Friday 26th June 2020Opening Words from the Executive PrincipalKia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 A very short message from me today to say thank you and have a great holiday. This is actually our first ‘last day of term’ of the year, and I’m sure it feels to many parents, teachers and students as if the last five months have been one long term, broken up by one of the most unusual period in many of our lives. So it’s a big occasion, and I consider us to be very lucky indeed to be able to have our whole community in school today, our whole community smiling and enjoying the last day of term, and our whole community coming together, saying ‘have a good holiday’ and heading off in our separate directions, confident that we will all be back together in three weeks. We are of course keeping an eye on events should they change, and will respond as we need to, but right now I am hopeful that we will all be back, one family again, on July 21st. I’ve had the chance to enjoy the very best of our school this week. Just a few examples: our College Open day was very well attended indeed, and it was good to hear the positive responses of people seeing our school for the first time. Our student guides – and our parent guides, of course: thank you! – are always amazing recommendations for our school. Dipping in and out of classes across the school this week has been such a rewarding experience, from the excitement of Lego Day to Year 7 experiments on water displacement to complicated discussions on discrimination and politics. I’ve seen Year 7 and 8 students come from behind to beat Kristin 4-2 in their first hockey game of the season (I enjoyed that); I’ve seen our Year 6 netball team play (and beat) Albany Primary in their first game of the season; and I enjoyed a wonderful Informal Music Concert on Wednesday, the highlight of which was probably Lingyao Qu’s performance on the Guzheng (古箏). Thank you to Mrs Naumovska and to all the students for their performances. I hope parents and students have had the chance to say goodbye to Miss Pirini, Mr Konlechner and Mrs Harrison over the past week or so. They take our very best wishes with them. Next term, we welcome Ms Haysom, Mr Maclean and Ms Robertson in their places, all very experienced, talented members of staff who will bring their own enthusiasms and strengths to the school. Mrs Kenny also joins our new entrant team, and Ms Brock joins our Year 5 team (though Mrs Millward will still be with us at the start of next term). We are looking forward to welcoming them all. Over the holidays, I hope everyone has at least two weeks away from work – students and teachers (and our other staff who are also managing to take a break). I’m pleased to see so many of our Year 11-13 students taking advantage of the tutorials we’re running in the third week of the holidays – a reminder that they need to sign up for these on the form they’ve been given – and I hope that they don’t do much work in the first two weeks. If possible, time out and about with friends and family should be a priority. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, have a lovely holiday and pop into see me if you need to talk about anything! I’ll be in school through most of the break. A huge thank you to our whole community for the way you have supported your children, the school and each other over the past few months, and an even bigger thank you in advance for your support when we come back. 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, We are all ready for a break at the end of this week, there are some tired little faces around who want some time to rest and recharge. That hasn’t stopped us making the most of every learning opportunity we can in the Primary. What a journey we have been on in 2020 so far, it hasn’t been what any of us have expected but there have been so many positives in learning and in building resilience. The biggest plus during Lockdown was the opportunity to create deeper relationships and to get to know our students so well. This has really paid off in the classroom and we have been able to continue our programmes from where we left off. Cross Country was a wonderful event last Friday, the sun shone for us and all of our students took part with a smile on their face. The New to 2 syndicate ran longer races than they ever had before thanks to the training they had with Mr Taylor. There were no tears and no refusals to run. Medals have been presented at assembly for Years 0-3 and Years 4-6 will have theirs at the beginning of Term 3. The races were also an opportunity for our older students to show leadership and they did an amazing job. Running races with younger students and cheering them on really helped our youngest children to have the confidence to run. The favourite day of the week was of course Lego Day, an annual event of learning through play, technology, engineering and creativity. Most started the day with the story of Lego and then went on to complete challenges based on a Lego theme. There was writing, drawing, animation and iMovies along with Lego P.E. and Science, using bricks to create habitats, bridges and buildings that lit up. There were very strong levels of engagement in every classroom, lots of activity and learning focused talk. Some children wanted to create their own inventions with a variety of bricks, some liked the safety of creating something specific. In P21 with Mrs McKewen there were Bricks4Kids instructors who worked with a different year group each lesson to create pieces for a Lego carnival. Children who were very passionate about Lego or self-confessed Lego fanatics were chosen to build the carnival pieces, all of which moved and were replicas of the kinds of rides you would find in an amusement park. The levels of concentration from the students working in there were exceptional and Mrs McKewen was very excited to pick up some new tips for teaching Lego Dacta and Robotics. If your child is interested in Lego or has been inspired by the Lego day, you can sign them up on the Bricks4Kids website for after school classes at Pinehurst next term. Thank you for all of the support you have given us through Lockdown, Level 3 and the rest of Term 2, we really appreciate how the community has come together for a common purpose and allowed us as a staff to continue to provide a high standard of education. Enjoy a break if you are able to take one and we will see you again on Tuesday 21 July. Nga Mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary Primary Cross Country 2020Last Friday, on a beautiful winters day, the 2020 Primary Cross Country events took place at Pinehurst School. In the morning, our Year 5 & 6 students ran a brand new course for the first time, incorporating our fields, the turf and even navigating their way through the back of our College buildings. There were some exciting finishes on the day, with many sprint finishes to the line for placings! Well done to Matai house, who were the winning house for the Year 5 & 6 event. After morning tea, our Year 3 & 4 students came out to run. They competed on a similar course to the Year 5 & 6 students, on our school fields. Well done to all students who took part, with lots of smiles at the finish line! To finish the day, our ‘New to 2’ students came to run the fields, with every single student making it all the way across the finish line! There are some great little runners to watch in this Primary age group – we are excited to see them all compete again next year! And a big congratulations to all our medal winners (see below). Finally, a very special thank you to our student marshalls from Year 8, Year 6 and Year 5 for all their help with the events, and a big thank you to all the parents, grandparents, friends and family who came along to support the students on the day. To see all the photos from the day, please visit Pinehurst Facebook Sports Page Henri Rousseau in P5In P5 we have been learning about Henri Rousseau's "Tiger in a Tropical Storm". This links nicely with our Science where we are learning about animals. Despite their apparent simplicity, Rousseau's jungle paintings were built up meticulously in layers. He used a large number of green shades to capture the lush exuberance of the jungle. We decided to have a go at replicating this creative approach. Firstly, we did observational drawings of tigers, which we then dyed orange, outlined with black vivid and cut out. Next we dyed our backgrounds with a mix of brown, orange and blue dyes. After that we created the main tree to the left in the composition and added some lush foliage. We really had to think about composition and layering different shades of greenery. It took a lot of perseverance to create an abundance of green forest grasses and scrubs. Eventually we had enough layers to build up and complete our composition. We hope you like our artworks. Keeping busy in P8We have visited Harold the giraffe in his ‘van,’ we had a successful cross country day last week and this week we had a magical Lego day. But in between all this we even managed to squeeze in come super work. We have introduced ‘happy handwriting’ in P8 and the children absolutely love it. Happy handwriting is what we call cursive writing and we are learning how to practise handwriting patterns and the joining of letters. We’ve had fun writing our names in shaving foam and practising our happy handwriting skills. In Science we have been learning all about the sun, earth and moon, day and night and all the interesting facts about Space. So for Art we thought our activity of the famous ‘Starry Night’ was just the best idea. This was a process and we followed the instructions step by step, using oil pastels, we then painted over with dye to get this outcome. We think you'll agree these pictures all came out beautifully. ESOL in the PrimaryIn ESOL this week, we had lots of fun building Lego towers and writing and talking about their special features. This is a police tower. It has got a treasure box in here. They found him. - Eddy Deng, Year 1 This is an old tower. The people keep the crystals safe. The bad guys will come and then they can fly away. See the wings, see the power. - Andersen Zhao, Year 1 My tower is a police tower. It has a motorbike and a police helicopter. There is a robber inside who tried to steal the gold and the legendary sword. - Justin Jia, Year 4 My tower is 180 stories high and it is a space elevator. It is protecting meteorites from falling down on Earth. At the top you can see the whole city from the viewing platform. - Remy Tang, Year 4 İBienvenidos! Welcome to Senior Primary Spanish!We have all been working hard on practising our spoken Spanish and it is so nice to hear the students calling out their new knowledge in the playground! This term the Year 4 have been discovering where in the world Spanish is spoken and learning how to ask and say where they are from. We have a wide range of nationalities amongst us. Now we are learning about various “Methods of Transport” and we spent today making Lego models of all sorts of strange ways we dream of coming to school; ranging from magic carpets to spaceships! Year 5 started the term learning the numbers to 31, the days of the week and the months of the year. Now we are learning how to form dates and to ask and answer when our birthdays are. We are enjoying lots of reinforcement activities and games to support our learning. Year 6 have learned a lot of vocabulary relating to “Parts of the Body” with a major focus on masculine/feminine and singular/plural nouns. This is always quite an unusual concept for the students to grasp, but they are all making excellent progress. We have just used all our new knowledge to draw and describe monsters! Lego DayThe Best Day of the Year? LEGO DAY! The same phrase could be heard across Pinehurst Primary throughout the day, “This is the best day EVER!” What more could a child want than a whole day of exploring and creating with Lego, through Maths, Reading, Writing, Music, Science, PE, Mandarin and Spanish? The creativity and problem-solving skills demonstrated by students was quite mind-blowing! In Robotics, Bricks 4 Kidz came in and set up a carnival. Wow, it was AMAZING!! The students used the WeDo sets to build and motorise carnival rides. There were merry-go-rounds, loop de loops, swinging boats and dragons... In Science, Year 6 students are learning how to make simple circuits and created a Lego lamp to light up. Look at the incredible designs and collaboration and check out the amazing Lego house lamp by Shuntaro and Youngmin! Learning about warm and cool habitats for different animals in Science, students created an appropriate habitat for a chosen animal. Alex’s Lego desert vehicle skims across the hot dry sand.... In Spanish, students are learning how to say and write the colours and parts of the body in Spanish. What better way to learn than with Lego? What a great day of amazing Lego collaboration and creation throughout the Primary classes! Primary NetballIn preparation for the upcoming netball season, the Year 6 Pinehurst Falcons, hosted Albany Primary on Wednesday for a pre-season netball game. Coach Deb was able to try some different combinations and was impressed with the teams performance. We are all looking forward to the season starting next term. Celebrating the Chinese Dragon Boat FestivalThis week, to celebrate the Chinese Dragon Boat estival also known as 端午节 (duān wǔ jié) we have been learning all about it's origin, the traditions and customs surrounding this festival in Mandarin. Throughout the school (NE - Year 9) we have completed many activities to mark this ancient festival. We even managed to incorporate Lego Day in the Primary to the festival, where some students modernised their boats with turbo jets. Some students were inspired and went home to make real edible sticky rice dumplings 粽子 (zōngzi) sticky rice dumplings. Kia Ora, Today we end Term 2 and the college has been running like it normally does, a stark contrast to how we started 10 weeks ago. A huge amount of credit must be given to both the students and the teachers for how quickly they adapted to the circumstances of Lockdown, and then how smoothly everyone transitioned back into school. Yesterday you would have received your son or daughter's report. I managed to read most of them before they were made available to parents, and again what they show is that the significant majority of our students are working hard and achieving to a very good level. We will be in contact toward the end of the holiday to invite you to attend our parent/teacher conferences in Week 2 of term. We look forward to being able to discuss your child’s progress with you and map out a pathway for the term ahead. I would like to wish all of our community a good midyear break. I hope that all of our students take a good break away from their studies during this time to refresh and recharge. This morning I am finalising our Year 11–13 tutorial programme for the third week of the holidays. We have had 138 students sign up to these optional tutorials which is great. I will be speaking to all of the senior students this afternoon to ensure that they understand the protocol for these tutorials so that they run as smoothly as possible. Nga Mihi, Kieran Verryt Year 7 Social Science: Sustainable CitiesThis term, Year 7 have been learning about how people’s management of resources impact on environmental and social sustainability. A core part of our inquiry approach is geared around research. Students were tasked with the question… why is clean energy important for cities to thrive? The art of answering research questions like this is not only the research and ability to locate information, it’s also about the student’s ability to present their answer in a convincing fashion. This requires them to structure their key points into topic sentences followed by facts, statistics and other information used as evidence to support their key points. Here are some examples of their work… Year 7 Global CitizenshipGiven the challenges the world has faced this year due to the global pandemic, a group of Year 7 students have been discussing and researching New Zealand's response to the Coronavirus pandemic. They have converted some of their research into presentations that illustrate how New Zealand has become a model for how to deal with the pandemic. Here are a couple slides from some of the presentations that show how New Zealand responded. Making their own musicDigital Technology students created these projects which can be played on Microbits. Kai Yu – Year 8 https://makecode.microbit.org/_WrC9V33MtCJP Osbert Gu – Year 7 Year 8 ScienceThe Year 8 Science students completed the circulatory system unit with a hands on practical where they got to dissect a sheep's heart. A sheep's heart is very similar to a human heart, and this practical gave the students a chance to see how blood is pushed around their bodies. They were able to identify the chambers of the heart and see the variations between the right and left sides of the heart. They were also able to see how big some of the major blood vessels, such as the aorta, really are. It was a great learning experience for them, and could be the start of some future heart surgeons' careers! Year 9 Design TechnologyThe student's final projects included design work produced during Lockdown. These students followed the design process to create an original product for use on or around a desk. These students came in at lunchtimes to complete some fantastic work employing many different manufacturing processes and materials. Year 10 EnglishYear 10 English students have been studying the work of poet Carol Ann Duffy. Students made a ‘poetree’ featuring cubes of imagery that individual students found meaningful from the poems, ‘Good Teachers’ and ‘War Photographer’. AS HistoryDuring the term in AS History we have had a series of mini quizzes to test the student's knowledge. This week, Neeraj was crowned the overall winner of the competition! Staff vs Students Volleyball MatchOn Wednesday the staff took on the students in the first game of their defence of the Christie Cup. Volleyball was the first game of the year, after Lockdown stopped play earlier and it was a great effort by both teams who fielded some skillful players. The staff team has never conceded even a game against the students before and took the first comfortably. The second game saw the students take control early on and the staff struggled to string points together. In the third, the staff and students were closely matched and match point went back and forth with teams struggling under the pressure. In the end, with an audible sigh of relief, the staff were victorious. Thanks to all those who took part and the Sports Council Leaders for organising. AKSS Golf Stroke (Round 2)The second round of the Individual Golf Stroke Play tournament was held last Monday, this time at Pupuke Golf Club. Our students placed very well overall with everyone placing in the top 20 for both rounds. Congratulations and well done to Eun Seo (Nicole) Choi who placed 1st overall in the girls division. Overall Final Results (36 holes)
A great start for the girls!The start of the winter lacrosse season coincided with a very blustery and forceful rain shower. The girls however took it in their stride and despite the multiple slides, trips and falls both teams made use of the opportunity to be out on the field playing and not in Lockdown. In our division the lacrosse season is starting off with friendly games in Term 2 and the competition component will commence in Term 3. The girls won 15 to 1 against Mt Albert. WeightliftingWeightlifting club runs every Tuesday and/or Thursday after school for students in Years 9-13. Pinehurst has secured funding from KiwiSport to run the activity so it is free to attend. Weightlifting is a great opportunity to find a new sport but can also supplement your existing training for other sport, improving your strength, power and mobility. This Saturday they are running an open day where anyone can go along and try it out but if you want to give it a go next term, you are entitled to a have-a-go session on a Tuesday or Thursday before registering your commitment. If you are interested in weightlifting please contact Miss Murray - Charlie.Murray@pinehurst.school.nz I Spy in the School....I Spy in the Primary...tracing shadows to track the time of day! I Spy in the College...running in the rain at Cross Country last week! I Spy in the Primary...having fun on the slide! I Spy in the Primary...a medley of music being played! I Spy in the College...Year 13 at their Informal Dinner last Friday! In Music this WeekThe Second Informal Music Concert – congratulations to all performers The second informal music concert was held in C2 on Wednesday from 4–5pm. Twenty items from Year 1-13 Pinehurst students wowed the audience with their beginner to exceptionally skilled performance ability. Here is a small sample of a couple of performances on the night.
The next informal Music concert will be held at the end of Term 3. Performances by the Year 10-13 Music students The IGCSE, AS and A2 students are working towards completing their performance portfolio by the end of Term 3. They have several opportunities to develop and gain feedback on the progress of their performance skills over the year, before their final submission is due. Check out William Lin’s (Year 11) performance of “A Poem Titled You” by Taeoyen by clicking here. A good time to enrol in Itinerant Music Lessons Term 3 is a great time to enrol your child in itinerant music lessons. Eighteen part-time, instrumental specialists offer individual tuition before school, during and after school. For more information or to enrol your child in a co-curricular group or instrumental tuition, visit the Music page on the Pinehurst School website, via this link. APPA Music Competition for Year 5-8 Music StudentsThe competition is designed to encourage and recognise Auckland’s primary/intermediate solo instrumentalists towards excellence in performance in the hope that they will become life-long amateur or professional musicians. The goals of the competition are: In order to enter young musicians must be: Prize Money and Other Benefits
* If not awarded then there will be additional Merit Awards of $500 each. For an application form and further details, please click here or contact Ms Naumovska on marija.naumovska@pinehurst.school.nz Pinehurst Fitness ConnectionHi Pinehurst Mums! Its Coach Kelly here! Are you lacking motivation and wanting to commit to exercise and eating well after Lockdown? Enroll now for the Pinehurst Fitness Connection! We will kick it off on Wednesday 22nd of July. Numbers are limited so join now! We will meet at the beautiful new dance studio on Mondays and Wednesdays during term time for fun, functional fitness for mums! Sessions run for 50 mins from 9:00 – 9:50am.
A bit about Kelly:
Pricing $30 per week for both classes or $15 for a single. Email Kelly Hebbink encompass.fitness@outlook.co.nz for further info or to register. Uniform ShopThe Uniform shop will be open during the holidays on the following dates between 10am and 2pm:
Harp Dance ConcertOur Pinehurst students who take up harp lessons with Anna Dunwoodie are members of the Auckland Harp Orchestra and will be participating in this concert. There will be some 20 harpists on the day. Please come and join this fun filled concert. |