What We Offer
Gladstone School strives to maintain a friendly, community-minded culture where everyone (children, parents and our wider community) feels welcome and excited to be a part of our school team.
E TANGATA (OUR PEOPLE): NURTURED, EMPOWERED, INCLUSIVE
Our staff support students to achieve a high standard both in and out of class by being positively supported, inspired, challenged and nurtured. We encourage you to walk around our school, through the classrooms and get involved in our daily school life. You will soon understand why we are an outstanding school…and why you should be a part of it!
We are incredibly fortunate to have an amazing team of teachers whose talents and strengths vary in order to provide a wide range of learning experiences for our children. We take pride in building strong partnerships and relationships with our children and their families. Our staff work hard to ensure they are highly effective teachers that help to make our classroom programmes and wider school activities exciting, engaging, meaningful and powerful; so all our children can succeed. They are constantly looking at new research, programmes, innovations and ideas to provide the very best.
Our goal is to always make a difference in all our children’s lives; enabling them to become confident, well rounded and happy people that can achieve their greatest potential!
We are proud of our low teacher: student ratio. In Kourarau (Years 1-3) we have a 1:20 ratio and in Ruamahanga (Years 4-6) & Ōnoke (Years 7-8) a 1:23 ratio. As well as this, both our FoGS Committee and the BoT are committed to funding teacher aide support in each syndicate.
WHĀNAU GROUPS
We have 4 multi-level whānau groups at Gladstone School. Each child is placed with their siblings and where possible, first cousins into a whānau group when they start at Gladstone School. Students then remain in these groups until the end of their time at the school. Staff are also allocated to a whānau group and the Year 8’s are the leaders of the groups.
Each of the 4 whānau groups has been named after a local school that closed and combined with Gladstone at some point in our school’s history. These 4 schools are Te Kopi; Te Wharau; Maungaraki & Longbush. The whānau groups have a colour associated with each and on whānau group days we encourage students to come in whānau group theme colours.
Te Kopi – Yellow; Te Wharau – Red; Maungaraki – Blue; Longbush – Green.
Here at Gladstone School children have a multitude of opportunities within The Arts, Enviroschool, EOTC, E-Learning and Sports programmes.
- Within The Arts, our children have opportunities to participate in choir, Kapa Haka, visual arts programmes, productions, to learn different languages..etc.
- Within our Enviroschool programme, children learn about how they can make a positive impact on and for their environment. This is achieved in a variety of ways through our classroom learning programmes and with children being involved in our environmental groups and action projects within our school and the wider community.
- EOTC (Education Outside the Classroom). We have a multitude of camps for different age groups that create lifetime memories. We are constantly planning opportunities for our children to get involved in our beautiful outdoors throughout the whole year. This may involve traditional Pet day & sports events, caving, rafting, hiking, Beach Education, planting days, class trips etc…
- Sports Programmes are a regular feature of our curriculum. We have outside facilitators working with all students each term. Recent examples include the Kiwi Hoops Basketball programme; Run, Jump, Throw athletics with Mark the Shark; the Small Sticks Hockey programme.
- At Gladstone School, we have a strong belief that E-Learning is an important factor in enhancing children’s learning. We focus on e-tools that create new learning, purposeful engagement and opportunities for our children to demonstrate their learning in new ways.
In Kourarau, students have access to a class set of iPads. In both Ruamahanga and Ōnoke, students are required to bring their own Chromebooks to school.
Device use is supported by our highly skilled staff in order to maximise learning and important life skills. We believe that e-learning helps teachers and children to extend and share their learning with their families and wider global community eg: Using a wide range of purposeful apps, sharing our learning on our Seesaw with family, reading e-books, researching work, accessing and learning from experts from anywhere in the world…etc.
We also know that e-learning can promote and help teach children valuable life skills of critical thinking, creativity, innovation and collaboration…just to name a few!
If you want to know more or want to enrol…all you need to do is contact us.
You are welcome to join our learning team and Gladstone School Family!
Come and experience the powerful and positive learning atmosphere that our school has to offer for yourself.
There is always something exciting to see and be a part of!
