Sunday 12 February 2012

From Garden to Plate! Mmmmm…!


The year has just only got underway, and children are embarking on their gardening programme again but there is still much to be harvested from last year’s plantings. What a delight it was to have Ansh and Milan visit from B1. They brought me a very delicious salad of organic vegetables from their stunning garden. Fresh crispy lettuce, baby gourmet carrots and spring onions! Thank you B1. I wonder what will be in your planting plan this year? The class gardens are one opportunity for teaching our children about living sustainably and promoting healthy eating. Check out B Block’s garden. 



Excellence!


Although this is just one of the EHS Values, it will be the key value for the year that unlocks for us that feeling of PRIDE when we have worked to be the best that we can be! We might not all be winners of World Cups, but we feel mighty good when we aspire to and achieve excellence! This was my first message at our school assembly on the first day of school. As I have visited each class, it is the challenge I have put to all of them, and I look forward to them sharing their ‘excellence’ with me on my future visits.


Welcome to "It's All About Learning'


Welcome to my blog. The purpose of this blog is to keep you informed of the Eastern Hutt School Learning Journey…and it is an exciting one! Our eLearning Vision is:

To engage and empower all eLearners (teachers, students and parents), preparing them to be digitally literate, innovative and confident users of digital communication and creative tools, and active members of the global eCommunity!

As recently appointed Principal, it is an absolute privilege to be leading our school community; children, teachers and parents as we embark on our new strategic direction. We want to fully utilise the power of the technology available to us, to enhance the teaching and learning opportunities for our children. Our children live, work and play with technology and participate in online environments daily, for them this is ‘just the way it is’. We need to use the technology to engage, motivate and empower our learners as they learn to create, collaborate, communicate and connect with other learners whether that be within our own EHS community or globally as in G4’s connection with schools in England and Scotland – read their blog.

We began the year with professional development as teachers became familiar with some newly acquired technology and the online blog community. For some, this was easy, for others, a ‘techy buddy’ was quickly identified! It was a day where as adult learners, we were creating, collaborating, communicating and connecting with others.




This will already have been the case for your children and I hope you are appreciating the sharing and celebrating of their learning on their class blogs as they establish their Class Learning Community for 2012. This will be one environment for teaching and guiding our children about ‘digital citizenship’ and the responsibility that is part of this.

We will be exploring as many opportunities as possible to use technology and media to drive our achievement targets in writing and to generally guide our professional teaching inquiry: How can we engage, motivate and provide the learning environment that develops highly effective communicators?

I hope you are excited by and enjoy the opportunities for learning ahead of us. Check out your child’s class blog and see what they have been up to!