By Simon Clarke | Posted: Tuesday March 9, 2021
We like to think of Kaikorai School as being an innovative school that is always looking for new opportunities to work with the wider community.
Last year, our big focus was working on the hospital rebuild and this year we are proud to be working with Sir Ian Taylor and the team at Animation Research. Next week, all of the teachers in the Hills Cluster will have an opportunity to listen to Ian Taylor's story before we launch our PBL Voyages topic.
Our Voyages topic is based upon the recently released work that Animation Research has developed, which has attracted some excellent media attention. These articles will give you a better understanding of what we are trying to achieve.
The Website we will be working on from Animation Research.
I was working with a class this week helping them with coding and robotics and we were discussing great explorers and how we now use drones to safely explore, like the recent successful landings on Mars. As part of this discussion, we listed other famous explorers. Names like Cook, Tasman and Hillary were easy for the students to discuss but it was interesting that not one student even considered who came to Aotearoa first. This is our task, and by the end of the PBL unit we hope that students know who, how and why the first people came to New Zealand and that they will be held in the same high esteem as all of the other explorers.
We are very proud to be one of the first schools in New Zealand to work with this new resource.
I see in the calendar section that Juniors are about to start swimming lessons. In our past community consultation, we asked if you valued swimming lessons run by swimming instructors and we received an overwhelming yes. However, last year we only had 75% of parents pay for the swimming lessons at a cost of $6,000 to the school.
We agree with you that swimming is very important and no child will miss out if costs are an issue, but we would appreciate even a small contribution to the overall costs of the swimming lessons. The best way to do this is to set up a small automatic payment. We understand that swimming is expensive and that not everyone can afford to pay so please feel free to contact the school if this is an issue for you.
Speaking of community consultation, the Board of Trustees have released this year's questionnaire and would greatly appreciate your time to fill it out. It is much shorter than other years and we are hoping for a good response.
Kind regards
Simon Clarke
Principal