March 2011

The New Year

The new school year is slipping by so quickly; we are already past the half way stage of term one and the teachers in the Primary section of the school are starting to think about report writing. The Grade 3 children have been busy doing some formal assessments and Grade 2 and 1 are just about to follow their example. The classrooms are looking bright and cheerful with children’s work and folders and books are getting full with stories, poems, topic work and maths.

We now have 130 children on role; each class is completely full and we have a long waiting list for places.

Children in the Toddler Class developing their fine motor skills.

Grade 1 children learning about their growing bodies.

House Point Teams

This term we have introduced a ‘House Point’ system into the Primary school; each child and member of staff is in a team with a name and colour. We chose key South African Leaders for our house names and the teams are as follows:

Nelson Mandela House – Red.

Desmond Tutu House – Blue.

Chris Hani House – Yellow.

Steve Biko House – Green.

The idea behind the house system was to develop our behaviour policy and encourage positive behaviour and team work and leadership skills amongst the children. We have a team trophy which is awarded each week in our celebration assembly and appropriate coloured ribbons are attached to display the winning team’s colours.

The system is working well, the children wait in eager anticipation for the team scores each week and the celebration when the winning team is awarded the trophy is a joy to experience.

SuperCamp

Our Grade 4 children have been offered the opportunity to go on a five day camp run by Scripture Union later this month, they will spend their week doing fun physical activities and participating in life skills sessions with Camp Counsellors. They are so excited about it and we can’t wait to hear their adventures and experiences.

Staff Development

We ended last year with a time away as a staff in Pringle Bay; we set plans in place for the new school year and worked through some changes in age groups and teaching teams.

Gary Welsh came and presented us with two excellent sessions on stress awareness and management and we have continued to look at this in our staff meetings this term. Each teacher has been able to identify areas in which stress was becoming unmanageable and has been able to apply strategies to deal with this.

Mama Florence is continuing with her Level 4 child development course at Boland College and each member of staff has identified targets for their professional development this year.

Celebrating our new outlook on stress in Pringle Bay.

Volunteers

We continue to benefit from a steady stream of willing and very able volunteers; the Glass family are with us on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday each week each working with different age groups and we have two part time volunteers from the community who are keen to be involved with Early Years education.

We are preparing to say goodbye to our current Work Travel SA volunteer on the 7th March; Sabrina has been with us for eight weeks and has been a model of patience and kindness in her work with the children. We are looking forward to a new team arriving later this month.

Sabrina working in the Nursery Class with Mama Vuvu.

The next few months are going to see some long term changes at the school and we are trusting God for provision of a new teacher and funds to repair and refurbish our building.

Please pray for us that we will grab God given opportunities to grow and develop our children in every possible way.

Deborah Gregory.

Emyezweni Principal.