Friday 27 November 2020Opening Words from the Executive PrincipalKia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 It seems hard to imagine, but we’re nearly at the end of the year. For nearly all of our Year 9 students, the school year has already come to an end, as they are heading out on camp next week, sailing to and from a northern wilderness. We marked the end of their year with a wonderful, small Prizegiving yesterday: our largest ever group, and a lovely one too. Twenty of the year group have been with us for just one year, but the whole year group is now so well integrated that we wouldn’t be able to tell the newbies from the lifers! My best wishes to all the Year 9 students: have a great time, and come back safely with plenty of stories to tell. Next week is full of ceremonies and events: three more Prizegivings (Primary, Year 7 and 8, and Senior College); two Christmas concerts (Primary and College); and our annual Christmas Picnic, which promises to be a lovely afternoon. I’m hoping to see as many of you as possible in and around the grounds next week. This week began with the Year 7 and 8 Social – such charming, grown-up and well-dressed young people! Then the Year 5 and 6 actors, dancers and singers took over, with two wonderful performances of The Lion King. A group of intrepid senior students headed down to Tongariro for their Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award tramp; and we welcomed next year’s intake of Year 9 students to the school for their induction on Monday. I’m looking forward to seeing them in a Pinehurst uniform next year. And today, of course, we have had PrEP, the Primary School’s annual business event-of-the-century! It was as wonderful as ever, and I loved the new reusable currency we have to buy the students’ creative masterpieces. One week out from the end of school is a good time to pay tribute to departing staff. This year, we lose Mrs Tammy Farquharson, who is retiring from teaching after 25 years at the school. Mrs Farquharson teaches Spanish to children from Years 3 to 8, and she has also taught French at the school in the past. She is, in fact, one of the original College teachers and has been a committed member of our community for the whole of her time at Pinehurst. We wish her well. Also retiring from teaching is Mrs Wendy Kothe, who has taught Mathematics at the school for three years, and who has been a strong, caring, expert presence throughout her time here. We shall miss both Wendy and Tammy, and hope that they will stay in touch. It’s nearly Christmas! Enjoy the weekend, avoid the Mall at all costs if you can, enjoy the freedom we have to mix and celebrate together, and see you next week. 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, What a week it has been! The most amazing production of Lion King from our Year 5 and 6 students has been one of the highlights of the year. Tuesday night was very wet but somewhat cooler and for an opening performance I just remember thinking wow where did that come from? Everything was perfect, funny, sad sometimes and very entertaining. The show was a visual feast for the eyes with amazing costumes, lighting, sound and set. The singing and acting performances well beyond the performers’ years. The whole of the syndicate, students, staff and parents came together to create fantastic memories. Well done everyone it was a fabulous production. Donovan Bixley the author and illustrator, visited the Library this week to entertain us with his books and his own story. His Flying Furballs series continues to delight young and old and it was thrilling for our students to meet him. This term has been all about PrEP or the Primary Enterprise Programme in our Social Studies curriculum and today is the big market day we have all been working towards. PrEP is not just about making products, its main purpose is to teach children about economics, exchange, marketing, production, needs versus wants and decisions at the margin. It also teaches children how to collaborate for a common purpose, to work together to produce something that others will want to buy and to be proud of what they have created. In the spirit of sustainability we have decided to use reusable glass pebbles as currency instead of the paper pines which were disgarded at the end of the market. In everything that we do, we seek the learning opportunities and teachable moments so that our students get the most out of the learning opportunities they are given. Next week we are looking forward to the Year 4-6 Academic Prizegiving on Tuesday at 1:15pm in the Gym. A culmination of a strange but in many ways fantastic year. We are looking forward to the Christmas Family Picnic on Tuesday too and our Christmas Celebration on Thursday. I will send full details on this later today. Have a lovely weekend, kia pai tō rā whakatā. Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary Senior Primary DiscoLast Friday night saw the disco lights shining at Pinehurst. Excited Year 5 and 6 dancers turned up ready to show their moves on the dance floor. Edward Marshall, our resident DJ who also played some great beats at the Year 4&5 lunchtime disco the week before, had the playlist ready to go and groups of movers and groovers were keen to demonstrate their stylish dancing. Out on the field J-Ball was in progress, the game of corners was played and the chill zone with bean bags was a welcome break for a breath of fresh air. Inside the disco zone a fierce battle of limbo took place and groups of students took the opportunity to visit the photo booth. Great fun was had by all! Year 6 GraduationOur Year 6 students came together to celebrate the end of a busy, eventful 2020. Teams were put together, hot dog orders sent in and some stylish outfits made an appearance on the night. We all met at Ten Pin Bowling in Wairau Valley for an evening of competitive bowling, hot dog eating and a lot of laughing and high fives. Guffaws and gutter balls were heard all around, with yelps of delight when a strike was scored. Our Year 6 students showed great team spirit and both teachers and students enjoyed spending the evening together. It seems amazing to think that their time in the Primary is coming to an end and we will be watching them move on to the College. We wish them well in the next stage of their learning journeys! Year 5 GATE RoboticsThe Year 5 GATE Robotics students were given the opportunity to choose a project of their choice to build and programme, now that their building and programming skills have been well practiced. The building process was very involved and had many steps to carefully follow. Once building was complete, the programming began. We had a variety of chosen projects, from puppies to crazy lawnmowers, mousetraps, remote control cars and power-saws. It was wonderful to see the students focus and commit to the process, and the modifications taking place with the various aspects of programming. The students worked with both the Mindstorms EV3 sets and the Mindstorms NXT sets. Great fun was had and the students felt a real sense of accomplishment. Wonderful Hats in P23!For New Entrants our goal is to firmly establish the key skills required for literacy and numeracy success, and to build upon the work you as parents and your child’s preschool centre have begun. We know all children are different and as such we structure our New Entrant programme to cater to each individual child’s needs. We have been using our knowledge and skills to plan a sun hat (drawing and labeling), then we wrote detailed instruction’s for its production, before eventually making a version of our sun hat following the exact details we had written. As you can see, we stuck to the plan extremely well, especially with lots of tempting decorations to add to the hat! Our main focus in Maths is on developing children’s understanding of number concepts. Other mathematical areas that we cover are algebra, geometry and measurement. We had great fun learning to write a number sentence, working in pairs and using dice to randomly select the numbers, adds so much more interest! We have seven cute, rapidly growing tadpoles in P23 and are combining our hat theme with learning a little about a frog’s life cycle. Did you know there are frogs on every continent except Antarctica? For Art this week, we designed a beanie for a frog to wear if they visited Antarctica! Then we practiced our fine motor skills scissor skills as we cut out frog masks and beanies, attaching them together. İHola amigos! Welcome to Senior Primary Spanish!The Year 4 students began a new booklet at the start of this term: ‘Los animales en el mundo que debemos cuidar’ – looking after animals and the habitats that they live in. We are about to start learning about the 3Rs – Reducir (reduce ), Reutilisar (reuse), Reciclar (recycle ). We have discovered lots of cognates in this unit. Cognates are words that are very similar to each other in Spanish and English. Our Year 5 classes have continued their work on La Ropa – Clothing. They have added adjectives of colour to describe what they would wear to a “Día de los Muertos” celebration and they are able to describe their school uniform. This term the Year 6 students are continuing to study their “pasatiempos favoritos” – their favourite hobbies and interests. They have completed activities ranging from the musical instruments they play; their favourite books and TV programmes to hiking, playing board games and video games. To finish the term with some Christmas spirit, all my classes have learnt how children in Spain celebrate ‘La Navidad’ and they have been given a booklet with activities to complete. After 25 wonderful years teaching at Pinehurst I have decided to retire at the end of this year. It has been an incredible privilege to teach so many amazing students and to watch them develop into the fine young adults they are today. İFeliz Navidad a todos y Hasta luego! Señora Farquharson Madame ButterflyLast week Madame Butterfly visited the New to 2 classes. She was speaking to the students about caring for her caterpillars which live in the butterfly garden. Madame Butterfly spoke about how we don’t handle the cute, stripy creatures so that they can transform to a chrysalis or cocoon. Some of the students in P6 made posters which they displayed outside their classroom, informing everyone on the rules. New to 2 are now wildlife warriors! Primary MandarinYear 4 students have completed their comic strips they have been working on for the past few weeks. Country names and nationalities are the focus for the Year 5 and 6 MFL students this term. We now know how easy it is to turn a country name into a nationality, which is simply by adding the word 人 (rén) at the end. The CFL students have been working on incorporating adjectives and simile in their writing. PrEP Market DayThe Primary Enterprise Programme (PrEP) is a cross-curricular programme where Year 1- 6 students design and operate their own functioning business. It has strong links to the Social Sciences curriculum and allows students to engage in economic activity. The programme culminates in a market day, with students able to buy and sell products. Through PREP, students:
Curriculum linksPREP links student learning to the Economic World strand of the Social Sciences curriculum. It also links to the curriculum strands of Identity, Culture and Organisation, and Place and Environment. Students will apply skills from the English, Mathematics and Technology curriculums. PrEP provides students with the perfect opportunity to develop key competencies in the following areas:
The 2020 PrEP Market Day was a huge success. The students enjoyed the opportunity to be a stall holder and a shopper. It showcased the creative thinking that took place in the design and production of a varied range of products. Letters to Mr Reed from P7Kia Ora, The penultimate week of the school year has been a mixture of busy students in lessons, celebrations, and new adventures. We have had nearly 70 senior students out on Great Barrier Island and in the Tongariro National Park. The Tongariro group had to adapt and change their plans due to challenging weather conditions, while the students on Great Barrier Island enjoyed a morning swim with a pod of dolphins on Tuesday. Yesterday we enjoyed our Year 9 Prizegiving. The Year 9 cohort would normally be in the senior award ceremony, but due to their camp next week we had to have a separate ceremony for them. Whilst the smaller crowd meant that our students were not acknowledged as widely as they would normally have been, the nature of the Prizegiving allowed us to focus solely on Year 9 and enjoy fantastic musical performances from this group alone. Next Wednesday we look forward to celebrating the success of all of the other students in the College. Our Year 7–8 Prizegiving will start in the gym at 10am, and our Year 10-13 Prizegiving will begin at 1:30pm. It would be fantastic to see lots of parents at these events. This afternoon our Year 7 students will be put through their paces in a series of student leadership activities. This is a great opportunity for all of our students to further their skills, and also allows staff to observe the students to assist them in selecting the Year 8 leaders for 2021. We look forward to a busy last week of school next week. With the Year 9 Camp, two Prizegiving’s, the Christmas Concert and the school picnic. Ngā mihi Kieran Verryt, Principal of College Pinehurst Blue Table Tennis TeamCongratulations to the Pinehurst Blue Table Tennis team – Jessica, Kohtaro & Youngmin – who finished runners up in the 2020 Intermediate Cup Competition at North Harbour Table Tennis league this week, taking home silver medals! Despite a disrupted season, this young team has played some amazing Table Tennis, and were only narrowly beaten by eventual winners TNIS Turbos in the cup final. Well done also to our Pinehurst White team (Oliver & Roey), who also finished in the top 8 for this league. Many thanks to all the families for their support of the Table Tennis programme in 2020, and a special thanks to Sarah (Manager) for all her fabulous communication. DoE Bronze Tramp to the PinnaclesOn November 19, we left on a bus to the start of the tramp where we got dropped off and got into our groups. One by one we then left in our groups; my group was the last ones to leave to start the tramp up to the hut. The walk was about 8 km up to the hut which took us around 3 hours. We first walked to a bridge and stream with rocks to step on to get to the other side, we decided to take the bridge which only held one person at a time. After we got across the bridge it started getting steeper and trickier to walk on because the floor was uneven and rocky. There were many parts of the tramp were the steps were quite high and you had to use your hands to get up as well, there was also lots of moss on the steps which made it slippery. After a few breaks and eating lollies, we finally made it to the hut, once we arrived, we had to wait for some of the other teams to arrive so that we could listen to the house rules and choose our places to sleep. It rained for a little bit of time and then who ever wanted to go to the top of the Pinnacles walked in groups with teachers. It took us around 45 minutes and 600 steps and 2 ladders later to reach the top of the Pinnacles. When we got to the top, we looked at the amazing view and all the mountains. Since it had been raining, getting down was quite slippery, so we had to be careful and take our time. When we got back to the hut, we had dinner, played a few cards games and listened to Timothy singing. We all woke up at around 5:30 am, got ready and ate breakfast. My group left at 8 am it was very slippery as it had been raining the night before and since it was downhill and steep. Overall, it was an amazing experience that I am very grateful for and will never forget. There was lots of beautiful scenery and nature with a few challenges like walking up 600 steps. - excerpt from an article by Samantha Lauchlan DOE Silver Qualifier 2020 - Tongariro National ParkOn Monday the 23rd of November a group of Year 11 students arrived at school in high spirits, eager to spend the next 3 days of the Duke of Edinburgh qualifying tramp with friends and peers tramping around Tongariro National Park as well as river rafting in Taupo. The river rafting was a first for many of us and we thoroughly enjoyed the rocky waves and bold banter between the instructors there. Although we got damp and wet towards the end, the thrill was amazing - we even got to jump off a cliff near the waters! The next day the weather seemed to have dampened, but still, we woke up in hopeful moods and set off with our tramp bags towards the mountains and by the afternoon, we had completed a 17km section of the northern circuit. Towards the halfway mark, a tall and steep mountain slowed us down a lot as the hill was slippery and rocky however it was still an amazing experience. The view was immaculate and breathtaking. When we finally arrived back at the lodge we were completely out of breath but it was still such an exhilarating experience. On Wednesday morning, our DoE experience came to an end and we cleaned the lodge and drove back to Auckland ready to emerge into civilization and take a long warm shower. By Lisa Sun Candle sales from Year 9 studentsYear 9 students Nikita, Amelia and Lingyao have produced candles as part of their 'business for good' commerce project. They have wanted to create a product that helps with stress and anxiety so have developed a range of scented candles. The money raised will be going to Youthline. It has been a wonderful learning opportunity. Well done! Year 9 Book ReviewYear 9 MandarinThe students in the CFL class have been working on a project where they need to create a travel plan to different cities in China based on a given scenario. Throughout the term, they have worked out the costs and conducted research on various aspects of the trip, such as accommodation, iconic places to visit and unique local cuisine. The Mandarin Foreign Language class has also been researching about China. Students researched on a city of their choice, they discovered some fascinating facts on politics, economics and history. We travelled from the northern part of the country (Tianjin) all the way down to the south (Hong Kong) learning all about the diversities China has within its geographical boundaries. Boys & Girls vs. Wild AdventureLast Thursday 38 of our Year 8 students took to the water to experience a thrilling adventure aboard some of New Zealand’s most iconic maritime vessels; Lion and Steinlager 2. The trip was the reward for two years of service to the school and the wider community. Each of the 38 students had all achieved their Silver Service and Leadership Awards. Their reward was a chance to do even more service on Rotoroa Island. Here, they took part in a beach clean-up and helped to clear weeds from the newly developed skink enclosure. The Department of Conservation rangers were very grateful for all the work the students did. They then got to spend the night aboard the vessels in a sheltered bay at the back of Waiheke island. Friday brought a challenging dip in the sea before a raft of team games on Motuihe Island / Te Motu-a-Ihenga. The day ended with a beautiful cruise back into the viaduct and the trip was topped off with a dramatic display of speed and maneuverability put on by the practising Americas Cup vessels in the harbour. Well done to all our students for representing the school in an emphatic fashion and the school would like to extend a special thank you to Mrs West and the parents who came along and helped to make the trip such a success. Year 7 & 8 Formal Dinner at SoljansOn Monday night the Year 7 and 8 students got dressed up to enjoy a wonderful evening at Soljans vineyard in Kumeu. The event is always a popular one in the students’ calendar and it was great to see so many smiling faces on the night. Following a wonderful meal, the students got to dance the night away and the dancefloor was packed full of interesting dance moves. The night served as a small token of reward for the way they have responded to the challenges the year has thrown at them. Well done Year 7 and 8! Little GemsThis week’s feature is the talented Bonnie Yu (Yr 4) who performed this Prelude on the Harp at the recent Senior Primary Formal Music Concert. The harp is one of the oldest instruments and we are lucky to offer our Pinehurst students harp lessons and the opportunity to join a harp ensemble and develop further their ensemble skills. To register your child for itinerant harp lessons, please click here, to view all the information and to complete the enrolment form. If you wish to nominate your child for our brand new Little Gem section, please email our Head of Visual and Performing Arts marija.naumovska@hurst.school.nz Year 8 & 9 Practical'sFor the final unit, the Year 8s and 9s have been focusing on developing their practical skills in Music this term. Each student has a choice to work in a group or as a soloist over several weeks with the goal to learn how to play a piece and video record their submission. This process also includes the students self-reflecting in their progress and adjusting along the way accordingly, which feeds directly into the way the Cambridge Music IGCSE curriculum is structured. College Production 2021It is with great excitement that we are able introduce the cast of Pinehurst's 2021 production of Peter Pan and Wendy. The production will run for 6 shows, from the 29th July to the 1st August. Each cast will rotate performance nights, allowing for all of Pinehurst's performing arts talents to be showcased. I Spy...Junior Primary Netballers last Saturday! I Spy...Our New Entrants practicing their reading. I Spy...Year 3 designing posters for PrEP and the Transition Buddy morning for Year 3 moving into Year 4. I Spy...Year 6 making rockets! I Spy...Beautiful works of art being created in Year 1! Orchestra performing at Prize Giving Ceremonies - Dress rehearsal and Performance DetailsJazz Band Dress Rehearsal on Monday November 30th: 3.15 - 5pm in C2 for ALL jazz band members (except Year 9 who are on camp) The Orchestra Dress Rehearsal Tuesday 1st December - periods 5 and 6 in C2 for ALL members (except Year 9 who are on camp) Pinehurst Christmas CelebrationYou are warmly invited to attend our Pinehurst Christmas Celebration. This will be held in the Gymnasium, Thursday 3rd Dec, 2.00pm-3.00pm. We look forward to enjoying this special, traditional occasion with you. Thank you again for your generous contributions to our beautiful Christmas Hampers for Foster Hope Charity. Christmas Family PicnicCome along on Tuesday 1st December for some family fun at our Christmas Picnic. Most of out food vendors have Eftpos available, there will be cash rides and free face-painting and balloon animals for the children! Bring a picnic blanket and all the family! 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 Mum’s Fantail & Turtle – Bubbles TastingWednesday 25th November brought us the final Mum’s F&T for 2020. It was a great evening with a wonderful group of Mums across Primary and College. Our host, Jemma Grobblaar a wine enthusiast took the ladies through 6 sparkling wines ranging from French Prosecco to Champagne from the region of Champagne. Thank you to the Mums who made this night such a fun event, and I hope you all met at least one new person that evening! Mum’s F&T will be a regular event moving forward and we will be running this once a term and hopefully on a Friday night! Keep and eye out in the newsletter next year for upcoming dates! Enduro Swim Run Challenge for StarshipWell done to Jack (Yr9) and Mr Johansen for successfully completing the Enduro SwimRun Challenge last weekend, with Jack ocean swimming 5km (along with ex NZ Olympian swimmer, Steve Kent) and Mr Johansen (and a friend) running 30km. To date they have raised $4,800.00 for Starship on their Givealittle page, with lots of support from the Pinehurst School Community. |