No images? Click here 13 August 2021Pinehurst School NewsletterOpening Words from the Executive Principal...Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 I spent Monday morning and Wednesday evening in Parnell this week (that’s not a sentence I ever expected to write). On Monday, I watched the Pinehurst Orchestra perform in Holy Trinity Cathedral, 51 students from Years 5 to 13, conducted by Mrs Naumovska, playing a challenging repertoire quite superbly. Yu Zhang Wu, in Year 11, was the soloist for the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 and delivered a moving performance that nearly had me in tears. On Wednesday, the Jazz Band, conducted by Ben Fernandez, played at St. Mary’s Church and were brilliant. I know I shouldn’t single out individuals, but I would like to mention Daniel Cradwick, in Year 13, who wrote and arranged “The Crab”, played as part of the repertoire, and Brianna Tirado, whose beautiful vocals added another layer to the Band’s performances. Many thanks to everyone involved in the Orchestra and Jazz Band: the twin highlights of my week! Still on music: I’m very grateful to those parents who have contributed to the purchase of the Grand Piano as part of our Pinehurst Theatre project, as well as to those who have purchased seats and a space on the Donor Wall. The formal launch of the project is next Thursday, so I look forward to seeing some of you there. Please pop into our Reception at any stage if you’d like to see a model of the building and a visual fly-through. I was very happy to see that the IGCSE Options Evening on Monday evening was so well-attended: I hope the evening was useful to all those who came. This coming Monday, we have the AS and A Level Options Evening, intended for current Year 11 students and their parents. We’re currently putting the final pieces in place for next year’s curriculum, and you may remember that I talked about extension quite a bit last term and on developing the options available for this part of our work. We’ve done quite a bit of work on this over the past few weeks, and I will be in touch again about a few developments before the end of term. On Monday, I attended a Board meeting for the ACSNZ (Cambridge Schools Association). It was a useful opportunity to talk about contingency plans should there be a further outbreak of Covid-19 in New Zealand. I’m not going to go into detail about these, but I did want to reassure you that we have all our plans in place, and that both the school and Cambridge are ready should there be any problems in Term 4. We’re all hoping that this won’t happen, of course, but it’s important to be prepared. And that’s a good reminder that I can book my vaccine appointment from today! I shall get onto that before the day is over. Just a few words to finish about our students in school this week. I’ve had the chance to get out and about the school grounds a little more this week, and it’s been wonderful to see how focused the students are, and how much energy they’re putting into everything. The Year 3 and 4s are (of course) working unbelievably hard on their production, as are their teachers, and the parents doing all the work on the costumes. Seeing the new New Entrants class in the Library was very entertaining, and I was impressed by how quickly they have adapted to school life. And our senior students are currently balancing exam preparation, lessons, co-curricular activities and everything else in their lives with skill and commitment. It’s not an easy thing to do, though, so please let us know if you have any concerns at all about how your children are handling the balance at this time of year. Ka kite anō au i a koutou. Have a lovely weekend, Alex Reed 如需阅读校长的中文留言和重要事件日期,请点击此处 Dates for your Diary Week 4 Kia Ora, Today is our annual Speech Final Day for most year groups. I am always impressed by the quality of content and presentations of our finalists, and I am looking forward to watching them today. I equally enjoy popping into English classes when students are presenting in front of their own class, to watch students who find public speaking a real challenge. There is so much to be gained from this experience for students and I believe that the students always perform better than they expect to. Yesterday afternoon we also had our Annual Student Subject Fair. This is a student only event where senior students set up stalls promoting each of the IGCSE and A Level subjects that we offer. Year 9 and Year 11 students are then able to visit the stalls and ask the seniors any questions that they may have about the subject: from how it is assessed, to how coursework may work, and how the seniors have found the experience. This is another valuable piece in the puzzle for students to help them put together their programmes of study for the next two years. The event yesterday is an example of the community activities that take place on a Thursday afternoon in the College. This event, and all others that we organise and run on a Thursday, are really important for students, and for us as a college community. I have noticed recently that a number of students are signing out of school early on a Thursday and are missing these important sessions. Can I ask that parents please avoid making appointments for their children at this time as the expectation is that all students are at school until 3:15pm each day. With regard to signing your child out during the school day a quick reminder of the procedure that we follow. If your child needs to leave school for any reason, please send a note or email to your child’s Homeroom teacher, POD teacher, or Dean in advance of the appointment. The teacher will then pass this information along to reception to give them the information. This is an important step for our staff to ensure that we are keeping our students safe by knowing where they are at all times during the school day. Students who present at reception without an acknowledgement from their teacher or Dean will be asked to return to class. If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to contact me. Nga Mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College A2 ChemistryStudents doing A2 Chemistry have been studying organic reaction pathways. As part of their work, they made aspirin. They got to use a variety of different equipment from quickfit apparatus which enabled them to produce the aspirin and then recrystallise it using the Buchner funnels. This was then left to dry in the oven. The next day they were able to test their product to see if they had actually made aspirin. They performed two tests. The first was the melting point determination to see if their substance melted at 134oC which was the melting point of aspirin. Most samples melted around 127-130oC. The second test was producing a chromatogram to compare the spots for salicyclic acid, a commercial sample of aspirin and their sample under UV light to see if they had made aspirin. Some groups showed pure samples whilst others showed evidence of aspirin but also some salicyclic acid. The students enjoyed the experience. Year 11 Auckland Geography Schools CompetitionOn Wednesday evening this week, 6 of our students travelled to Takapuna Grammar School for 3 geo-packed hours to participate in the Maatangi Whenua Geography competition. This was open to Year 11 Geography school students across Auckland and the students participated in 2 teams of 3. Both teams did very well and had a very enjoyable, geo-tastic evening! They competed in various rounds of activities with everything from geographic location knowledge, to mapping skills, to te reo place names and even showing geographic features and concepts using play-doh! One of our Pinehurst teams placed 2nd, which is even more brilliant given this is the first time our school has participated, and Guilio, Hannah, and Ashleigh should be congratulated on their excellent teamwork and vast knowledge. Year 10 Physical EducationThis term in Year 10 PE we are engaged in our Disability Sports unit. This unit aims to give students an appreciation for the challenges people with disabilities face. To do this we will be playing a range of disability sports such as blind cricket, seated volleyball, and the Paralympic sport of goalball. As part of this unit we will also be investigating societal discrimination against people with disabilities and promoting inclusive attitudes and empathy. Y11 Speech winnersThe Year 11 students took part in the Senior Speech Finals, judged by Mr Bean, Miss Easson and Ms Coombridge. Congratulations to the following students, Olivia F who came first place, second place to Gabriella and third place to Gryffon. Well done to all who participated! Pinehurst Busy Bean Barista TourA highly anticipated tour of the Altura coffee roastery became a reality for the Pinehurst Busy Bean café baristas last week. The tour of the boutique roastery was informative and inspiring. Our baristas learned about coffee bean origin and quality, the roasting process, aroma notes and gleaned tips for making that perfect extraction. A complimentary drink of choice completed the experience. Our baristas goal is to apply their new knowledge to further enhance the Busy Bean café experience. AKSS Lacrosse
Our girls lacrosse team got off to a shaky start but soon found there groove improving there game over the season. They managed to finish 2nd overall in the Auckland competition C Grade. Congratulations and well done team! Yesterday, they also participated in the AKSS lacrosse One Day Tournament. They had a few wins and losses, having been moved up to the B grade, but gained from the experience of attending and being challenged at this level of play. College Subject FairYesterday during POD time, College 4 was set up as a Subject Fair and Y9/Y11/Y12 students were invited to visit and circulate to find out about subjects they are considering selecting for study in 2022. No teachers were involved but instead each subject had Y12/13 students as representatives and the visiting students gained considerable insight from their chats with these senior students. Kia Ora, In the Mid Bays Principals cluster I am a member of, we each share a professional highlight when we meet each month. Mine this month has been working with the Year 3-4 syndicate on their production of Pirates Past Noon Kids. No one begins their teaching career as a Principal, we train to be teachers because we really love working with children every day. Having the opportunity to spend so much time with our middle syndicate students during rehearsals has been a lot of fun. It would be easy to look at the work that needs to be done in the running of the Primary and say can I afford the time? The answer is yes, I have loved every minute of it so far. Our children are enthusiastic, they know their lines and most of their moves and the singing is beautiful. As we head to the final week of rehearsals before the shows on the 24th and 26th of August we will enjoy the process and have a lot of fun too. Productions are an opportunity to create memories that will probably last a lifetime as well as learn the skills of acting, singing and dancing. The costumes are almost finished, the set is being built, make up designed and we know on the night that we will look the part for our audience. It is hard work for the adults at times but incredibly rewarding too. We have finished marking our Year 6 mid-year progression tests in English, Maths and Science and we are very pleased with the results our students have achieved in every subject. The skills of teachers throughout the Primary along with the Cambridge curriculum, excellent resources and support from home really does give our students fantastic opportunities that they make the most of. We have recently introduced Big Reading across the school and Big Write last year and we are definitely seeing the results in our English programmes with close to 50% of our students achieving more than 64% across two papers. At the beginning of Term 4, Year 6 will take the Cambridge Primary Checkpoint tests and we are looking forward to celebrating their success. Students in Years 4-6 are learning about the art of speech writing and how to construct a persuasive or informative speech that will interest the audience. If a speech is well written it is easier to deliver and add the techniques for a good speech as we head into the class, year group and Senior Primary competitions. Some students love the performance element of speeches and love to stand in front of others to entertain them. Many feel quite nervous and that is of course perfectly natural, as parents we too can feel for our children if they are worried. As always we want to give our students the opportunity to grow and develop their skills and our teachers will do everything they can to put nervous children at ease, so that they learn. The Year 4 to 6 competition is in Week 7 and we are looking forward to hearing our year group winners deliver some high quality speeches. Enjoy the sport this weekend if you are on the netball courts or football fields and some family time with your children. Kia pai to rā whakata, have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary P2's Midnight AdventuresP2 has had an eventful first few weeks back at school. We have started our ‘Midnight Garden Adventure’, discovering all about nocturnal animals and the night sky. We have been busy learning how to write reports and have written animal reports about owls and hedgehogs. In Science, we have learnt about the night sky and discovered all about the moon. We learnt that the moon is mostly made up of rock and is covered in craters that were created by asteroids hitting the moon’s surface. We also found out about the first moon landing and discussed why astronauts wear suits and that there is no gravity in space! In Art, we read the story ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and created our own Owl babies’ mixed media artwork. First, the students created the owls’ bodies using a pom-pom as a paintbrush. Next, we added a branch using pastels and facial features using paper. The final step was adding the glitter for the stars, this was the students’ favourite part. P2 has been busy during phonics, learning new sounds and writing new words using their ‘Fred Fingers’. The year 1 children are continuing to learn their diagraphs and trigraphs and have learnt the ‘air’ sound this week. The new entrant children are still working on their single letter sounds and were working on x, w and v this week. In Mathematics, we have been learning to count in steps of 2, 5 and 10. Our next step is to count in steps of 10 from any number, for example 4, 14, 24, 34. Next week P2 is blasting off into their next adventure all about space! Amazing learning this week P2, keep up the fantastic work! Phonics fun in P4!
The last few weeks in p4 we have been focusing on the magic E in phonics. When the magic E is at the end of a word, it makes the vowel say its name. So far, we have learned a-e, o-e, and i-e. We really enjoy all the fun games that we get to play during phonics time. Our favourite is making words out of playdough. We also like making silly sentences like "The bird likes to fly in the sunshInE with his friends." Next week we are learning the long vowel sound u-e!
P8’s budding Artists – We’ve been looking at an Artist called Henri-Emile MatisseHere are our very own Henri Matisse Collage Cats and as you can see each and every individual cat displays their very own uniqueness. P13 Primary newsThis week P13 have been learning how to convert between kilometres and metres and how to record the lengths using decimals. Developing connections with this learning has been made through completing examples from their Busy Ants Book, playing a fun dominoes game with a partner that reinforces the learning as well as singing the latest measurement song from Numberock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djTNUp4XIRo Check it out, we’re sure you’ll enjoy it!
P18 in Action
There is always something exciting happening in P18. Last week the students had the fun of organising and running their own class assembly. The whole class were involved and presented an item of their choice, in small groups, to the rest of their year group. There was a wide range of items presented including a band performance, art, dance, global sharing and an entertaining maths trick show! It was a great opportunity for the students present in front of others and share their talents. Fun on the Farm in P23
This term we have been helping Old Macdonald on his farm. He has been rather forgetful and keeps forgetting the names of his animals. To help him out we have been coming up with some rhymes about the animals. We are good at singing, Old Macdonald Had a Farm, Hickety Pickety, Hey Diddle Diddle and 5 Little Ducks.Fun on the Farm in P23 We have also been starting to retell a story using a story map. We listen to the story, talk to a buddy about our favourite part and then help Ms Walton put the story in the right order using pictures. We are really good artists, and our story maps look great. On Old Macdonald’s Farm there are Fresian cows. We know that cows give us milk and we used some of their milk to make a smoothie. We added berries and banana, blended it up and it tasted yummy. We were able to say how to make the smoothie and draw the pictures in the right order. We have just started phonics and we love using our ‘Fred Fingers’ to say the sounds and help us to read the word. Fred, the frog helps us out and we are practicing everyday. We are really good at saying and writing the s, p, t, I, n, and m sounds. In P23 we love maths and have been working really hard at reading and writing our numbers to 20. We went outside on Tuesday and collected 20 things with a buddy, we practiced counting to our partner and then to Ms Walton. We have been working on making 10 and are able to say how many more we need to make 10. Using the bears, is our favourite way to count as we really like the bright colours. Our science topic started this week and we looked at things with stripes. A lot of us knew some fantastic facts about animals, why they have stripes and where they live. We found some really interesting animals that have stripes that we didn’t know about. This week, at the Library, we are going to have a look for some books about animals that have stripes. Super learning P23, keep up the great work. Pinehurst Orchestra wins at KBB CompetitionThe Pinehurst Orchestra will be presented with at least a Bronze Award this Saturday at the Holy Trinity from 6.30pm. This is the third year our Orchestra has entered the Symphony Category and is recognised with an award despite competing against other Orchestras twice the size and only made up of secondary students. It is a fantastic achievement for our Orchestra to place so well and thank you for all your support and encouragement. Congratulations to all 51 students who took part in the competition, especially our fantastic soloists - Yu Zhang (Yr 10) on the piano for our opening number (Mozart Piano Concerto no 21 – Movement II); Chang (Yr 11) on the violin for our second piece of the Romantic era (Scheherazade by Korsakov) and Daniel (Yr 12) on the alto saxophone for our fourth and closing number (Harlem Nocturne by Hagen). The Orchestra, which rehearses on Thursday lunchtimes in C2, welcomed its new members today and already embarked on preparing for next year’s competition. If you child can play an orchestral instrument at grade 3 or above difficulty and would like to join the group, please contact Marija.naumovska@pinehurst.school.nz. Four students represent Pinehurst at the KBB Honours ProgrammeAn unprecedented four students were selected to participate in this year’s KBB Honours Programme and Gala Concert to perform as part of a Symphony Orchestra or Jazz Band, created by the best of the best secondary school’s applicants around Auckland. Daniel C on the alto saxophone (Yr 12); Daniel H on the tenor saxophone (Yr 12); Petra D on the flute (Yr 13) and Sarah X on the violin (Yr 12) will attend the master class and workshop session today and perform at the free to the public Gala concert tonight from 8.30pm at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell. Annual Junior College Music Concert Wednesday 18th of August 3.30-4.30pm in the ArenaOur fantastically talented year 7 and 8 students will present a varied programme at our Annual Junior College Music Concert next week in the Arena. Students who are interested in taking part in this event can complete the following form. Just a reminder that the audition video deadline submission closes tonight at 7pm tonight. Reserve your tickets now here For any questions, please email michelle.alves@pinehurst.school.nz Year 7 Go Karting Family Fun!Last Saturday Year 7 enjoyed an afternoon of Go-Karting, Laser Tag and Mini Golf at Game Over in Albany. Organised for Y7 students, parents and siblings, the event bought in 50 Y7 families and saw some of our Parents Go-Karting…. with some even going for an exhilarating second round. An abundant supply of pizzas (70 Large Pizzas) arrived to feed the team and then it was back into the round of activities. We hope everyone had a great time and we’re not sure who had a better time – the kids or the parents, particularly the group that stayed after Prizegiving and decided to do a round of Laser Tag! Congratulations to our Go-Karting Winners who took home a $50, $30, or $20 Westfield voucher for placing 1st, 2nd or 3rd and thank you to Mr Reynolds who showed up and managed to squeeze in 15-laps around the track! Parents
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Keep an eye out for more family events in the newsletter. Jade's Music SuccessCongratulations to Jade, Year 6 on her recent success. 2021 Golden Classic Music Awards – USA
Has been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2022/23 season 2021 Appassionato International online Youth Music Festival
2021 North American Virtuoso International Music Competition
2021 Globe International Music Competition
South Auckland Performing Arts Competition Junior General Instrumental Shield – overall winner 11/under North Shore Performing Arts Theatre Awards vocal competition
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