Fruitvale School

Academic:
We reserve our mornings for Literacy and numeracy. Our teachers are professionally trained to meet the learning needs of the variety of children in front of them. We are a learning community and the teaching and support staff take very seriously the education of your child. We inquire into what we are doing and what we can do better constantly. We are evidence driven and look to make a difference across the curriculum. All teachers are numeracy trained and work together to build classrooms that incorporate experiential techniques designed to encourage talking and so conceptual growth. Oral language is the basis of learning in reading and writing. Because many of our learners are speakers of other languages we strive to ensure they have excellent spoken English models. Children achieve well here.

Assessment:
We incorporate the latest thinking around assessment both of students but also of teachers. We use e- AsTTle for senior assessment in reading. We use digital wedge graphs to track junior progress(Y0-3) in reading every five weeks. We moderate writing across the school each term to ensure consistency and to ensure all teachers understand the progression of writing from juniors to seniors. We use GLOSS and ICANZ to assess Numeracy. We incorporate rubrics into the assessment of our Inquiry work to make sense of the progress the children are making in integrated studies.

Sports:
We are very active in the local inter-school cluster and attempt to have the kids entered into all sporting fixtures. Because we are smaller in numbers this means your child gets lots of opportunities to participate and excel. We often are in the leading three schools in these competitions: Rugby, soccer, netball, touch, tag, gymnastics, swimming, athletics, cross-country. We have a good size pool(120,000L) that we are very proud of and that is used constantly over T1 and T4 and is available for community use over the summer break. We teach swimming skills and water confidence as appropriate. Sporting prowess takes time and practice. Because we are committed to academic achievement students practice and are coached in their lunchtimes and after school.

Cultural:
We want children to be able to express and be familiar with the dance and song of many cultures. We have Indian, Maori kapahaka, and Pasifika cultural performance groups. We have a Hip hop and have had in the past and hope to have again a Mandarin Chinese performance group to supplement the Mandarin Language classes your child can be part of. The children learn the folk dances of the European cultures as part of school PE lessons. Every two years we hold a whole school dramatic performance. At the end of every term we construct a Celebration of Learning that the whole community is invited to. This Celebration is a creative way of pulling all the different threads of our Inquiries together. Every alternate year we have a Camp for the senior students and on the other years a Marae visit and overnight stay. Because we are committed to academic achievement students practice and are coached in their lunchtimes and after school.

Tuakana / Teina:
We believe in living out our values: The school is organised physically in tuakana / teina pairs. An older class and its teacher is paired with a younger classroom and its teacher. These two classes will often interact across the school day to reinforce or build confidence, cooperation and competence and nuture the relationships of the older children with their younger peers. We have the occasional bully like all schools but this is dealt with quickly in our restorative justice style and our playgrounds generally are very safe.

ICT:
It’s not the tools but the way they are used that counts. We are ICT rich at Fruitvale. We are in the lucky position of having a benefactor that allows us to run and maintain excellent systems and resources. We have been Snupped for Fibre optic cable and we are a wireless environment. We have a suite of 30 computers and two laptop cows. We have two or three computers in each room and are Interactive white-boarded across the school. We have a TV station and a web design group. Our Web presence is highly interactive and once your child is in the school will become a real resource for them here and at home. We have major plans for the further integration of ICT and learning. We are leaders in the use of the Interactive whiteboards and where it is useful integrate the use of computers with learning.