About Sherwood School

Sherwood School is a relatively young school that is building on traditions that were established when the school first opened in 1963.

Sherwood School is located in the beautiful Central Hawke’s Bay. The school boasts some of the most exquisite views of the Ruahine Ranges and the surrounding country side

The School is a co-educational, full primary, decile 8 school with a make up of  approx 70% New Zealand European and 30% Maori students.

Sherwood Students are successful students who are focused on being the centre of their learning and fully understanding assessment for learning.

We continue to be proud of the successes of our students in academic, social, sporting, and cultural endeavours. They exude a combination of natural talent and hard work while being praised and supported by the school, parents and community.

Sherwood students and staff have achieved local, regional and national success and have a strong reputation. We have strong Maori achievement and our students are proud of our Reo and Tikanga.

The school has a hard working Board of Trustees and a group of committed parents of Friends of Sherwood School who work hard behind the scenes and who add to the cheerfulness and success of Sherwood.

Sherwood students “exceeded expectations in a rural environment” – our school mission

Room 1

Room 2

Sherwood Playgroup

Sherwood Bus

FOSS stands for ‘Friends of Sherwood School’ and is the parent and community fundraising committee for our school.

The funds we raise give all Sherwood School children the opportunity to benefit from resources and opportunities they would not otherwise have had.

The main fundraising activities FOSS is involved in are catering for our annual Sherwood School Trail Bike Ride in February and running a food stall when we host the Go Kidz Triathlon in March.

We have also catered for weddings, various groups visiting the community and meetings held locally. Our chocolate brownie and lamb burgers with homemade aioli are world famous in Central Hawkes Bay!

If you are a new family to Sherwood School or new to the district, do come and say hi. We would love to have your support.

School Governance

All of New Zealand’s state and state-integrated schools have a board of trustees. The Sherwood board of trustees is the Crown entity responsible for the governance and the control of the management of Sherwood school.

The board is the employer of all staff in the school, is responsible for setting the school’s strategic direction in consultation with parents, staff and students, and ensuring that its school provides a safe environment and quality education for all its students.

Boards are also responsible for overseeing the management of personnel, curriculum, property, finance and administration.

Below are documents that aid our board in the running of Sherwood School.

Formative Assessment

What is Formative Assessment?

There are four purposes to formative assessment:

•  to provide feedback for teachers to modify subsequent learning activities and experiences
•  to identify and remediate group or individual deficiencies
•  to move focus away from achieving grades and onto learning processes, in order to increase self efficacy and reduce the negative impact of extrinsic motivation
•  to improve students’ metacognitive awareness of how they learn.

Why Formative Assessment?

Many reviews have indicated significant learning gains where formative assessment is used. Marzano states:

“Recall the finding from Black and Wiliam’s (1998) synthesis of more than 250 studies that formative assessments, as opposed to summative ones, produce the more powerful effect on student learning. In his review of the research, Terrance Crooks (1988) reports that effects sizes for summative assessments are consistently lower than effect sizes for formative assessments. In short, it is formative assessment that has a strong research base supporting its impact on learning.” (Marzano, 2006, p. 9)

Researchers have concluded that standards-based assessments are an effective way to “prescribe instruction and to ensure that no child is left behind” (Marzano, 2006 p. 13)

What are the benefits of Formative Assessment?

•  Students are more motivated to learn.
•  Students take responsibility for their own learning.
•  Students can become users of assessment alongside the teacher.
•  Students learn valuable lifelong skills such as self-evaluation, self-assessment, and goal setting.

What does Formative Assessment look like at Sherwood School?

The key competencies underpin everything that happens in teaching and learning.

They have implications for all aspects of planning and teaching, including activities, resources, and language used; content, topics or focus for learning; the role that both students and teachers take in the learning process; and the culture of the classroom and school.

Many things that teachers and schools do already work well for the key competencies. The emphasis on key competencies in the NZC does, however, give educators an opportunity to reconsider the things they typically do in their practice.

Discovery Learning allows Junior students to engage in self inquiry and have a specific focus on the competencies.

Student feedback is vital and below is what our junior students think.

Why do you do discovery learning?

“Well we do it to try things we have never done before” Rosie Yr 2

What is discovery Learning?

“Its when we make and work things out.” Rata Yr 2

What is the focus of discovery learning?

“It is so that we learn to work with other people and by ourselves, learn new things, give people compliments like ‘good work’, learn to share, have fun and think.” Drew Yr 3

Our aim: to foster a generation of people who instinctively think and act sustainably.

Sustainability has many different interpretations.

To us it means living in a country where people work with positive energy to connect with each other, their cultural identity and their land, to create a healthier, peaceful, more equitable society.

It means the regeneration of resilient, connected communities in which people care for each other and the environment.

It means valuing indigenous knowledge and celebrating diversity so that everyone thrives.

We believe this can be achieved if we learn together in empowering and action oriented ways.

Enviroschools is a kaupapa

The Māori word kaupapa encompasses words in English such as foundation, principles, ideology, vision, approach, and philosophy.

The Enviroschools kaupapa is creating a healthy, peaceful and sustainable world through facilitating action-learning; where inter-generations of people work with and learn from nature. It weaves in Māori perspectives, combining traditional wisdoms with new understandings. Importantly, our kaupapa reminds us to be in connection: to love, care for and respect ourselves, each other and our planet.

Enviroschools is a programme

The Enviroschools programme supports children and young people to plan, design and implement sustainability actions that are important to them and their communities.

The programme provides pathways from early childhood through primary, intermediate and secondary school and beyond. Through our collaborative approach of building strong relationships and sharing information, we are growing a collective puna mātauranga or pool of knowledge.

Enviroschools is supported by a national team, in partnership with around 100 national and regional partners, including the majority of New Zealand’s councils. Facilitators from these partner organisations work with a suite of resources to progress the sustainability journey.

More information about enviroschools is available at http://www.enviroschools.org.nz/