Strathmore Community School
Tahi Tatou Tupu — Together We Learn
Our Day
Find out here about what our staff and students do on a typical school day.
Children in Room 1 at work, following a visit to the zoo
(photo from July 1968)
Daily timetable
The morning bell rings for the start of the day at 9am, and ends the day at 3pm. (See note below.)
Our morning break is from 11 to 11:20am.
Lunch break and physical activities are from 12:30 to 1:15pm.
Duty staff are often involved with the physical activities, and at times use breaks to coach team sports.
Pick-up and drop-off times
It is school policy that we supervise students who arrive at school from 8.30am onward. If your child arrives earlier than this, it is your responsibility to ensure they are supervised appropriately until 8.30.
Similarly, it is requested that children are collected from school by 3.15pm
Daily curriculum
Each day is scheduled to ensure we cover a range of specific learning and activity areas, including:
- Literacy is the focus for the first part of the morning.
- Numeracy occupies us for the remainder of the morning.
- Students have a physical education/activity break at the end of lunch, as weather allows.
- Enquiry learning is generally covered during the afternoon.
Days of the week
- Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, students have access to a variety of sports and physical activity equipment.
- Tuesdays and Thursdays are ‘wheels days' — students can ride the school's bikes around the grounds during breaks, or can bring their own wheels (scooters, skates, etc.).
- Thursday afternoon is library time, when the school library is open. This is also our time for buddy reading, and health promotion.
- Friday is Discovery Day, when we explore beyond literacy and numeracy, and focus on providing a balanced, rounded curriculum.
Parents and other volunteers work with a rotation of groups to introduce the children to new skills, such as music, art, technology, cooking, gardening, handcrafts, and so on, as well as activities that supplement our literacy and numeracy learning.
Note: Anyone interested in providing Discovery sessions is very welcome to contact us. - In Terms 2 and 4, swimming lessons take place on Fridays.
Classes take turns visiting Miramar library twice each term. Each class also has the opportunity to use the school library once a week. We regularly receive support from the Duffy 'Books In Homes' programme, too.
Clubs and activities
We try to choose school activities that focus on caring for ourselves, for our environment and community, and learning skills that develop our ability to co-operate and be self-reliant. Our staff and students are expected to recycle.
Each Friday, Discovery teams work on the kitchen garden at the back of the school. Students are encouraged to eat or take home some of the produce as it grows. We have a compost heap and are establishing a worm farm for the garden, which also help us manage our school waste. (See Our Facilities for some more details on our garden.)
During colder terms (2 and 3), students can also purchase cups of hot soup on buy-your-lunch Fridays to help with fundraising. The soup is made by students and staff, from mainly the produce of our own garden plus any donations of vegetables from students' families. The proceeds are fundraising, used for school projects.
Until our school pool returns to normal operation, our students are receiving swimming lessons at Kilbirnie Regional Aquatic Centre during one or two terms per year. Our next set of lessons are booked for Term 4 of 2010. (Also see Community Swim School Project.)
Our students are working on putting together a ream for the Motu Kairangi Eastern Suburbs Netball league. We're very proud of our students for their initiative and go-for-it attitude!