COVID-19 Update

27 October 2021

Kia ora whānau,

As you most probably know, we continue to be at Level 3 until Monday the 1^st of November (at least). There was mention of schools returning as per normal from the 15^th of November. This will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the Primary Education sector over the next two weeks.

Matangi School teachers continue to deliver a robust online learning programme. We have shared the Google form with you this afternoon, for those who wish to borrow a device from school. We will distribute these on Friday the 29^th of October from 9:00am-11:00am.

Another Google form will go out tomorrow morning for our Essential workers to sign their children up for online/onsite supervision next week. We will continue to do this on a weekly basis, sending out the form on the Thursday of each week.

We hope that you have had the chance to download the Hero app on your home device or phone. You will be able to view your child’s learning goals and other information that we have, on this platform. Just a reminder: you will only see your child’s goals at this stage. We will be adding in the data in relation to your child’s achievement levels, over the next few months – it will be there for you to see toward the end of this term.

A link to the School Interview portal was sent out last week and yesterday. This is for you to log in to set a time for you to engage in a Zoom Meeting with your child’s teacher. This meeting will be to discuss the Hero Platform, and to answer any questions you might have in regards to the goals that you see. The times that we have set aside for this are: Thursday the 28^th of October 2:00pm-5:00pm and Friday the 29^th of October 9:00am-11:00am.

Our Ag Day entries were very enjoyable to watch. I would definitely say the cute factor won the heart of many of our staff members here. We can’t wait to deliver the certificates and ribbons out to our children. This will be done in the very near future. A huge thank you to Tracey Cameron for organising our virtual Ag Day. This was such a great idea; it enabled our children to share their pets, something they can be all very proud of. We are leading the way in our innovative thinking; other schools in our cluster have decided to also do a virtual Ag Day, after learning what we had done here at Matangi School. Amelia Meertens is currently putting together a movie to showcase our Ag Day entries. We will share this with you, once it is ready.

We will continue to keep you updated on any new information that we hear from the Ministry. Please know that we are missing you all very much. We are in a very unpredictable position right now, the only thing that we can do to take advantage of this situation is to keep finding new ways to engage with our community. We might be looking at doing an ‘adapted’ Country Show Day…I wonder what we come up with..?

Until then, stay well, stay safe, and keep smiling.

Ngā mihi

Helena Kirkham

(Acting Principal)