Dr Cheryl Doig

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This week we held a community consultation evening with Dr Cheryl Doig to discuss the future modern learning changes to education. As a school we have been trialling a variety of modern learning mindsets and environments and it was great to get parent feedback on this. I found this evening really interesting as a wide variety of parents attended and I got to hear lots of different thoughts and opinions. I found it really useful to talk to parents of children in room 20/21 as they felt the teaching and learning environment here was a perfect transition from early-childhood to primary school. They also expressed disappointment that their children may not be in a similar set-up next year. This led me to think about our continuity as a school and how we cater to the range of needs and wants our community put forward. These particular parents were keen to see their children remain in a collaborative classroom next year however other parents were a bit hesitant. I am excited about the possibility of teaching collaboratively as I can see a huge range of benefits for both staff and students. Likewise I felt overall the feedback from parents was they can see the benefits too and are supportive of our plans.
This term the year 4 teachers have be trialling cross-grouping our maths classes to better meet student needs and the feedback from this has been amazing. As teachers we feel our students are learning more and making huge progress as well as social connections and resilience from moving around the middle school. The feedback I have heard from parents is that their children are enjoying maths, it doesn’t appear so scary (as it is at their level) and overall they are very happy with the choices we have made. This parent consultation evening proved this further to me. Overwhelming the parent feedback stated they loved the teaching and learning that is taking place at Paparoa Street School along with all the extra-curricular opportunities our children have. I am excited about the next stage of Paparoa Street School and feel very inspired to teach collaborative and flexibly next year.

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