Weekend Netball Images

Telford Rural Polytechnic Visit Images

Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Music Composition

Congratulations to Patrick Wilkes on achieving a highly recommended in the nationwide competition for the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Music Composition. Patrick had to write an original piece that could be accompanying music for one of Shakespeare's plays. The presentation will be at the finale of the Sheilah Winn Festival which is held each year in Wellington during Labour Weekend.

NZ Airforce

Congratulations to Logan Simpson who has been selected to have a weeks experience with the New Zealand Airforce. Only forty students are chosen nationwide to have this hands on experience for students who are interested in being officers with the Air Force during the July holidays.

Sporting Teams Code of Responsibilities

You and Your Coach

The coaching role is a very important one and mutual co-operation to help you improve your game and reach your potential will assist the coach in reaching theirs.
An effective Coach – Player relationship is very satisfying.

Coaching takes a lot of time and effort and is mostly done in a voluntary role. People coach because they like you and the sport they are coaching. Coaches like to see players able to participate and enjoy their sport. The coaching role is a skilled job and involves many responsibilities.

Coach Responsibilities Include:

• Understanding players, their goals and aspirations.
• Taking opportunities to up-skill themselves.
• Teaching skills and tactics.
• Moulding a team into a motivated and co-operative group.
• Giving praise and effective feedback.
• Making training and playing enjoyable.
• Providing opportunities for players to reach their potential.

How Can You Assist Your Coach:

• Involve yourself wholeheartedly in trainings and games.
• Follow team protocols e.g. punctuality, dress code, training and game day routines.
• Assist in setting up and packing away of equipment.
• Listen carefully and follow directions quickly and quietly so training is efficient and beneficial to everyone concerned.
• Focus in and do not be distracted.
• Listen to your coaches advice and put it into practice.
• Always inform your coach if you are unable to attend trainings or games.
• Communicate with your coach.
• If you do not understand or are unhappy with some aspects of your game or trainings, talk to your coach about it.
• Provide your coach with thoughtful feedback.
• Be tolerant – If your coach makes the odd mistake or is sometimes tired and irritated remember it is a voluntary job often done in their spare time.
• Coaches, like players, are only human.
• Appreciate what your coaches are doing for you. A “thank you” goes a long way.

How you relate to your coach will determine how quickly you learn the skills and tactics and how much you enjoy playing your sport.

Mrs Broughton

KidsLit Quiz

Louis Earl, Sarah MacManus, Andrew Miles and Meg Kelly will be representing Verdon College on 20 June in the KidsLit Quiz in Wellington. They are busy practicing and revising and we wish them well for the competition.

Senior Drama Winners

The Verdon College team competed in the annual Bishop's Shield last weekend, winning the senior drama. Thank you to the many staff who have helped with the preparation of the students and the supporters who attended the events. Your help was really appreciated by the students competing in such a challenging event.

Bishop's Shield 2010 Images

The Real Art Roadshow

This week the Verdon Community have had the opportunity to view a cross section of stunning New Zealand artwork. The collection is travelling to schools all around the country in an attempt to inspire students by bringing quality examples of contemporary art directly into schools.

Catherine House Feast Day Images

Junior Cross Country Images

Results of the Junior Cross Country held this week are as follows:

11 Year Boys

1st - Tim O'Neill

2nd - Joshua Pagan

3rd - Oliver Crooks

11 Year Girls

1st - Laura Tolmacheva

2nd - Sophie Reitsma-Smith

12 Year Boys

1st - Liam Cullen

2nd - Thomas Glew

3rd - Daniel Hogan

12 Year Girls

1st - Amber McKelvie

2nd - Kate Kissell

3rd - Meg Kissell

13 Year Boys

1st - Lachlan O'Driscoll

2nd - Conor O'Neill

3rd - Terry Thurlow

13 Year Girls

1st - Hannah McLean

2nd - Larissa Tyler

3rd - Tina Wright

The Incubator Programme

Year 12 and 13 students have experienced their second classroom session of ‘Incubator’ for the year. Students have heard from a variety of guest speakers in the health careers. These have included mental health, emergency nurses, dentistry, and pharmacy.
The Incubator Programme (which was developed by Hawkes Bay DHB in 2007) is a mentoring programme for year 12 and 13 students. The initiative incorporates health professionals sharing their hand knowledge and experiences with students and sharing stories by way of conversation.
SDHB Chief Operating Officer Lexie O’Shea said the programme was an innovative and important initiative to encourage more students into the health sector and help ease future work force storages.
The students’ next class is Tuesday 1st June where students will visit Southland Hospital and experience hands on in a variety of departments.

New Library Resources

The Verdon College Librarian, Mrs Jenny Taylor, had just finished adding a number of very useful texts to the shelves. The new resources include:

• 2010 World Book Encyclopedia.
• World Book Discovery encyclopedia which is useful and accessible for Year's 7 and 8.
• World Book library of natural disasters.
• Celebrations & Rituals around the world.
• Living Green.

A great selection of high interest books have gone onto the shelves. In total over 350 Fiction and Non-Fiction books have been added to the collection.

Mrs Taylor invites students to make some time to browse through the new books. There is something to capture most tastes and if you have a special request she will work hard to get a copy for you.

Trainee Priest Visits Verdon

Verdon College welcomed Tran Tuan at this weeks assembly. Tran is a trainee priest who heralds from Vietnam and has been training in Sydney. He came to New Zealand at the invitation of Bishop Colin to finish his training and has about 18 months to completion. Fr Martin has taken Tran to a number of sporting fixtures as an introduction to Southland. We look forward to seeing Tran at the College supporting Fr Martin.

Catholic Schools Day

May 19 was National Catholic Schools Day. To acknowledge and celebrate the occasion, a special assembly was held. Br Denis Turner, former principal of the College, was the guest speaker. We thank him for his wise and encouraging words. As a relatively young College, we recognise the importance of establishing and maintaining links with our founding orders. Our special character's charisms reflect the hard work and commitment by the religious orders to education in the Catholic tradition at Verdon College.

Preparing for Bishop's Shield

This weekend the annual Bishop's Shield competition between the four secondary Colleges in the Dunedin Diocese will be held in Gore. The Verdon senior drama group took the opportunity to perform their presentation at assembly this week. We wish the participants all the very best for the for this celebration of special character.

A Team on the Improve

The Verdon College Under 15 Rugby team proudly pose for a team photo after a 64 - 7 win over Aurora College on Saturday. Coach, Mr Ben Winders, was pleased with the effort the lads had made during training and noted that all the hard work was showing results. This weekend the team play St Peter's College at Verdon College at 1.15 - Mr Winder invites everyone to come along and support the team.

Board of Trustees Election Results

Declaration of Parent and Staff Election Results

Parent representatives votes:

Mrs Bernadette Gourley 127
Mr Peter Heffernan 63
Mr Fergus More 138
Mr John Prendergast 154
Mr Richard Tattersfield 74
Mr Colin Telfer 117
Mr Bryan Townley 132

I hereby declare the following elected:

Mrs Bernadette Gourley
Mr Fergus More
Mr John Prendergast
Mr Colin Telfer
Mr Bryan Townley

Staff Election Results

At the close of nominations, as there was only one valid nomination received.

I hereby declare Mr Wes Melvin elected.


Karyn Dykes
Returning Officer

Silver Fern Acknowledged

Verdon College is proud to have Wendy Frew's silver fern netball top framed for display. Wendy is an ex-student of the College and a superb role model. Photographing the top has been difficult because of the glare, however the signatures of the silver ferns are just visible.

Biography: Wendy Frew (née Telfer; born 15 October 1984 in Invercargill, New Zealand) is a New Zealand netball player. Wendy was a previous member of the champion Southern Sting in the National Bank Cup from 2002 until 2007. With the start of the ANZ Championship in 2008, she remained in Southland playing for the new Southern Steel franchise. She also made her debut for the Silver Ferns that year, against Australia. Wendy is also a past member of the New Zealand White Sox softball squad. She married on New Years Eve 2009 and changed to her married name.

Catherine Assembly

The Liturgy theme for assembly this week focused on St Catherine of Siena, celebrating her feast day and challenging students to examine how they live their own lives as members of the Verdon Family. Following on from his lead role in the College musical, Ryan Jones gave a well received report about his involvement with the Rotary Technology and Science Forum earlier this year.

Strategic Developments and Annual Plan

Principal’s Progress Report

Ruru Satellite at Verdon

After a year having passed since the consultation process, the Catholic Education Office has received no information from the Ministry of Education about the project’s current status.

Mentoring Program

The staff are completing the second cycle of senior student academic mentor interviews. Fortnightly report data is distributed to staff about the students they are mentoring. We are currently waiting on software developments to progress before committing to automate the distribution of this data to parents. If parents are concerned at any stage during the year, they can access this information by contacting the year level dean.

Numeracy Project
Mrs Jacques is working with the mathematics staff to bring the strategies into the year 7 to 10 classrooms. This follows on from her training time in Auckland during term 1.

Literacy Project
Mrs Crawford is working with groups of staff to continue the development of learning strategies for literacy.

National Standards
Mr Miles, Mrs O’Neill and Mr Olsen attended a workshop, facilitated by University of Otago presenters, focusing on the details of assessing and reporting on the national curriculum. The three way conference – staff / student / caregiver interviews – were a success. Feedback from our on line survey was positive. The suggestion was made that a booking sheet be placed online. This will be investigated.

Blazer Badges
The sports and cultural leadership badges have been presented at assemblies in term one and early term two. This is the first year that blazer badges of this type have been presented systematically. It is an ongoing process during the year and will be reviewed for next year.

Verdon Haka
Work is progressing on development of a Verdon College Haka. The haka is based on the sentiments expressed in the school song –The Verdon Anthem. Dean Whaanga is leading this project. It is planned that the school will learn the haka and have an inter-house competition at the end of term. It will be a pleasure to have the whole school being able to support our sporting and cultural teams with a passionate and well delivered haka.

Annual Plan
At the last Board of Trustees meeting the draft Annual Plan was accepted. Since then deans and senior management have been working to develop an action plan for the 2010 Target that identifies an at risk group of year 11 and 12 males. The first step in the process has been to identify the at risk students through fortnightly reports and for the deans to agree on a management plan. The deputy principal is overseeing this step of the process.

Strategy
To identify a group of twenty students who are in years 11 and 12 and are at risk. To develop an active mentorship programme for this group with the aim of improving critical indicators such as attendance, engagement and achievement.
Target
Improve the attendance rate, academic and behavioural fortnightly report grades and NCEA achievement so that 2010 results significantly exceed the 2009 achievement profile data for this cohort. This is a difficult target to measure and will require qualitative /anecdotal as well quantitative evidence. The overall target is to improve the educational outcomes for these students.
Following on from the identification of students at risk, we will develop individual education plans (IEPs) for each of the students and have the progress reviewed by the pastoral committee.

Staff Vacancy
At the end of term two Mrs Whakamoe, our teacher of Maori Language, will be retiring. We thank her for her three years of service to the College. As a result of this staff change there is a vacancy for a half time teacher of Maori at the College advertised in the Education Gazette. Any enquiries should be directed to the College office.

Preparing for Winter

Mr Sims and Mr Kidd have been hard at work relining the roof of the technology block. With winter approaching fast, this is a temporary measure to make sure the building is sealed against the weather. Catholic Property Services have approved the re-roofing of this area in this year's works budget and we look forward to this being completed as soon as tradespeople are available.

Seussical Images

Highlanders Secondary Competition

Winter sports competitions have started in earnest. This Saturday the 1st XV played Southland Boys' High School in the Highlanders competition at Verdon. If you have photographs of student sporting activities, please email them to: admin@verdoncollege.school.nz. We are keen to showcase a range of sports.