No images? Click here 27 August 2021Pinehurst School NewsletterOpening Words from the Executive Principal...Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 The rain hasn’t yet swept through Auckland as I write, and I hope that the sun has warmed your week so far. There’s been an edge of spring in the air, and I can see buds on the oak tree outside my window, its spindly arms beginning their annual transformation. Even the rain on the way should be a reminder that we’re moving out of winter. At a time when we’re, well, not quite as mobile as we usually are, these signs of summer seem to mean more than ever. I’m going to start with a quick run-through on some organisational details. We have spent a good deal of time cancelling events the last couple of weeks, which has obviously been difficult for everyone, but we’re coming to the end of that process now, doing some rescheduling and working through some alternative activities. All College sports are now cancelled or finished for Term 3, and it’s very unlikely that there will be a return to any Primary sports this term either. We have cancelled the remaining Kidzplay sessions this term, but we are planning to finish the season in Term 4 – more details will come out about this next week. And we are working on the basis that we are very unlikely to be running any other events of any kind in school this term. This means, though that Term 4 will be a busy one, as it was last year! So something to look forward to. The Year 3 / 4 Production has been moved to November 2nd and 4th, and we should have some new activities and sports to make up for those that have been missed. We’re also just finalising the new date for the 30th Anniversary Formal Dinner, and we have re-scheduled the Theatre and College 5 Information Evening for October 14th. Everything is conditional on being at Level 1, of course, but I’m always optimistic! A huge thank you, by the way, to the families who have made donations to the Theatre over the last few weeks. Over 60 families have contributed so far, either sponsoring a seat (27 already taken…), putting their names on the Donor Wall, or contributing to the Grand Piano. The form for donations is on the website, and I’m hoping we can show you more about the project when we run our Information Evening. And another thank you to everyone in our community as we navigate our enforced online learning environment: students, staff and parents. Our teachers, supported by all of our hardworking support staff, are continuing to adapt so professionally, trying new ways to engage children and support them in their learning. It takes time to do this, and to sustain their enthusiasm, and I’m incredibly grateful for their commitment and professionalism. Our students, of course, make it all worth it, and I’d like to thank them for their enthusiasm, laughter and honesty. And our parents too: if you’ve got younger children, or children of any age who find the online environment particularly hard, it will feel like a full-time job and more besides right now. Please reach out to us for support if you need it. We are continually reviewing our online programme, and I know that the Primary school especially have some plans to break things up a little to keep it as fresh as possible. College parents will also have received my long email about arrangements for the Mocks and external examinations. I hope it was clear, and that the process of decision-making made sense. I have been asked about the impact of missing the Mocks if we are ultimately unable to run them. For our students, the impact is not as great as it would be for those in some other schools, as our young people are very used to exam situations. We will also, as you would expect, be making sure that they have plenty of practice with exam-style questions and past papers (we do a lot of this anyway during the year). We will do everything we can to make the Mocks happen, but I did want to reassure you that the students will be well-prepared whatever happens. Have a good weekend and hopefully see you very soon! 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, It has been a tough week for many of our students in the college. Some will be struggling as they are really beginning to miss the social time with their friends at school. Others will be disappointed that due to alert levels, the events that they had been looking forward to all year, or even longer, are cancelled. To all of our athletes missing Aims Games and Winter Tournament week, I am sorry. There are two groups within this that I would particularly like to signal out. Our Year 8 athletes have missed Aims for two consecutive years and will not have the chance to experience this event. As a college we will try to make some amends for this by entering more teams in the winter tournament next year so that students have the opportunity to be away with teams for a tournament experience. The other group of students I want to acknowledge are our Year 13 students who have contributed so many years to our sports programmes and had hoped to finish their school sports career at tournament week. Thank you for all of your contributions and your leadership of our teams this year, I hope that you continue your sport beyond school. As well as Aims we have lost our Year 8 Camp for the year. Mr Reynolds is working hard to find some opportunities for the Year 8 students for later in the year. In addition, Mrs Lindsay is looking at creating some opportunities for those that have missed Aims Games. Our online lessons continue to go well, and I am very grateful to all of our teachers as they continue to work hard and adapt what they do in the online environment. Different year levels and different subjects create their own challenges, and I am grateful for the professional teachers that we have. We are working hard to support all our students and the range of needs that they have. There are multiple layers of support in place, and so I ask parents that if you have any concerns, please do communicate them with us. You will have received Mr Reed’s email earlier in the week about Mock Examinations. We know that these are very important to our students as they prepare for their external exams. The feedback provided is valued and the mocks also give students a gauge as to where they are up to in their preparation. We have taken significant amounts of time as a leadership team to find ways to make the mocks work, so that they succeed in achieving their purpose. We have a clear set of plans in place and we are confident that whichever option we end up taking, our students will not be disadvantaged. We are still planning many events. I am busy working on our Year 13 Valedictory Dinner preparation for this year. Mrs Griffith is planning our transition to university workshop for senior students, planning for the Year 12 Great Barrier Camp is ongoing and I know that Ms Naumovska is still very busy working with all of our musicians around a range of practices. We will continue to plan as we always do and look forward to our students being able to engage in as many opportunities as they can. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College English Gratitude JournalsMs Smith is starting off her English lessons with students writing a Gratitude Journal entry. One of the prompts this week was to write about ‘Something you know now about yourself that you didn’t know a year ago’. Ms Smith is aware that we are all being bombarded at the moment with a lot of stressful and negative news. She wants her students to spend a few minutes each day focusing on a positive aspect in their lives. Anonymously here are some of their thoughtful and insightful comments:
Lockdown with Year 7Year 7 students are currently learning about different aspects of measurement. This class did a project called 'My favourite space- lockdown edition' where they were tasked to measure objects in their favourite room in the house. They were asked to use their knowledge of area and perimeter to calculate several items in the room. Here are some of the many fantastic results. Physics with Year 10Year 10 Physics students have been creative making Flip grip videos that demonstrate thermal transfer – Conduction, Convection and Radiation. Y9 Global Citizenship
We place a strong emphasis on ethical education in Year 9 Global classes - not because we expect students to become more ethical, in the main our students already hold a robust moral compass, we would rather expose them to ethical dilemmas that will allow them to develop their own knowledge & skills to make ethical decisions of their own in the future. So far we’ve learnt about the ethics in sport, politics, healthcare & the exploitation of child labour. This week our students have been learning about the fatal Space Shuttle Columbia Mission – what happened & why, leading to the question… if Mission control had knowledge that Columbia’s re-entry was fraught with danger, should they have informed the crew prior to re-entry? In an attempt to engage our students in an online environment, some of our teachers have adopted additional technology such as Pear Deck, which allows students to post responses anonymously. Here is some of their work… Transition to Tertiary WorkshopNext Thursday, 2 September, all Year 13s will spend the afternoon (12:05-3:15) looking ahead to 2022 and thinking about their life after Pinehurst. Facilitated by some of last year’s Year 13 students this will be a very valuable workshop as our facilitators will pass on hints and tips about transitioning from school to tertiary study. Their brief is to think about what they wish they had known this time last year! Preparations are in place for this to be an online event, as we assume it is likely we will still not be at school, but there will still be plenty of opportunity for interaction. Student CouncilThe Student Council have organised a mini 'scavenger hunt' for all students in years 9 - 13 (and teachers!) to participate in to cure your boredom during these dull times as it gives you a break from your devices. There will be HOUSE POINTS awarded to those who meet all the criteria. Take a picture and enter it into the form found here! Good luck and stay safe. Kia Ora, I am missing the smiles and hugs on my morning walks through the junior playground but it is great to see so many happy faces in classrooms and to hear what everyone has been getting up to. Each day is very different even though we are at home. Some days the children are a little quieter and some days they are rolling around on the floor laughing and you just have to go with it. The temptation for us as teachers has been to over plan a little at first, in the classroom it is easier to gauge where everyone is up to, who needs extension and who needs to support and make that happen. Online that is not as easy and so we make sure we have everything ready just in case. As time goes on we find a rhythm that works and everything settles down. Overwhelmingly our teachers talk about how amazing our students are in the online learning environment. They are much better at muting themselves at the start of a lesson and letting others speak. In older years we have been able to use breakout rooms and channels for groups much more this time, which has enabled us to work in a similar way to the classroom. In these virtual rooms students can work together in a group and support each other with the teacher moving around the groups. This afternoon we will run a virtual scavenger hunt where children are challenged to find items around the house and garden. This gets them out and about and off the screens for a while. We will have an extended lunch until 1:45pm and finish the day by 3pm. Apologies in advance for the mild chaos that might cause but parents who love a competition can join in too! We wanted to do something less taxing on the brain that involved physical activity. Next week we are having Wacky Wednesday with dress ups, wild hair or hats and a similar offline activity for the afternoon. We hope by doing this that everyone has fun and some structured down time too. We are looking forward to seeing the children in action so please send us photos and videos and we will include some of them in the newsletter. Kia kaha, take care everyone. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary Art in P15Before lockdown, P15 had started working with clay and creating pinch pot sculptures, but with the lack of clay at home, we have adapted. We started by polishing our landscape drawing and shading skills. Students focused on making objects in the foreground appear larger and darker, whilst objects in the background were lighter and smaller. Students also experimented with using their pencils in a variety of ways to create shading. Then, we started looking at how scribbling with a pen could create art. We examined how we could create art by layering our scribbles on top of each other to form shading. This was inspired by the artist Jon Harris.
Scribble art bunny by Bella Zhong Landscape art by Bonnie Huang Landscape art by Vivian Zhu. Scribble art bunny by Audrey Ge Scribble art bunny by Vivian Zhu This week in P6We have survived another week in lockdown. It shows me what a resilient bunch of children we have in P6. They have been enthusiastic, and we have had some giggles when technology (or is it me the user) doesn’t quite go according to plan. This week in our literacy programme we have had a pirate theme and we have enjoyed the story ‘The pirates next door’ by Jonny Duddle. We have learnt about possession apostrophes, discovered new vocabulary and its meaning as well as the effects of different types of sentences and how the longer sentences are packed with descriptive information and shorter sentences are used to stand out and grab our attention. P6 enjoyed our class assembly on Tuesday. What a talented group of children. We enjoyed watching a hula hoop act, piano, clarinet and guitar recital, an origami paper folder, and some up and coming tall blacks show us the basketball shooting skills.
We even had some talented comedians. Wawa shared the following joke: Why did the kid throw his clock out of the window? Because he wanted to see time fly. Vincent shared this joke: Why was the skeleton lonely at the party? Because he had nobody to dance with. In art we have continued to be inspired by Henri Matisse and Wednesday's art lesson skills were enhanced with paper cutting, curling or concertina the paper to create feathers for the pirate parrot. Climates and Antartica in P10
Our first week of lockdown has flown by, and students have been sharing their learning, creations they have made, showing their pets, and how they have been feeling about lockdown with me their teacher and their classmates. During our assembly on Tuesday, students that wished to, shared something that was special to them. We had dogs that were dressed up, turtles that were swimming around, favourite toys, amazing Lego creations, fabulous artwork and even how some felt about lockdown and online learning… Rainbow thinks that lockdown is good as you get to spend time with your family. Jenny feels lockdown is boring, but some of the schoolwork is exciting but Spelling is boring. Edward explained that he kind of thinks it’s ok because he can communicate with his family. At the end of the day, 6 names are picked out of the kete and students are able to share their favourite thing or their least favourite thing that has happened during the day. It is awesome to hear that there are more favourite things happening than less favourite. Today, Rainbow’s favourite thing was able to pat a baby lamb. So gorgeous, and it must mean that Spring is not too far off? Primary MandarinWe have been up to all sort of things in Mandarin this week despite being in lockdown. We have managed to sing, dance, made a virtual conga line, play games online, have competitions against each other as well as achieving class goals and improve our collective knowledge. Here are some screen shots of what we've been doing and the improvements we have made on Kahoot. The most important lesson we have learned while being online this week is to be kind, supportive and working collaboratively to solve problems. We discovered that we each have a different piece of the knowledge puzzle and together we can solve all kinds of problems. Primary PE
PE during lockdown is slightly different, but it's important that we are keeping active and working out while stuck at home, not only for our physical wellbeing but for our mental wellbeing as well. This term our students are learning about a range of different ways to stay active while at home, whether it's doing an activity inside or out in the garden, they are learning different skills that will assist in keeping them healthy while developing a range of fundamental movement skills. They are participating in traditional sports such as basketball, football, and tennis, while also trying new sports like cycling, rollerblading, and trampolining, which lockdown has provided us with the opportunity to explore. Remember it is important to try and find some time in your day to get out and stay active, whether it's a hard 30-minute gym workout or a walk around the block, are bodies and mind need that physical exercise to stay healthy. I'm looking forward to seeing all the new workout video's and pictures this week. GymnasticsPinehurst gymnastics has grown over the years and this year we have over 80 gymnasts ranging from Year 3 through to Year 8. The gymnasts have been working hard at their weekly lunchtime practices to develop their flexibility and strength so they can compete in the upcoming interschool competitions later this year. Not wanting to lose what the students have achieved so far, Coach Georgie has been running lunchtime sessions for the students this week and she will continue to run these until we can return to school and practice on the equipment. The goal is to keep the students moving and continue to strengthen their bodies. We are excited to see their improvement on the equipment once we are back at school. Our coaches are very pleased and proud of the commitment the students have shown this week at their lunchtime workouts. Lockdown fun.....Spring is coming! Pinehurst Orchestra KBB Competition HighlightsIf you missed the opportunity to see the Pinehurst Orchestra compete live at the KBB competition, click here to view the compilation of highlights from the performance. Covid-dependant, the Orchestra will perform live at the upcoming Junior and Senior Prizegiving ceremonies at the end of the year and we are very much looking forward to it. Around the World with the Year 9 Music ClassesDespite the lockdown, Year 9 students have been travelling the world by researching and presenting the musical aspects of their varying cultures. The Musical Heritage project took us around the world to England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, South Africa, Korea, Japan, Iraq, Bangladesh, Iran and many more. The student's presentations have been impressively detailed and well created and this topic prepared them well for the World Music topic which is extensively covered in the IGCSE Music Syllabus from Year 10 onwards.
Junior College Music Concert Goes DigitalA number of very talented Year 7 and Year 8 students auditioned and were selected to perform in the annual Junior College Music Concert, which was to be held in C2 last Wednesday. Those students will be featured in the newsletter over the next few weeks, to celebrate their talent and effort. Claire (Yr 7) is a valued and committed Orchestra member but she is also a very talented piano player. To see her in perform Sonata No 10, Op 2. By Beethoven , please click here. PhotolifePinehurst School photos are now available to view online. Students should have the access ID details for online ordering. Please complete your order before Sunday 5th September 2021 for free delivery.
Harbour Hawks Lacrosse first training will happen at the appropriate COVID level, however the link to register is now up and running here |