Photography Club

Last term Mrs Horan ran a photography club as part of her lunchtime duties.  This fun activity attracted a large amount of budding photographers from Stanley Avenue School.  Late in the term the Piako Post advertised a competition challenging photographers to capture scenes from the Wetlands.  Today we have been given the wonderful news that Toni Keenan won the junior landscape competition and Amber Wotherspoon won the junior wildlife section.  Well done ladies!!

What a wonderful example of our learners having opportunities to discover their talents, passions and interests!  Ambers photo is directly below, with Toni's underneath.

The Joy of the Struggle

I really appreciate this clip which investigates the power of feedback.  This was shared at a presentation by Guy Claxton who encouraged participants to consider the power of teacher feedback.  As he said "If you want it, coach it!"

Technology Challenge

This week four of our school leaders chose to enter HP's rural school challenge to win some technology for our school.  Each pair only had a very short time to consider an idea and run with it.  On Friday I was amazed to see the creativity and quality of each entry!

I then started to reflect on what technology coupled with excellent teaching has created at Stanley Avenue School.  The ability to search for information and use apps for creating content using Chrome books and Ipads has opened so many doors for our learners.

This week we are having Ultrafast Broadband installed and we are expecting to have a network upgrade on our switches, cabling and wireless points in the near future.  I can't wait to see the impact of these initiatives on our learning environment!