Principals Message

Kia ora Whanau,

Welcome back to Ridgeview for 2025!

The beginning of the year is an extremely exciting time of year full of potential and new energy. Our teachers have been in working very hard to get all the learning for 2025 set up and ready to go. They have already been to full professional development sessions around structured literacy and on Tuesday next week they have professional development around the mathematics curriculum.

Education in New Zealand is going through a transformative time, a lot of challenges and changes are happening at once, but we feel very confident in our teachers abilities and their commitment to educating the amazing students at Ridgeview school. We know through Research that well prepared, informed teachers made a difference to a child's education, but that they are only 50% of the equation. Students need to be showing up prepared, ready and willing to learn. So as the year develops students will be learning and working on developing their own agency around learning and having the skills to have control over their learning. You can support your child this year by helping them be ready for learning in the morning, having good routines before and after school and working along side the classroom teacher for the best outcomes for your child.

We have some exciting changes to our curriculum and also timetable this year which teachers will cover with parents during the meet the teacher day on Wednesday the 29th of January. If you have not already booked a time please do so here: https://forms.gle/JUHzfQ6jyFb2i7L38

Kalene will email parents with confirmation on Tuesday with your time slots.

If you have any questions or need to have a conversation about your child's learning, please do reach out to your classroom teacher, they are your first point of contact. If you feel you have additional questions then please feel free to contact myself. I wish you all a fantastic year and look forward to seeing our students exceed there potential in 2025.

Pōwhiri - Welcome

This year we will be welcoming our new families and students with a small Pōwhiri ceremony on Friday 7th of February at 2.15pm followed by a light afternoon tea. We would love as many families to be able to join us to help make our new families feel welcome.

We will also be announcing our student leadership team for 2025 and Head students at this assembly .

Stationary

Teaching the new curriculum and timetable this year requires some additional resources and books. We work hard on getting stationary costs down as low as possible and we get an additional discount on books in order to ensure the cheapest prices. All stationary packs have everything your child will need for the year and must be purchased through the office.

Koru $52 per pack

Pitau $48 per pack

Pakari $44 per pack

You can pay this online - use your child's name, class, stationary as reference

Pay: Ridgeview, ASB: 12 3059 0350076 00

Online payments preferred.

If you are having difficulties paying for stationary by the beginning of term, please let us know and we can arrange a payment plan for you.

Also please email the office if you need an invoice for stationary. We would like all our students to have stationary for Monday 3rd of February so that teachers can start lessons as quickly as possible.

Partnership with Oke

This year we are lucky to be partnering with Oke a charity that works with schools to help develop their gardens. Students learning and planning in technology this term will come to life in term two through the support of Oke and our community. Oke will organise the funding and resources for us and we will host a working bee where we will develop all our gardens. More details about when the working bee will be will come out as soon as we have a confirmed date.

Sustainability Programme in 2025

In 2025 we are introducing a sustainability program for students to start learning more about the concept of Kaitiakitanga in practice. Each class has a Sustainability topic to cover for the term and over the year will cover 4 different topics. These include the introduction to looking after animals with our chickens program. We will have hatchlings this term and learn about the life cycle of chickens, how to look after them and hopefully by term 3 they will become egg laying and we will have eggs that students can learn about.

Our other topics for this year include: Rubbish and compost systems, Kai gardens, Pataka kai (a pataka is a storage system for food, also known as a community food bank). If you have any experience in these topics and would like to support the classes please email the office to let us know, we would love your input.

Houses

This year we will also have houses running across the school and a range of house events to encourage students to participate. We have three houses this year

Ngarara - the lizard house which is green

Manu - the bird house which is blue

Whetu - the star which is yellow

Our house names come from our current school logo.

For house events students can dress up in their house colours to support their houses. In term one we have house sports on Thursday afternoons and we will also have some competitions at our swimming carnival this year.

Attendance for 2025

All attendance is monitored in 2025 daily by the Ministry of Education. We are required to explain all absences.

Justified absences include: Sick, attending a sports events to present a team at a competitive level, Bereavement leave & Tangihanga leave. Unjustified absences are considered truant by the ministry of education. New guidelines around attendance have an expectation that students have an attendance rate of 90% regular attendance, these is equivalent of 4 days of a term. Our process for attendance this term will be - if your child is away and we haven't heard you will receive a text and phone call from the office. If we hear nothing the classroom teacher will call, email or text (based on preferred way of contact). If we hear nothing after 3 days the Principal will do a house visit. Attendance to school is a legal requirement in New Zealand so please work with us to ensure that your child is at school regularly and inform us when this is an issue.

Staffing for 2025

In Koru - Lauren Hawkins

Lauren is considered a beginning teacher as she has just completed her Bachelor of Education in New Zealand, but has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Lauren has a passion for seeing others succeed and she extends this to her colleagues and the community so this year she will also be in charge of Wellbeing across the school for our teachers, students and community.

In Pitau - Claire Gibbons

Claire is a highly experience classroom teacher but this year she has some exciting news and will be adding to her own family so she will be taking Maternity leave at the end of term 1. We will be advertising for a new teacher to join us in term 2 for a fixed term bases till the end of the year to cover Claires class while she is on leave. We are extremely excited to be having a new Ridgeview Baby on the way, but we are also sad to see Lauren leave us temporarily.

In Pakari - Katrina Hart will continue to work with our senior students and has a lot of experience growing students and helping students find passion in learning.

Principal - Cassey Prentice

This is my first full year as Principal at Ridgeview and with 17 years teaching experience I am extremely excited to work along side you all.

Support Staff: We are very lucky to be able to fund four teacher aides to work with our classes and support students to meet their goals. We have Julie who has a lot of experience running intervention programs for students who need an extra push. Julie is not attached to a classroom and works across the school where she is needed. Sandy Cook has a lot of knowledge and experience working with neurodiverse students and supports in Koru from 9am - 1pm. Carine Rombouts is currently studying and learning to be a teacher aide and is working in Pitau this year. Lucy Brandly works predominately in Pakari and but has a flexible afternoon to work alongside any students that might need additional support or encouragement. We have extremely high expectations of all our students for 2025, but with a wealth of knowledge and experience will offer them all the support they need.

Ridgeview School Newsletter

Respect, Excellence, Positive Relationships

Issue 1 · 24 Jan 2025

In this issue