Thursday 3 December 2020Opening Words from the Executive PrincipalKia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 To talk, in early December, of ‘the end of the year’ seems even more presumptive than it usually feels. In a year that has been divided up in new ways, and in which school “terms” mean less than the rhythms of Covid alert levels and lockdowns in our memories, we approach the last month of 2020 delicately, and a little more uncertainly, than we usually do. This holiday season, only a handful of our community will be heading overseas, though many of you will be seeing family, freshly on our shores, for the first time in many months. To newly reunited families: my thoughts are with you, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Most of will, though, be heading to other places in New Zealand – I’m going to take my daughters for a few days to the West Coast of the South Island, somewhere we’ve never been before – so enjoy exploring our country, and travel safely. The last week of term has been every bit as wonderful as it usually is. The four Prizegivings we have held have been wonderful, warm ceremonies, and around 300 students have received prizes, awarded for their academic performance, their talents in other parts of school life, and their contribution to our community. I’ve received a few questions from parents about the ways we award prizes, and a couple of suggestions that we award more prizes: I do understand that it can be disappointing for students if they don’t receive a prize, and we try hard to have as broad a base as possible, but the nature of awards is unfortunately that not everyone gets one. About 30% of students receive awards, and that strikes me as about the right proportion. I’m happy to take any alternative suggestions, of course. I love Prizegivings, though, as they celebrate school life in all its rich variety. And the young people and their proud parents are a joy to be around. I’d like to congratulate our 3 ‘Dux’ and ‘Proxime Accessit’ award winners in particular. The Dux is the student who has the highest overall academic achievement; the Proxime Accessit is the runner up. We award these prizes at Year 6 (Primary), Year 8 (Junior College) and Year 13 (Senior College). So congratulations to Daniel Yu and Sophia Wang, Dux and Proxime of Primary; to Kelly Liu and Tara Sabor, Dux and Proxime of Junior College, and to Linda Tang and Yuyi Li, Dux and Proxime of Senior College. These are outstanding awards to win, against very stiff competition, and we are all very proud of you. Thank you to all of the parents who came to another packed and enjoyable Christmas Picnic on Tuesday night. It was a lovely evening, the whole community coming together, small children proudly displaying unicorns and magic rabbits on their faces; slightly bigger children deciding that they needed to rediscover their youth on the Junior Primary playground; and even bigger students sitting around, chatting and attempting (not very successfully) to look cool. Wearing most of the school uniform tends to undermine that. A huge thanks to Judy Wallace and her events team for pulling the event together so well yet again. Thank you, too, to our Facilities and Property teams. They are the hidden engines that keep the wheels of the school turning, and they have been absolutely brilliant this term, especially these last few weeks, as we have thrown event after event on them. They are great people, really committed to our school, and they are simply stars. So to John, Jon, Shane, Tony, Juan, Isaac, Terry: thank you! To our whole community: thank you for everything you have done this year. We won’t remember 2020 globally with any great fondness, but I will remember the way we came together as a school, adapting, supporting each other, and ultimately becoming stronger as a community. I do think we end the year stronger than we started it, and that takes a joint effort. I’m going to thank our staff once again for their resilience and commitment; our parents for your support and ideas; and, of course, our wonderful students who make everything worthwhile. I’m not planning to write any more this year (yes, I can hear the sighs of relief in the background), but the school office is open until December 22nd, and many of us will still be here until then. We reopen on January 7th, so please feel free to get in touch. Students return on February 2nd. Ka kite anō au i a koutou. Have a wonderful, rejuvenating holiday; enjoy the time together as a whanau; make plans for 2021 (we certainly will be!); and stay safe. I’ve decided to end the year with one of my favourite poems. It’s by a well-known British poet called Carol Ann Duffy. Her poems are taught widely in UK schools, and this one is from a collection I first came across in my first year of teaching: 1994. Seems like a long time ago. The poem is about travel, but it’s about how we travel in our minds as well as with our bodies. It’s about being in many places at the same time, and I love its rhythms, its images and its sense of peace. In Your Mind The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered? You know people there. Their faces are photographs Sleep. The rasp of carpentry wakes you. On the wall Then suddenly you are lost but not lost, dawdling Enjoy the break and see you all in the new 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 Kia Ora, After 22 years, Christmas in New Zealand still feels a little strange without the below zero temperatures and possibility of snow but by the end of this week it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in the Primary. Lots of happy, excited but tired faces as we reach the end of the year. The New Entrants in P23 had a big mystery to solve yesterday when they returned to their classroom. For some strange reason there were reindeer footprints on the carpet and all of the letters to Santa that the children had written were missing! No one knew what had happened and had to have a big think until Carlo came up with the idea that the reindeer may have taken the letters to Santa, we think you may be right Carlo! We are all looking forward to the Christmas celebration today as a chance to wear our tinsel hats and celebrate a fantastic year of learning, creativity and resilience. Each year group has several items to present and we will come together to create some amazing memories as children, staff and families. I am really looking forward to the Santa jokes which will be told by P7 this year and the singing, dancing and performing that is to come. I am not so sure about Santa Shark but I know Y3 will be wonderful. The highlight this week was the Y4-6 Prizegiving which was a very special celebration of learning, hard work, support and dedication by students, staff and parents. The year group items and very well executed Valedictory speech by Edward Maclean plus the rather witty reply from Y5’s, Millie Wang and Zachery Solomon complimented the celebration of success. I have listed the main award winners below and the core subject award winners are listed in the 2020 Yearbook. All that’s really left to say is thankyou, mostly to the students for doing so well in a very strange year, being so flexible and adaptable in every situation. To the staff who have been absolutely phenomenal in the way they have come together to continue to provide high quality learning experiences for our children and to our parents and Pinehurst community for your care and support of us to do the best that we could. We hope that you enjoy reading your child’s report this afternoon, 2021 classes will be online Wednesday January 13 and you will be able to book a before school conference with your child’s teacher. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season, kia kaha, take care. Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary Athletics Medal Winners Year 3 & 4Congratulations again to our Year 3 & Year 4 Athletics Medal winners for 2020 – certificates & medals were presented in class this week to these very talented young athletes! Primary Netball Superstars!A huge congratulations to our Pinehurst Primary Netball teams on an outstanding 2020 season at Kidzplay. At the conclusion of the 2020 competition last Saturday, we are thrilled to confirm 6 of our Primary teams playing in a competitive grade (Years 2-6) placed either first or second! (see the table below for details). Students were awarded their certificates & ribbons by Mrs Jones-Hill at a special Netball presentation earlier today. We also wish to congratulate our Pinehurst Kereru team on their commitment to Netball this year, and our 3 x Year 1 (non-competitive) teams, who also had a fabulous season – many of these players were playing Netball for the first time this year. We wish to thank all the players, coaches, managers, parents and of course our wonderful Primary Netball Coordinator (Anina) for their hard work and commitment this year, right until the end of Term 4 and we look forward to another busy and exciting year of Netball in 2021. P6's Tee-ChainsThe primary had its annual Market Day last Friday. In preparation for this event, all primary classes run 'businesses' and design and produce a product to sell at Market Day. P6 decided to make Tee chains, which are key chains made from recycled old T-shirt material and beads, hence we developed the name 'Tee-Chains'. Throughout the PrEP process, the children learn valuable skills such as collaboration, negotiation and leadership. They all learn about different aspects of running a successful business and get the opportunity to learn about designing, marketing, budgeting and producing. All the students in P6 were involved in every step of the process, as a class, we designed and produced the Tee Chains. We made a budget and reviewed this as we needed more supplies to create our product. The students learnt about the features of a successful marketing poster and all the students designed a poster to advertise our Tee Chains. As a reward for all their hard work P6 was paid a salary in 'pines' which they got to spend on Market Day. On the day, all the students were involved in working as a shop keeper and we had a roster to ensure everyone did their shift. We sold all our lovely Tee-Chains and the P6 students had a wonderful time shopping at the other primary businesses. Year 3 Busy BeesP9 participated in Market Day last Friday. They designed and made turtles made from plastic bottles. They used their problem-solving skills to determine how much should be charged for their product. They worked as a team and learned how to be sustainable. Students also designed and constructed windchimes from plastic bottles. They have been extending their understanding of financial literacy and learning about all the roles involved in ensuring that a business runs smoothly. In Mathematics, P9 have been working on Statistics. Students took surveys in class to find out their favourite food and drinks. Data was collected in the form of a survey, using tallies. The students worked out the frequency and then represented this data on a bar chart or pictogram. They answered questions on the data by reading the information from bar charts and pictograms. P9 really enjoyed the interactive element of statistics and working together to gather information. In writing, students have been working on the genre of reports. P9 brainstormed and then planned a report about an emergency in the North Pole for Santa! Some students chose to write about the reindeer catching a cold just before Christmas Eve! Others chose to report that the elves had decided to down tools and go on strike! Students worked very hard to write an attention-grabbing headline, including alliteration, rhyme or a clever pun! They separated their ideas into paragraphs. They included direct quotations from the reindeer and elves, documenting their traumatic experiences. Finally, a picture was added to capture the attention of our reader. P9 are very proud of their hard work. In Reading, students have been developing a range of strategies to help with comprehension. These include: predicting, connecting, visualizing, inferring, summarising. We can use clues from the text to help us with words we do not yet understand. The students have been practising for the Christmas Assembly this week. They have joined up with the other Year 3 classes and have been working on a surprise song! They added some dance moves to keep our audience entertained! The students report that it has helped them to get into the holiday spirit! The children had their awards for Athletics Day this week. P9 were delighted to have three medalists in the class. Congratulations to Ryann, Ethan and Azita. The children in P9 would like to wish everyone a happy holiday and a safe new year. They look forward to returning to Pinehurst School in 2021 as Year 4 students! Creative expression in P17 – PrEP and Claymation fun!We had a wonderful time over the last few weeks getting ready for PrEP market day last Friday. P17 had lots of ideas that they developed and we had a range of companies represented at our class table. We found it really interesting how quickly some of our products sold out on Friday. The slime was especially popular and our wheat bags all sold out too!! Our company of the year in P17 went to “Lava lamps.” Marco, Thomas, Isaac and Paul used plastic bottles which they recycled and made into Lava lamps by adding oil and food colouring. These could then be turned upside down and made into something quite mesmerising to watch. Our Business Person of the Year this year was Noah who really taught us on Friday the importance of being able to market and sell products. Noah developed a range of products and we found out that he had a real talent for making balloon animals which he taught himself how to make. He also recycled milk containers and made animal flower pots, along with windmills. We look forward to seeing where Noah’s creative talents will take him in the future. In this final week of term, we have been working on Claymation activities using modelling clay to create still animation sequences. We have then created I-movies to share on Seesaw and with the class. There have been many opportunities for the class to create creatures, characters and backdrops using a range of different media. Below we can see Ray, Anthony, Daniel and Dylan enjoying working together and collaborating and sharing their ideas. The marine them (below) was created by Yahan and Eason. P17 have worked really well together. We have loved learning, exploring and creating. We have taken many learning experiences and crafted them into rich academic thinking. We know how to make connections, look for similarities and be endlessly curious. We love to challenge thinking and justify what we believe by finding new ways of seeing things. As high level thinkers, we know how to visualise and draw and our connection to the earth has been enhanced through growing and reproducing food. From our class family to your family- Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Kia Ora, Our last day of classes today and we have a number of students wearing antlers and other Christmas paraphernalia. We look forward to finishing today with our annual Christmas music concert, which will take a slightly different shape this year as we have split the college and primary events. Yesterday was a brilliant day of Prizegiving’s and a great way to acknowledge the hard work, and significant success of many of our students. No doubt our junior students are looking forward to a well-earned summer break, and our senior students will enjoy their holidays with an awareness and anticipation of what their academic results will be in January. Our special award winners are shown below. The College has been a little quiet this week with our Year 9 cohort out enjoying their 'Out There' Camp. From the photos that I have seen on the school Facebook page it looks as though they are having a brilliant time. Thank you very much to everyone that was able to attend our Prizegiving’s yesterday. Also a big thank you to our whole community for all of your support this year. To those leaving our school community I wish you all the very best. I hope that everyone has a brilliant summer and a merry festive season. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College Auckland Interzone Athletics ChampionshipsCongratulations to Year 7 students Fernanda, George and Osbert who all represented Pinehurst and the NH Zone at the Athletics Auckland Interzone event last Thursday. To qualify to attend this event, students had to finish in the top 3 in their event/s at the NH Zone Day. The Interzone event was held at Mount Smart Stadium, and involved students from schools from all across the Auckland region. George had a fantastic top 8 finish in the Year 7 400M boys event. Osbert did well in the Year 7 boys discus, finishing outside of the top 10 but with a very respectable throw. A very special mention however to Fernanda, who finished 1st in Year 7 Girls High Jump, 2nd in Year 7 Girls Long Jump, 3rd in Year 7 Girls Discus and 7th in the Year 7 Girls Shotput – some outstanding results ! Year 7 MandarinDuring Term 3 and 4, the Year 7 Chinese First Language students learnt about shadow puppetry. Shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen. The cut-out shapes of the puppets all have translucent colour. From the end of Term 3 we started to learn about shadow puppets and did some research. In Term 4 we then started script writing and looking for pictures for our characters. We all based our stories on traditional Chinese stories and all of them were to do with the moon festival. Our favourite part of this project is making the puppets and performing to the MFL students. This was an amazing and super fun experience! Year 9 MathsLast week the Maths Department had their inaugural Year 9 MATHEX competition. It was very high energy and lots of fun was had! The winning team was VH4 with Bohan, Christian, Maya. Katherine. Year 10 EconomicsThis week the Economics class looked at the Economics behind gift-giving and came up with their improved versions of Secret Santa. Perhaps you want to incorporate one of these ideas into your own holiday traditions… Meri Kirihemete! Year 9 Book ReviewStudent Musical ShowcaseThe final week of school has been all about showcasing our talented students in all three Prizegiving ceremonies as well as the Christmas Concerts. Pinehurst students involved with choirs, dance troupes, flute choirs, rock bands, jazz bands and the orchestra have proudly performed for their peers, parents and teachers this week. With the generous support of the school board, all Pinehurst students can join a co-curricular group for free and learn to develop their collaborative dance or music skills with the guidance of a mentor. To view a full list of what is on offer at Pinehurst and enrol your child for 2021, please click here. Dancesport comes to College in 2021Pinehurst is very excited to offer Dancesport to our Year 7-13 students next year, under the guidance of former student and regular competition on the NZ circuit, Jemma Goeldner. Jemma has in the past coached our primary students and this year did a fantastic job as the choreographer of the Addams Family Musical. If you would like to register your child for Dancesport for next year, please click here. I Spy...Lots of fun had at the Family Christmas Picnic on Tuesday night! I Spy...Year 10 Maths quiz! I Spy...Electric playdoh and circuits in Year 3 Science! I Spy...Our gifts at the Christmas Concert ready to give to Foster Hope! Uniform Shop - Holiday Opening HoursMonday 18th January – Friday 22nd January 10am – 2pm Monday 25th January – Friday 29th January 10am – 2pm Please note: Shop will open a little later on Wednesday 27th January 11am – 2pm |