The latest West of the Taieri Newsletter can be downloaded from HERE. It gives a lot of news and information about events and people in this part of the Taieri Planes.

If you are interested in advertising in this publication – it is delivered to houses all over the Taieri – then please contact the editor (or even us at school and we will pass on)

I am including the front bit I write in each weeks newsletter in a post on this blog:

A BIG thankyou to all the families who kept children at home on Tuesday afternoon while many of the staff were at a funeral. It is one of the real strengths of a community like Outram that people gather around each other at times like this. Our whole staff, and particularly Lyn and her family, felt very supported by this, particularly given the short notice. So thanks again!

We have a Working Bee on the 20th September. This is a Sunday and we will begin at 10am. The main thing we are aiming to do is pour concrete to extend path areas behind R3/4 to keep mud out of the classrooms. We will also be making new garden beds and doing a small amount of paving around the Garden Club gardens by the Hall. While we have the digger the long jump pit will be moved from the edge of the soccer field. So bring along shovels, wheel barrows etc and any concreting equipment you may have. Any specific offers or questions to Garth Mitchel, or Greg at school please. It would also be good if you are intending to come if you can let us know so we can pass numbers on to the caterers. There is a return slip later in this newsletter.

A reminder and plea to PLEASE let us know if your children are not going to be on the school bus on any particular day. If you pick them up and don’t let us know it can mean a big hold up for the rest of the children while we confirm what has happened. Equally if your child is on the bus when this is not part of their usual routine we need to know so we can add their name to the bus lists.
Each day we gather names of children not going on the bus and mark them absent on the appropriate bus list. We update the lists based on any calls that come in to the Office before the end of the school day. Children then line up at the end of the day in their designated places for each bus and the bus lists are checked against the children in the line. We then also do a head count on each bus and ensure that the number of children on the bus matches with what we were expecting.
As you can see a lot of work goes into ensuring we have the right children on the buses each day and buses have to wait for the last child to be checked off and accounted for. This is why not knowing where a child is can be a real problem. PLEASE let us know as soon as you can of any changes to who we can expect on the buses.
Thanks

Remember you can download newsletters from here

We all have to think about the model we are for children. Parents, teachers, families ….. All of us, all the time.

We have re-worked the Values we used to focus on and now call them CHALLENGES.  This reflects the fact that they are a challenge to do well, to achieve, and to keep achieving.

We focus on a different Challenge every 5 weeks and they are also reported in reports:

Original and Independent Thinker:
* Will generally look beyond the obvious
* Responds in a way that appropriately challenges their own and others thinking
* Create new ideas and thoughts and can justify their opinion

Accepting risks and taking challenges:
* Manages physical risks and takes appropriate actions
* Is willing to try something new
* Be able to recognise what is personally challenging and persevere to achieve
* Knows their limits but pushes beyond them towards personal excellence

Perseverance and Dedication:
* Is able to persevere on a task through to completion.
* Is able to keep on task when an activity is challenging.
* Takes pride in the presentation and quality of their work.

Cooperation and Team work:
* Works actively with confidence in group situations
* Co-operates with others and respects varying opinions
* Accepts different roles within a group

Respecting and appreciating ourselves and Others:
* Encourages and supports the efforts of others.
* Is able to win and lose graciously.
* Listens and speaks with courtesy.
* Displays empathy towards others.

Original and Independent Thinker:
* Will generally look beyond the obvious
* Responds in a way that appropriately challenges their own and others thinking
* Create new ideas and thoughts and can justify their opinion

Curiosity and Wonderment:
* Asks questions and actively seeks the answers
* Shows awe and gets excited about new things and learning
* Eager to share discoveries and amazing things

Accepting risks and taking challenges:
* Managing physical risks and takes appropriate actions
* Is willing to try something new
* Be able to recognise what is personally challenging and persevere to achieve
* Knows their limits but pushes beyond them towards personal excellence**

Accuracy and excellence
* Identifies, set and monitor appropriate personal goals.
* Gives their personal best in all areas of the curriculum.
* Achieves a high standard when presenting work.
* Extends their own areas of strength.

Contributing to the Life of the School:
* Takes on (seeks?) responsibility and leadership within the school willingly
* Takes the ‘challenges’ and puts them into practice
* Looks after the school and its property, people and systems
* Is a good ambassador for our school

So each bold heading is the Challenge and the list below are the things we are looking for to exemplify each one.

We are looking for a kind and caring person to be a teachers aide for a boy who is beginning at our school next term. The position is 15hours each week and will probably involve work each morning, but we have yet to work out all the details of the timetable.
We need someone with patience and the ability to encourage children to achieve what they can on their own.
Go to the Vacancies part of this site to find out more or download the Position information.

This week Outram entered its first Dunedin schools Volleyball tournament (1 boys team, 1 girls team). The teams were nervous going into their first games. After both teams winning their first matches easily the nerves soon turned into confidence!

Both teams went through the tournament unbeaten, winning 6 games in a row!

The highlight for the boys team was demolishing John McGlashan College 23-12. The highlight for the girls team was beating St Hildas College 18-4.

Our children recently participated in the Otago Regional Science Fair:

Otago Regional Science Fair 2009- Scholarship Winners
Of the 7 projects entered from Outram School 5 have won scholarships.

Department of Computer Science, University of Otago Award
Max Newall/Daniel Gruppelaar- Computer Health

Children’s & Young People’s Research Cluster, University of Otago Award
David Darby/Cameron McLennan- Does Time Fly

School of Dentistry, University of Otago Award
Aleisha Adam / Nicola Lord Acid Attack

Otago Regional Council Award
Joseph Meehan / James McLennan Taieri River Water

Highly commended
Ayden McArthur Toilet time

Congratulations to all the groups who participated!!

We went to Carisbrook excited and ready to play. We had qualified after winning the Taieri Schools tournament. We knew it would be hard but none of us knew just how hard it would turn out to be. There were teams from all around the Otago region! We easily got through the round robin series (3 games) that lead us to the semi finals. We won the semi final comfortably and qualified for the final against Millers Flat. This was a realy big game and we needed to win, the year 3 &4 team had already won their grand final against Clyde 7 to 9. In the end we beat Millers Flat 6 to 3. We are now Otago Regional Champions.
By Georgia B.

Congratulations to the whole teams from us all!!!

Stacey Buschl will be taking the NE class during T4 that will be starting in R1.  Because of this:

We currently have a vacancy for a teacher to release our Reading Recovery teacher as well as provide CRT in 4 classrooms in both the Junior and Senior school. This position is 0.54 FTTE. You can download the information pack from HERE.

So …. if you know of anyone who may be interested please encourage them to apply!

If you go to our Vacancies Page you will find more information as well.

We have purchased a big lot of Lego for the Allen Centre: