Bookings are now open for the parent/teacher Progress and Achievement Meetings. For those of you newer to the school, we have 4 formal points during the year where parents come and either take part in a:

• Term 1: Goal Setting Meeting (children/teachers/parents)
• Term 2: Progress and Achievement Meeting / written report (teachers/parents)
• Term 3: Student-Led Conference (children/teachers/parents)
• Term 4: Progress and Achievement Meeting / written report (teachers/parents)

(This may look different for New Entrants or children starting during the year.)

Although we will be reporting on progress against the National Standards, we must keep our 3 principles at the heart of all that we do. These being:

• The Whole Child
• Knowledge Building and Inquiry
• Collaboration

As our school has a big focus on wellbeing/positive education, you will also see/hear reference to the children's use of character strengths in the written reports. By having this focus on strengths, we can engage these to support growths in the areas that aren't so strong. At the end of last term, I had a parent coffee session when I went into strengths in more detail. It also happened to be on World Character Day where the teachers had planned great activities in whānau groupings and wrote about it on the blog, etc.

At the parent session, I shared the VIA Institute of Character - 24 character strengths. These are the strengths we base our work on and also the strengths most widely peer reviewed. I urge you to take the free survey and read some of the material available on the site: http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey

Our Board and all staff members have taken the survey and it's a useful way of recognising different strengths in each other and how these may contribute best to the 'work of the school'. If you are really keen, you may also like to listen to this 30 minute radio interview by Prof. Lea Waters from Melbourne Uni on World Character Day, as it has some nice tips for parents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJeGA84ee3c

Only 2 weeks until the Fair now - let's engage our zest, teamwork and ensure there is plenty of humour and self-regulation on the 13th!