News and events for the week ending 25 October 2019 Friday 25 October 2019 Opening words from the Executive PrincipalKia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 There’s been so much on this week. Exams, of course, and revision for exams to come, but we’ve had large numbers of Year 7 and 8 students running in all directions as part of their Rogaine Orienteering competition, Year 6 students heading out to Kelly Tarlton’s (a welcome reward after their hard work last week), and a wonderful ‘Share a Skill’ Day for the Senior Primary students today. A huge thank you to the parents and staff who have been sharing their special skills with the students. I won’t spoil the surprise and let you in on the exact skills they’ve been sharing, as I’m sure the details will be in the newsletter this week or next. So yes, we’ve had more exams this week: IGCSEs have got going with a vengeance, and our Year 11 students have been great. We’ve been impressed by their focus, and the way they’ve approached exams. And it’s been good to see smiling faces on the Year 12s and 13s as they sign in and out before and after their AS and A Levels. We have Year 4 and 5 Progression tests this week as well: these are just a chance for the school to check up on students’ academic progress, and the teachers will be making sure that the students don’t feel any pressure. It’s important to us that the children don’t worry about them. This week we have also welcomed prospective parents to the school at our Open Days for the last time in 2019. It was good to see so many parents brave what might euphemistically be described as ‘changeable’ weather, and even better to be able to answer their questions about the school. Some of the questions were about enrolment into the school, so I thought it was a good time to talk about enrolment, and about what our school will look like next year. We are currently over-subscribed with waiting lists in Years 1-9 for 2020, but we still have a small number of spaces in Years 10-13. If parents wish to enrol a student in any of those years, though, they should still apply because places do come up. We also keep a very small number of spaces for siblings of students already in our school. Nicole Chen, our Admissions Registrar, will be happy to answer any questions. The Primary School will be the same size next year as it was this year – there will be three classes of 22 or 23 students in each year group – and Years 7 and 8 will also be the same size. That means there will be 22 or 23 students in each homeroom. Year 9 will be a little larger than this year; and Year 13 will also be larger. It’s Parent Survey time of the year again: we are about to send out a link to the annual survey in our normal way, and we’d encourage everyone to respond. It’s an opportunity to share your views on the school, and it’s something we take seriously. The Board and I talk through the responses, compare them against previous years’ results, and discuss what they mean for our planning. The free-form written responses are confidential to the Chairman and one other member of the Board, who ensure that students can’t be identified from the responses, so you should feel free to write down your feelings. We survey staff in the same way and at the same time. We also do some student surveys as well, but we are looking at doing this in a much more systematic way next year. A final quick good luck to all the students taking part in our Term 4 sports programme: it’s a little smaller than at other times in the year, but it’s still an extensive programme, and it seems to get larger every year. A special ‘thumbs up’ to all those students competing in netball for the very first time: I love to see such enthusiastic participation from the students and from their parents. Thank you, as ever, to the parents and staff who enable our students to enjoy their sports so much. I'm going to finish with a quick recommendation to all of our parents: Mr Prince has just filled our reception with some of the work our senior design technology students have been doing. There is some fabulous work there and its great to see our students expressing their creativity and technical skills. Pop in and have a look! Have a lovely long, Labour Day weekend. Spring Netball Reminder: There will be no games this Saturday, 26th October as it is Labour Weekend. WEEK 3 Monday 28 October
Tuesday 29 October
Wednesday 30 October
Thursday 31 October
WEEK 4 Monday 4 November
Tuesday 5 November
Wednesday 6 November
Thursday 7 November
Friday 8 November
如需阅读校长的中文留言和重要事件日期,请点击此处 Dr. Sandie Waddel, Senior College Science Teacher Sandie has taught at a variety of schools in Auckland at Secondary level. The schools have varied in their ethos, decile rating and curriculum. She has taught a range of subjects including Science, Technology and Mathematics. She has been teaching at Pinehurst for 24 years. Last year Sandie achieved a PhD in Science Education. She decided to investigate whether students were more likely to pursue Science at higher levels of education, using differentiated programmes of work as the basis of the layered activities which incorporated ICT; Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and Bloom’s taxonomy. The numbers taking Science to higher levels is ever on the decrease and she wanted to see if there was a way to turn the tide. Once she found a gap in the research, she then proceeded to design how she was going to do this, what instruments she would use and who would be her target group. Research throughout the process was ongoing as she always had to keep abreast of the latest material. Differentiation has always been a passion for Sandie and finding new ways of achieving this has been an exciting journey for her. She has enjoyed finding out about the Layered Curriculum and aims to continue using this approach in her teaching. Kia Ora, Year 6 were a little more carefree this week as they aimed to finish their Primary years making more happy memories, enjoying themselves on the playground at break times and at Kelly Tarlton's. According to Sam it was a really, really good trip! They managed to survive the sharks and learn a lot about marine life in the process. This week was our final open day for the year and I took quite a large group of prospective parents around Years 4 to 6. One of the things I love about our students is that they are always so willing to share their learning and can answer any questions our visitors throw at them with confidence and ease. We saw reading lessons, lots of cross group Maths, coding with Sphero, Big Write, high jump, echo location in Science and poetry writing. Students were totally engaged in their learning, respectful and beautifully behaved and I was very proud of them. One of the Term 4 programmes that our students really look forward to is PrEP which is short for the Primary Enterprise Programme. Children learn financial literacy and economic principles through social studies and technology programmes. At the most basic level they will learn what it means to have a job, they understand why we use money as a method of exchange and they form companies to make products. Whilst working for their company all students earn 'Pines' to spend at market day on the products that have been made in each business. In the Year 5 and 6 syndicate students will use a banking programme to track their earnings during PrEP, pay taxes and collect interest. Whilst students will inevitably have a lot of fun during PrEP they will also learn many valuable real life lessons in financial literacy and basic economics. This week a number of parents have volunteered to become teachers for the afternoon in Year 5 and 6. We invited our parents in to share a skill and teach small groups of students something new. The range of activities on offer is amazing! Students have the opportunity to cook a variety of dishes or learn to sew a bag or a button on. We have origami, knots and sailing skills, marketing, theatre make up, drums, juggling, computer skills, netball, flower arrangement, tangled art and much more in what promises to be a very fun and educational afternoon. What a great way to spend time together and learn something new. Just a reminder that all students need to be in summer uniform when they come back to school on Tuesday next week. They need a hat and sunscreen to be able to play outdoors too. Have a lovely long weekend. Ngā Mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary Junior Primary Formal Music Concert (Years 1-3)Our annual Junior Primary Music Concert will be take place on Tuesday the 12 November 2019 at 3.30 pm in the Arena. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase our musically talented students from Years 1-3. This event will also feature the Petite Elite choir. To ensure that our concert runs to a maximum of one hour, we will be holding auditions for this event on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, on the 29th, 30th and 31st of October at lunchtimes in JC8 . Please make sure that your son/daughter has their music and instrument at school on these days. If you would like to nominate your child to perform at this concert, please click on this link by Friday 26 October to register them for an audition. Please include all the required elements. Time Flies in the Junior PrimaryWow, we are already in week 2 of our final term for the year and the students in the Junior Primary are working towards achieving all their goals for 2019. Another 10 students joined our New Entrant class this term and with them we welcome back Mrs Benson, who will be working alongside Mrs Murray to provide our students with the best possible learning experiences. Our NE/Y1 classrooms are full of budding mathematicians. At the beginning of the week they were learning to share objects into equal groups. They have also been consolidating their understanding of telling the time, using o’clock and half past. It is important for these young students to have lots of experience using concrete materials as they learn best when they are ‘doing.’ The Senior Year 1 classes are currently immersed in a world of Fairy Tales. Rumour has it, there was a Big Bad Wolf seen lurking about the Butterfly Garden! This week there was also a giant whose beanstalk came crashing down. Luckily our students were on hand to help plant another one. They designed their own ‘Magic Bean’ packet and then planted their seeds. The students will observe the changes they see in their plants over the coming weeks and record what they find. In Year 2 our avid readers are getting their teeth into their first novel, titled, The Wild Robot. Our students are learning how to delve deeper into a story through guided lessons that are based around key comprehension skills. They have been learning to summarise, re-tell and retrieve answers; explore the author’s choice of language and talk about the effect; and also search for clues and find hidden meaning. This week, we used role-play to infer how the characters were feeling and we then examined how their emotions changed throughout the chapter. Sometimes school is so much fun that we forget we are learning! The Year 3 and 4 SyndicateIn P10 the students have been discussing their writing and how to edit and improve it, by using ‘Writing Pyramids’. They are coming up with some creative ideas together as part of their ‘Big Writing’ programme. In Reading, P11 students have been learning how to make inferences and identify an author’s purpose. They are completing activities to help their understanding, by working together in small groups and listening to stories and answering inference questions. P12 students have been learning about what an income is and why we have taxes and how they work. They looked at what our taxes pay for and what people do to earn an income. P13 artists have been learning the whole paper technique for applying papier mache. They carefully applied a layer of vibrant tissue paper over the mold. This was then followed by at least four layers of white newsprint, then tissue paper again over the outer layer. Aren’t the colours of these beautiful bowls so vibrant? The P14 and P15 students have been learning about the Fashion Revolution in Social Studies. The Fashion Revolution believes that the fashion industry should value people, the environment, creativity, and profit equally. #whomademyclothes became very popular around the world with people asking if their clothes were made ethically. They looked at the clothing labels of their favourite clothes, and realised that in their classes, most clothes were made in China and Bangladesh. The fabric that was mostly used was cotton. They have created posters to make people more aware of the Fashion Revolution. What’s Happening in Term 4 in the Year 5/6 Syndicate?The answer to this question is quite simple; they are doing A-LOT! Term 4 is always extremely busy and fun. However, it begins quite seriously with a focus on testing. The students are academically measured using the Year 6 Checkpoint and Year 5 Progression Tests in Maths, Science and English. This helps us plan for the following year’s teaching by finding where our student’s strengths and needs are. Term 4 is not just about testing though, it’s also about learning business skills, working collaboratively and being creative, as students work in small business groups to design, develop and build products to sell at our Primary Market at the end of term. These skills are developed through our PrEP programme which we have redesigned this year to ensure our products are of a high quality and environmentally sustainable. More news to come on that in the following weeks. Sports events are also a big part of Term 4. Athletics is the current focus in PE as we assist the students in improving their techniques in long jump, high jump, discus, shotput and sprinting. Following our Inter-House Athletics Day at the Millennium on 13th November, a team is selected to represent Pinehurst school at the Super Cluster Athletics. Another Super Cluster event this term is Touch Rugby on 5th November. We also have our Gymnastics team competing on the 7th November. They have been training hard for the last term and a half. To make the 8-week term even busier, we also have a few social events. There is a Year 5/6 disco on Friday 22nd November, which is always a well-attended event. Today, we had a wonderful group of talented parents offer to come into our classrooms and teach small groups a specialised skill. We thank those parents who gave up their time and look forward to sharing with you next week some of the activities that the students participated in. At the completion of the term we celebrate success through our 2 prize-givings; Sports on 19th November and Academic on 3rd December. This year we are also having a special Graduation Assembly for our Year 6 students on Friday 22nd November in the Arena. As you can see there are many events this term. All events are on the School calendar and include times and venues. Term 4 overviews, SeeSaw and the Newsletter also list events specific to your child’s year level. Any event that involves travelling out of the school requires parent permission which is hopefully much easier for you now that all forms are sent out digitally. Finally, the last day of term is Thursday 4 December. But as you can see there is a lot happening between now and then! I Spy in the PrimaryI Spy...lunchtime activities and fun in the sun! I Spy...P8 working hard at Maths! Kia Ora, We have enjoyed a very settled week in school. Our Year 9 students have transitioned back into classes well. Our Year 7, 8 and 10 students are working hard in preparation for their end of year examinations that will take place in Week 4 and Week 5. The schedule for these examinations are available to students and parents on Schoolbox. Year 12 and Year 13 students are now on study leave as they work through their CIE examinations. Year 11 students have had a busy week of IGCSE examinations and will return to classes next week for their final week of lessons. There are still a number of tutorials taking place for senior students so please encourage your son or daughter to avail of them. Unfortunately, bad weather on Wednesday meant that the Year 10 Geography field trip and the Year 7/8 Rogaine Competition (sustainability tasks combined with orienteering) were both postponed. With better weather on Thursday the Rogaine Competition was able to take place and 50 of our students had a brilliant day. In preparation for next year parents of Year 8 students will receive a letter informing you of our Year 9 Camp. This letter is a basic outline of the camp and will be followed up with a further letter and parent meeting next year to ensure that students are well prepared for a challenging camp. Our current Year 9 students will start their preparation for the Duke of Edinburgh Hillary Award – Bronze level this term. Parents will also receive a letter this week outlining the programme that students will work to complete next year. The extracurricular side of the College is much quieter this term. However, there are still sports taking place and it great to see our volleyball teams performing well, and the vast number of students availing of tennis coaching. We have a few zone days left which our junior students are looking forward to getting involved in. Ngā mihi, Chris Wiggin and Kieran Verryt Principals of College Textbooks ReminderCould all students who have borrowed textbooks please return them to the library after their exams. Table Tennis ChampionsLast Wednesday our Pinehurst Blue Table Tennis Team played in the semis and finals of the 2019 North Harbour Intermediate Table Tennis Cup. Pinehurst played Northcote Stars in the Semi Final, winning comfortably 12-0. The final was a much tighter affair, against a very good TNIS Turbos team, with the score tied 6:6 at the conclusion of the games. The match then went to sudden death, with Pinehurst coming out the champions for 2019! Congratulations to Yumin Kim and Anson Dwung (Year 8) and Youngmin Kim (Year 5). Rogaine OrienteeringOn Thursday, 50 of our Year 7 & 8 students represented Pinehurst at the Rogaine Orienteering event at Shakespear Regional Park. Rogaining is a cross country navigation sport similar to orienteering, but requires a pair of students to visit as many control sites as they can within a 90 minute time limit. Thank you to our TIC Orienteering Kaye Griffiths, and to Emily, Tania, Tania & Keiko for supporting the students on the day. Junior College SpanishThe Year 8 Spanish students have just completed a unit on food and drink, which always proves to be a very popular one! We have learned about some typical Spanish/Mexican dishes and enjoyed “Nachos” for lunch. We also studied the vocabulary for food and drinks often served in a café and practised how to place an order or be a waiter/waitress in a café. Once we were proficient we got to experience acting out both roles in our class café “La Cantina.” Year 8 MathematicsDesign a Flag Project - Investigation of Symmetry and Transformations in Flags from Around the World. The first stage of this design project was to make up a country in 'Mathemagicland'. Students were then required to design a flag for their new country. They needed to decide on a particular polygon to create a flag based around this shape. To meet the set criteria, their flag design needed to include at least two of the basic transformations, some type of symmetry and a tessellation. Duke of Edinburgh Programme – 2020If you are a current Year 9 parent you should receive a letter this week about your child’s Bronze level Duke of Edinburgh Award programme (Year 10). The letter contains a great deal of information – key dates and information are as follows;
Please make sure you register and pay the registration fee online – all the details/instructions are in the letter. Any questions please see Mr Rossin. Design TechnologyHere are the finished products of the Year 11 IGCSE and A Level student projects. These are the end result of lots of work exploring the design process; identifying a problem, interviewing clients, sketching and refining original ideas, researching everything from materials and processes to ergonomics, exploring communication and planning methods used in manufacturing. Once completed, the students then evaluated the product and proposed improvements. Year 8 and 9 Music ClassesThis term we are focusing on developing your child’s practical performance skills. The students will be allocated in groups and will be given the freedom to choose their own piece. Some of their coordinating, negotiating and patience skills will be explored as they navigate the intricacies of working with their peers, with the aim to perform to each other at the end of the term. This topic also develops strong self-motivation, drive, initiative and problem solving skills. Teaching ‘Adulting’ in EconomicsFinancial Literacy programme, Banqer High, was introduced to Year 10 students this week in Economics class. Banqer High includes opening a bank account, writing a CV, choosing a job, finding a flat, making a budget, and investing in the share-market. Through scheduled tasks, including going to work each day, students build up their net-worth. Our most wealthy students at the end of the two-day trial were James Austin ($3,700), Brie Cooper ($3,200), and Hamish van der Steeg ($3,088). Pinehurst Christmas HampersAroha mai aroha atu - Love given love returned It is traditional for Pinehurst to donate Christmas Hampers to those in need. This year we have chosen our sister school, Yendarra, in South Auckland. Pinehurst has established an on-going relationship with Yendarra and know our generosity will be greatly appreciated. Donations of non-perishable food, Xmas treats, gift vouchers, new toiletries, toys and games would be welcomed. Your contributions may be given to your child’s homeroom teacher from Monday, 29 October onward so that we can make beautiful hampers to present at our Christmas Service. Thank you for your generosity. Pinehurst Students take on 11km RunA group of enthusiastic Pinehurst students attended the Auckland Marathon 11km distance run on the 20th of October. Students who attended were: Elsa Shu, Julie Xiao, Ariel Liu, Jennifer Lin, Rona Huang, Rena Wang, Matthew Lee, Lawrence Liu, Austin Picard and Jessica Picard from Primary School, and Oscar Zhu, Michael Ma, Ian Zhao from Junior College. All students finished the 11km course, on top of this they all beat their parents across the finishing line, what a fantastic effort! |