mark Hunter.

Hi my name is Mark Hunter.  I am really excited about my new role and joining the staff at Outram School.  I have recently returned from overseas where I spent a year in Ireland playing rugby and teaching, I also taught in London for a year.  Prior to that, I taught year 7 classes at Southland Boys’ High School and Tahuna Intermediate.  I am a keen sportsman and enjoy the outdoors.  I look forward to meeting you all next year.

Mark is going to be teaching in Y7/8 next year and will be our new Sports ad Physical Activity leader for the school.  Angie will be teaching in Y5/6.

Each week at 2:30 on a Friday we have an assembly that celebrates the things that have been happening that week in our school.

You can see in this photo the children who received class certificates this week.  All families and supporters are most welcome to come and join us!

Clemency Wright and the wonderful Room 9 WON the Interface magazine best class bog award!!

This is a HUGE achievement as the competition for this award is tremendous.  There are many, many entriesandd to even make the finals is HUGE.  Winning is a real coup.  Well done to both Room 9 and the wonderful Mrs Wright.  Two years ago R9 had not even begun blogging and now they are the best in the country. How cool is that!!

You can see in the photo the Netbook Mrs Wright won as the prize.  They are talking to Greg Adams the Editor of the magazine on skype and have just found out about the win.

You can follow the links to their blog and all the other web presences classes have from the sidebar of this blog.  Do have a look at the wonderful things that are happening in these spaces.  They are a wonderful way for families to see what is happening at school and in the classrooms.  No longer can the children go home and answer “nothing” to the “what did you do at school today?” question.  There are small maps on many of the sites that show where the visitors to the pages come from.  You can see from the dots in so many places that peopl from around the world are coming to our websites to find out about the things we are doing at Outram School.

Tania Bellamy and the Robots group presented four workshops at the Kidz@Conference ICT conference today.  Mark Beaton also helped out with the sessions and the feedback the group had was very good.  Well done to all 6 children involved.

We also had 4 Y5/6 children who were delegates at the conference and went to a number of different workshops and found out about using all sorts of different software and technology.  Janferie Tansley and Kerry MacKenzie also attended a day of the conference each to learn about the kinds of things that the children were learning about as well.  They will then be able to share the ideas with other teachers back at school.

Channel 9 news also had an item that included interviews and shots of our children.

A big thanks to the team that put the conference together and well done to all the people from Outram School who attended over the two days.

We had our biannual pet day today.  What a day it was!

Heaps of parents and children everywhere.  Most of the school bought along some kind of pet to share and the photograph above shows Tayne with his trophy for the Best in Show with his pet calf.  There were a huge number of categories that you could enter into.

A massive thankyou to Lynda Bayne and all her team of helpers who bought all the day together and made it the wonderful success it was for us all.  The rain stayed away until we were all ready to head home.

Pet Days are a special part of Outram School.  They are a big part of what it means to be in a rural community.  So very different from schools in town.  The children from Pine Hill School who shared the day with us had a wonderful time as well.

Once again a BIG thankyou to all involved!

we have two positions available for wonderful teachers who want to join our team from next year.

Senior School.

1. Classroom Teacher (Senior). We are looking for a skilled classroom teacher.  The successful applicant will have strengths in literacy, numeracy and PE/PA as well as the ability to motivate, engage with, and enthuse children. Applications close 16 November. Information pack is available from Outram School, our website or by emailing gregc@outram.school.nz.

1. Classroom Teacher (Senior) / Sports Coordinator (1mu). First and foremost you have to be a skilled and successful classroom teacher.  The successful applicant will have strengths in literacy, numeracy and PE/PA as well as the ability to motivate, engage with, and enthuse children.  You will be leading our very successful co-curricular and sports programme and the position comes with some release and 1 management unit in recognition of this.  Applications close 16 November. Information pack is available from Outram School, our website or by emailing gregc@outram.school.nz.

These are the ads that have appeared in the Education Gazette.

You can download the position information and application form HERE

This week the Y7/8 children are at Oreti beach near Invercargill on their camp.  All the messages we have had back from them are that things are going well and the children and teachers are having a BALL.

We work hard to have a varied programme at Outram School and give the children a wide range of experiences during their time with us.  If you keep an eye on the R3 and R5 web pages/wikis you will no doubt see more about their time ‘down south’.