No images? Click here 24 September 2021Pinehurst School NewsletterOpening Words from the Executive Principal...Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 This is the first newsletter I’ve written from my office for six weeks. There’s a large puddle on the Green, watched over jealously by a large, lonely seagull. The pukekos have retreated for the moment, aggrieved by the reappearance of our grounds staff and alarmed by the workmen carrying long pipes around this part of the school. The workmen are actually here to connect up our new water tank: we have been steadily reducing our ecological footprint over the last few years, and the latest addition has been the installation of a huge green yurt-shaped tank to the rear of our administration building. So the school is ready for your children! The grass has recovered over the past six weeks, fed by a rich diet of sun and rain, and the buildings have come through with flying colours. We have been filling staff pigeon-holes with wipes, masks and sanitisers, and the classrooms are all equipped for our move to Level 2, whenever this should happen. We have had less than a single handful of students in school this week – something we expected these last few days of term – but we know that we will have a few more in should we still be at Level 3 at the start of next term. Our arrangements for Level 2 are in place, basically, and we’re just updating our guidance on the website to reflect this. That document will be ready in the next few days. But just to clarify: at Level 2, we run a full in-school programme, and we will not be running our online programme. We are preparing for next year as well, of course, when everyone has had the chance to be vaccinated, and the situation may be different. There may be some hybrid learning taking place in that situation. But Level 2 as we currently know it is an in-school experience. I want to thank everyone once again for their wonderful spirit and hard work over the past six weeks. We are heading into the holiday in a strong place because of the commitment to our children from teachers, other staff, and parents. Online life is, for our younger families, a collaborative effort; for our older students, parents typically take a step backwards, but they are still even more involved than they usually are with their children’s education. So thank you to everyone! Once again, our community has been thrown a challenge; once again, our community has shown its strength. We are hoping that we are back at Level 2 at the start of next term, of course, but we also know that we will be challenged again over the coming months. I have complete confidence that we will continue to show our sense of solidarity and community. On challenges, I wrote to all parents and to all senior students yesterday about the way forward with this year’s Cambridge exams. They are going ahead, and we are managing some of the complications with those exams that occur earlier than others. Should it look as though we will be staying at Level 3 for an extended period, we will be able to move to School Assessed Grades, and we are ready for every eventuality: the students will not, in any situation, be adversely affected. The full details are on the front page of our website, and are available here: https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/media/2627/cambridge-examinations_23_september.pdf Please let me know if you have any questions. I will be running a live Question and Answer session online next week: parents and students will receive a separate invitation to attend this. Over the next two weeks, the school will be open between 8 am and 4 pm, as it usually is during the holidays. Do remember, though, that no parents or students are permitted in the school grounds except for the front car park and Reception. If you come in, please wear a face covering, sign in with the Covid app, and come to Reception. If you need to come into school to collect something, we will escort you there. Once we reach Level 2, we will explain how the rules will work at that level. Our teachers, though, will be on holiday! Other than those teachers of senior students who are running tutorials, I want all of my teaching staff to have a rest. Unlike the teachers in some other schools, our teachers have been working full-time throughout lockdown, doing a fantastic job to ensure that learning and pastoral care has continued as smoothly as possible. They need a break so they can take a deep breath, enjoy their family lives, and come back refreshed for next term. As do many of our parents! It’s going to be an unusual holiday once more, but I hope that you all do as much as you can to get a break, to have family time without the pressure of learning (except for our Year 11 to 13 students, but you do get a long, long learning holiday after November 18th!), and take the opportunity to get your first or second vaccination. I’m now fully-vaccinated, and we would encourage all those able to get their jabs in as soon as possible. It’s about our personal safety; it’s about the safety of our whole community; and it’s about the ability of our whole community to live a full, active life with as few restrictions as possible. Enjoy the next fortnight and I’ll hopefully see you all very soon indeed! Kia kaha, 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 DiaryBook week..... Kia Ora, I am going to be very brief today, as like many of our students I am looking forward to getting away from my laptop for a period of time. What I do want to say though is a huge thank you to our students. Online learning is a challenge and school is very different when we are unable to meet, interact, and enjoy the full range of experiences that school normally involves. Our student’s attendance and engagement during the past five and a half weeks has been excellent, to the point where our online attendance is possibly better than our normal attendance at this time of year. Thank you also to the parents. For the reasons I have already mentioned, keeping your son or daughter engaged, motivated, and enthused about school during this time has no doubt been a challenge for some. Your ongoing support is much appreciated. A final thank you goes to our brilliant teachers. They have again adapted and evolved their lessons to work online. They have created and modified assessments to give students and parents feedback on progress. And now, as we come to the end of term many have volunteered to run tutorials during the break to support our students in their final preparation for the end of year assessments. An email regarding tutorials was sent earlier today to enable students to see the timetable available and to sign up. Tutorials are optional for students. Some students may wish to attend all of the tutorials available in their subject areas, while others will be a bit more selective in where they put their energy. We trust our students to make decisions that are going to work best for them and their learning. You will have noticed that some subject areas do not have tutorials during the break, this is because their examinations are later in the session, and we will be running tutorials throughout Term 4 as we always do. I am optimistic and hoping that we will have our students back in school to start next term. A reminder that for Term 4 our students move back into their summer uniform, great news for boys who have struggled to keep their top button done up or their shirt tucked in. I hope that everyone enjoys the break from online schooling and is rested, refreshed and ready to take on the final term of the year. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College
Global CitizenshipThe following website provides information about the Global Citizen initiative. If the students open the site and scroll down, they will discover that being a 'Global Citizen' is about Defending the Planet - Climate Change, Defeating Poverty, and Demanding Equity, by their actions. Many World leaders are contributing to the 'Global Citizen - Take Action pledge', and this weekend Global Citizen Live is being held which will be a 24-hour event involving guest speakers, musicians, and world leaders. So, encourage your son/daughter to learn how they can be part of the solution and not the problem. English Lockdown PoemsYear 8 EnglishIsometric Rooms in Year 7 MathsThis week Year 7 have been learning about drawing in three dimensions and specifically isometrically. Students were required to design an isometric room. Here are the some of the rooms they created: This week's College Maths Problem
Solutions for last week's problem:College Hockey RegistrationsYear 7/8 Hockey 6-Aside League – Term 4 @ Pinehurst School We have extended registrations for our Term 4 afterschool 6-Aside Hockey program until the end of the school holidays (Sunday 10th October) ! This programme can run in Level 2 or Level 1, and it is a great chance for students to be active within the Pinehurst school environment. Please register here: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School. Please see the information letter on the website for further details: https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/media/2614/hockey-yr-7_10-term-4-afterschool-6-aside-league.pdf College Touch Rugby RegistrationsYear 7/8 Touch Rugby – Year 7/8 BOYS wanted. We need a couple more boys to join our Year 7/8 Boys Touch team in Term 4. Games are played on a Thursday afterschool. If you are interested, please register here: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School. Please see the information letter for all the details: year-7_8-touch-rugby-information-letter-2021.pdf (pinehurst.school.nz) Kia ora, Parents, I am sure you are ready for a break right now and although we won’t be able to do the usual things we do in the holidays this time there is a chance for some downtime. During this week in particular we can see that the children are tired and there are a few more tears in the background from pre-schoolers during lessons so we know that it is time to recharge, get up a little bit later maybe and hang out. We know it has been tough at home with young children who aren’t able to burn energy off so easily and as a staff we really appreciate everything you have done to support us to carry on our programmes. Online learning is different and we have had to adapt what we do so easily in the classroom to make it work but it really has worked well this time. As this is our fifth lockdown in the past 18 months we have been able to refine our practice, listen to feedback and create an online programme that has meant our children have not missed out on their learning through the opportunities given to them. If we are able to go back to the classroom at the beginning of next term, we can carry on from where we reached today. I am really proud of the efforts that children, parents and staff have made to ensure that is the case. P23 will have nine new friends to get to know next term as our last intake of New Entrants for the year. They have met online with their teachers Vicky Walton and Kylie Turner and their parents have had the opportunity to find out more about our New to 2 syndicate and programmes. I am sure that we all remember vividly each of our children’s first days at school, the anticipation and anxiety of letting go of our five year old and the next stage of their life beginning. It is a magical time and we welcome all of our new children and families to Pinehurst and our very special Primary school. If we are in Level 2 next term there are Cambridge progression tests to look forward to from Week 2. Our Year 6 students will take their Checkpoint tests in Maths, English and Science and have received revision packs to go through during the holidays to give them extra confidence before they take the tests. We don’t ask other year groups to revise or give out papers, they are too young. We know how they perform in class and this is the most important thing at this age. The tests just give an opportunity to work under timed conditions and for us to teach our students the best ways to do that. Thankyou all of you for the support and kind words we appreciate them and we are really looking forward to seeing your children, hopefully in person, next term. Kia kaha, ka pai to harere. Take care and have a good holiday. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary
Sea Monster Soup in P4!We have been working hard this week brainstorming ideas for catching a sea monster! Following along with our Pirate theme this term, we decided to make delicious sea monster soup aboard our pirate ship. But first, we must catch the sea monster! There were lots of different ideas like, using a burger and fries, using yummy smelling hand sanitizer, and even charging up a special tool that makes the sea monster fall asleep so that we can catch him. As part of our Global Perspectives unit this term, each child in P4 had to pick and learn a new skill. Some of the skills were a magic trick, juggling, roller skating, and flipping a pancake. Watch the video and see April Jing mastering her skills of flipping a slice of bread. She’s off to make some delicious French toast 😊 P9's Art TessellationsOnline learning is fun in P10!To celebrate Te wiki o te Reo, P10 were creative by making a colour wheel and labelling the primary and secondary colours in Te Reo. To enrich our basic knowledge of shapes and colours, we used the brain breaks to hunt for items around the home. The catch was that it was in Te Reo, so thinking fast was key! We read Māori Myths and Legends and revisited myths about Māui. He was such a trickster! To finish of the week, the students wrote their own myth, they rolled a die to determine what characters, setting and event their myth was going to be about. During our writing lessons, P10 have been learning about writing an entertaining poem. Students have discovered that using alliterations, end rhyme sentences and onomatopoeia’s help their poem become more engaging to the audience. We have been investigating the power of magnets in science. Students made a home-made compass and discovered that the ‘needle’, when magnetised, will always point north. Book week and the Culture and identity afternoon yesterday have been a welcome change for the students. It has been fantastic seeing costumes made at home, activities completed and items that students have been extremely proud to share. P10 wish you all a safe and happy holiday and we all cannot wait until we are back at school, in the classroom. P13 Culture and IdentityOnline Learning News From P14P14 have become very confident online learners and we have been using a variety of different ways to share our thinking and learning with each other. Our Big Write last week celebrated Book Week. It was about ‘The Greatest Library’ and we used our imagination and feelings to add detail. We were also learning how to use repetition of words to create interest and to share a strong point of view. We have been loving reading our class novel ‘Charlotte’s Web’ each day. In chapter 14 we compared and contrasted two of the characters using different diagrams to show our thinking. Using key words and main ideas we created our own visualisations of scenes from Chapter 13. The special activity afternoons have been so much fun and we have really enjoyed being as creative as we can sharing ideas, information and thinking. During Book Week some of us created Mr Potato Man and… Mr Fruit Man as well! During Cultural and Identify Afternoon we took pride in sharing clothing and precious items from our different cultures while others shared about their identity and ideas they are passionate about. Lockdown Life in P15We are proving to be resilient and adaptable in P15. Students have been having fun not only with their core daily lessons but also with the Book Week and the Cultural and Identity Week. We have been learning to draw comics. This has involved mini-lessons in how to draw characters, word bubbles, and block lettering. Please read some below. P15 has also been learning to write persuasive letters. We have examined the features of letters, and the use of emotive language. Below is an example of a student trying to persuade her parents for a dog. Plastic rubbish, especially in the ocean, is a real issue. P15 has been investigating this problem and we have been designing solutions involving technology to either clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or to stop rubbish getting into the ocean. Below are some of our designs. We wish you all Happy Holidays! P16 this week
Over the past two weeks, P16 have been learning all about area and perimeter. This week we became architects and builders, putting our newly learnt knowledge into action. First, we solved problems with given floor plans. We then created these floor plans using an online platform called ‘Floor Planner’, while ensuring we included the correct measurements. Once this was mastered, we were able to create a floor plan of our dream house! We had to think carefully about how much carpet would cover the area and think about the perimeter for the building materials. Sharing special items for ‘culture and identity’ week.
P17 this termIn P17, we are currently doing a Big Write mission about the “Mysteries at the Red Cafe!” For this writing mission, our first task was to become a journalist and write a newspaper article asking for help from the community to help solve the mystery. From this mission, we soon found out that the culprits to the Red Café mysteries were the local squirrels. Since then, we have had to create ways to help the squirrels by building a “Squirrel Activity Centre”. To help with this, we took our writing skills one step further to pretend and write a journal as if we were a SQUIRREL. For the newsletter we have collected some sample work from our class to showcase our writing and art skills. Our next mission is to create a formal letter asking permission to create an activity centre for the squirrels 😊. Primary SpanishWhat a busy term we have had despite the lockdown! The Year 1 students have been busy learning to talk about their pets and favourite animals. They are experts at identifying the farm and zoo animals in Spanish and have enjoyed a wide variety of activities both at school and at home. The Year 3 and 5 students have been learning about clothing (la ropa), describing what they are wearing in first and third person. We have looked at verb conjugations, definite/indefinite articles, parts of speech, and basic construction of Spanish sentences. Señora Cataloni is proud of everyone’s efforts during lockdown and would like to congratulate all her classes on such a successful term of learning! Primary Hockey RegistrationsHockey Lunchtime Programme – Term 4 We have extended registrations for our Term 4 Lunchtime Primary Hockey programmes until the end of the school holidays (Sunday 10th October) ! These programmes have already been very popular with students ! A reminder that the sessions are open to ALL students, including students who are new to Hockey / want to give Hockey a go 😊 This programme can run in Level 2 or Level 1, and it is a great chance for students to be active within the Pinehurst school environment. PS – if your Year 3 son/daughter is doing competition Gymnastics on a Thursday in Term 4 already, and is also keen to try Hockey, we are happy for them to join our Friday lunchtime programme with our Year 4-6 students – please just register and we will include them in the Friday programme. Please register here: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School. Please see the information letters on the website for further details: https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/co-curricular/sport-at-pinehurst/hockey/
Primary Touch Rugby RegistrationsWe need a couple more boys to join our Year 5/6 Boys Touch team in Term 4. Games are played on a Monday afterschool. If you are interested, please register here: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School. Please see the information letter for all the details: year-1_6-touch-rugby-information-letter-2021.pdf (pinehurst.school.nz) Year 12 Music takes a guided tour of Australia’s largest National ParkThe Year 12 Music students got to immerse themselves in the wildlife of the Kakadu region – and all for the sake of music. One of their five studied works this year is by the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe whose work, Third Sonata for Strings (Jabiru Dreaming) is inspired by the wildlife in this park as well as an Aboriginal folk song. The Aboriginal culture used music as a mapping system as well as a story-telling method of tribal traditions across Australia. To view a short documentary of the bird life at Kakadu, click here and to hear the piece, click here Movement 1 and Movement 2. This is the first year the syllabus is exploring works outside of the well-known Western great works and it’s a refreshing change to explore what composers closer to New Zealand have to offer. Primary Lantern Competition WinnersYear New-2: Linghcu Year 3-4: Elizabeth Year 5-6: Michelle Scholastic Book OrdersDue to the Lockdown, Scholastic Books have a number of unfulfilled orders from Term 3. Auckland orders will be dispatched to schools from their warehouse as soon as Auckland reaches Level 2 and students return to in-person learning. Pinehurst School Leavers MementoAs Pinehurst celebrates 30 years of memories and milestones, we are celebrating by launching a new range of NZ made jewellery that has been exclusively designed and handcrafted for Pinehurst by Meghan Balmer from 58 Facets Limited. Each item is made in NZ of sterling silver with a handcrafted pinecone pendant to represent our school and the seeds that come from ‘our Pinehurst’ – which is the name for a grove of pine trees. The necklace includes a 50cm cable chain and a solid pinecone pendant – both in sterling silver. A silver sterling pinecone lapel pin is also available, which arrived the week before lockdown. This has yet to be photographed but we will get this image to you as soon as we can. We are offering pre-orders for these items to our School Leavers as an initial launch to this exclusive range.
If you are interested in putting through an order, or have any queries, please contact sylvia.lum@pinehurst.school.nz EcoMatters Bike Hubs have just launched their Street Art Bike Challenge, a month-long photo treasure hunt by bike, in which people of all ages are invited to look for street art across the Auckland region and share their photos with the hashtag #StreetArtBikeChallenge. The challenge is part of Biketober, Auckland's annual festival of bicycle fun and will run from 1 – 31 October 2021. The challenge is a family-friendly event anyone can enjoy while adhering to Covid-19 restrictions and physical distancing. For all the information you need, visit the event website https://www.ecomatters.org.nz/bikechallenge/ Play Cricket with East Coast Bays CricketRegistrations for the cricket season are now open. Please register online at eastcoastbayscricket.co.nz The Club is focused on fun, teamwork and performance providing children of all skill levels a chance to learn the game in an enjoyable environment. We cater for all children’s cricket from Year 1 through to Year 8, both girls and boys. The uniform comprises a club shirt, club shorts or trousers, and club cap or wide-brimmed hat, which are available from Players Sports online or at their Onehunga shop. The Club will have clothing available for purchase on muster day. The Club provides all playing equipment required, although you are welcome to use your own. Please contact the Club for more information at ecbayscricket@gmail.com |