No images? Click here Newsletter - 11 March 2022Message from the Executive PrincipalKia ora koutou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 I’m once again going to leave the Covid conversation for my daily updates and talk about other aspects of school life in this week’s newsletter. All of the daily updates are on the school website in the usual place, so please just head there for the latest Covid information. There’s obviously a great deal of organisational work going on behind the scenes to keep everyone as safe as possible, but life in school is generally busy and full doing all the things that young people in school usually do! On Tuesday, our Year 7s had a fantastic Team Building Day on the field. It was certainly hot, and the students were pretty exhausted by the end of the day, but Mr Elliott (who did a fantastic job with the students and who has also been a star all week looking after the Junior College students) was impressed by the way the children developed their teamwork skills over the course of the day. This wasn’t a replacement for camp – we know that – but it was an attempt to run part of the camp experience in school, and it’s something we may well do again. As is the case with Wheels week! The Primary School has been a riot of colourful bikes, scooters and rollerblades this week as we ran Wheels Week Part 1 (there will be a Part 2 later in the year when everyone is back in school). Watching the intensity and pride of some of the children, I realised that the event was a bit like a pre-pubescent Prom, with bikes and scooters standing in for dresses and snappy DJs. The right form of transport matters to our little ones, it seems. As it does – to judge by the car park – to those of us who are a little older. (I’m not immune to this myself – I love my car.) I haven’t commented on the actual classroom work taking place, but I did want to say how impressed I am by the way the Primary students have adapted to their new groups. When I watch the lessons taking place, it’s clear that our approach of ensuring that each class follows, more or less, the same curriculum, is effective. Teachers have their own approaches, their own strengths, their own personalities, but students have a very similar experience and teachers plan collaboratively. This enables them to move quite easily between teachers and the benefits have been clear to see. In College, lessons have continued more-or-less uninterrupted, with teachers enabling those students self-isolating to join in lessons wherever possible. I’m seeing lively, engaged conversations and, just as often, focused, quiet work as students get stuck into their work. I’m also seeing great engagement in co-curricular activities across the school: sports practices are very well-attended, the Model UN had students spilling out of the classroom on Wednesday, and our Amnesty group had a good meeting yesterday to work out its response to the invasion of Ukraine. And we have had a superb turnout from Year 10 for the first sessions of Combined Science (around 40 students all told) – it’s brilliant to see such great enthusiasm for studies and physical activities, and I’m delighted that our older students are becoming more and more engaged in global political issues. Finally, a quick word on College 5 and the Pinehurst Theatre. We’re a couple of weeks away from the first tilt slabs scoring the sky – we’ll make sure to take some photos as they rise, which will be an exciting moment. The foundations are pretty much complete (and huge!), but the moment the building first reaches into the sky is always something special. For those of you wishing to sponsor a seat (or seats), a brick in the donors wall or the Grand Piano, a reminder that there’s a form on our website under “Contact Us – Donate”, or you can just contact Nicki Williams, who will be very happy to help you. Have a lovely, quiet weekend and I hope to see you in school next week! Ngā mihi, Alex. 如需阅读校长的中文留言和重要事件日期,请点击此处 Message from the Principal of PrimaryKia ora, We had slightly more students on site this week and there were lots of happy faces especially on our unofficial wheels days. The New Entrants have shown that they are a pretty fearless bunch on their bikes and scooters, and they are obviously skilled in outdoor play. As the wheels got bigger we moved onto the fields and eventually the driveway for more challenge. The bank on the back field was especially fabulous as it is steeper at one end and you can start small and work up to more of an incline when you feel confident. Year 5 and Year 6 roller bladers loved the smooth surface of the driveway and moved effortlessly up and down the concrete. Next week we have some fun outdoor games on offer, something a little different for our on site learners to try and we can’t wait for them to arrive! Music is going from strength to strength at Pinehurst and our class programmes are varied and interesting. Being able to play and create music helps children to make connections in their brain which benefit many aspects of learning. I never knew you could get electric ukuleles until this week when I saw Ms Pope leading a Year 5 class in a heavy rock song on the ukulele. Who knew you could even play rock on the ukulele? It was fantastic and the class were having a ball, mostly in tune too. Our marimbas arrived this week and we can’t wait to get our marimba groups going and enter some festivals and competitions later in the year. Thanks to Mrs Leefe who is leading that initiative. Art lessons I saw this week in the New to 2 classes were developing fine motor skills, cutting, colouring, sticking, glue application, colour matching and working with different textures. Fostering creativity is so important as it helps children to solve problems and develop their intuition, plus it is relaxing and good for mental wellbeing. Year 1 were learning about overlapping materials to cover white spaces and not getting glue all over their hands, although that can be fun when it dries! Our online school continues to thrive, with teachers reporting good levels of engagement and attendance at lessons. We would love to see more students back in classrooms next week, it is the best place for them to learn and to develop vital social skills by being with their friends. Kia kaha, kia pai to rā whakata. Stay safe and have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon. Hola a todos!The Year 0-3 primary students have had an excellent start to the year learning Spanish. The New Entrants and Year 1 students are keen to greet one another, practising basic greetings and self-introduction phrases they learnt this term. Our Year 2 and 3 students have been learning ways to extend their responses to “¿Cómo estás?” to talk about emotions and how they are feeling. They can express a wide variety of feelings and differentiate between boy/girl endings. We are having so much fun with the songs, games, roleplays, surveys and creating mini emoji booklets! This week in P10 & P11P10 and P11 have had mixed classes in the past two weeks. Our students have been incredibly flexible to adapt to hybrid learning and they are doing extremely well too! For Reading, we are taking on different missions every day with our Big Read Agent, Rex the Retriever, on the Chapter book, The Wild Robot Escapes. We have been learning how to retrieve information from the text to support our statement during a discussion. Students are absolutely excited at the beginning of every SPIES (Share, Probe, Investigate, Explore and Share) trip to find out their daily mission as a Big Read Agent. For Science, we have been focusing on the functions of flowering plant parts. This week we conducted an intriguing experiment on the functions of stems. Students not only learned WHAT is the result of the experiment but also HOW did we get the result through the investigation with first-hand and second-hand evidence. After experimenting with real flowers, one student suggested using fake flowers to see if the results are the same. We love our inquisitive and adventurous scientists! For Maths, we have finished our multiplication and division problem solving and move on to finding fractions of a set. Students are working so diligently and we often joke about how smoke comes out from our ears because our brains have been operating too hard! For maths strands, we have also finished our learning on 3D shapes and started with measurements of weight. Check out the 3D shapes we have made by using sticks and blu-tac! We can understand the properties of 3D shapes so much better when we get hands-on! Primary MandarinChinese New Year started earlier this year, Lantern Festival being the last celebration of the fifteen day long festival, in Primary we chose to celebrate this instead. Apart from admiring lanterns, one of the other popular activities during the festival is to guess riddles 猜灯谜。We created a House challenge with this event. Year 5 and 6 students researched and found an array of challenging riddles both in Chinese and English. Year 2 students made beautiful lanterns for us to hang these riddles on. These lanterns were then hung in all the Year 2, 5 and 6 classrooms. Each student earned house points when they solved a riddle. It was such a fun event, none of us wanted it to end, and there were so many great riddles to solve! But after two weeks of running the event, a winning House was found. Drum roll…… MATAI. Congratulations Matai, a great effort by all. Additional Language LearningIn Additional Language Learning, it has been so lovely to see many of our learners back in school this week. Some of the beginner groups have been focusing on the meaning of question words and asking appropriate questions, and others have been reading and writing their levelled high frequency words. Some of the more able groups have been speaking and writing in the past tense, while others have been using their base word knowledge and suffix understanding to support the meaning of unknown abstract nouns. The Year 2 group writing today’s story. Mason’s retelling of a story where he stayed in the past tense perfectly. All students and the many different languages we use to greet people. Primary PEFor our Year 4 to 6 in PE this term we are focusing on two different sports. The first sport we have been doing is football and the students have been learning fundamental movement skills while also looking at what makes a good team member and how to have a positive impact on their team. The second sport we have moved onto this week is around our hockey skills. In school students are learning the basics of stick control and how to utilise these within team games, working together to achieve a shared goal. At home, our students are completing challenges using sticks, clubs, or items around the house to improve their hand eye coordination while trying to control a ball with an object in their hands. Remember, if you're in school or at home it's important to get up off your devices and get active, being physically active can not only improve your physical wellbeing but also your mental and emotional wellbeing as well. Supporting SPCA HobsonvilleChantelle and Madeline Cowie have been busy asking family friends for donations of old towels. Chantelle is her class representative on the Primary Council, helping to promote our support for the S.P.C.A Centre in Hobsonville. We are currently asking each class to collect old towels which are then used for puppies bath time, and for bedding. You can drop the towels off at reception and we will ensure they make it to your child’s classroom. Great effort Chantelle and Madeline! Primary SportRegistrations are NOW OPEN for the following Primary Winter Sports (see the noted link for the relevant information sheet). Please note – if your son/daughter is already participating in the Term 1 Hockey or Netball programmes, they will need to register again if they wish to play in a team for the 2022 Winter Season. CLICK here to Register: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School It is important you carefully check the information sheet (at link’s posted below) BEFORE registering for a Sports Programme, to ensure you can meet all required game / training times / costs, equipment requirements, etc. Hockey Year 3/4 Winter North Harbour Hockey Primary School League winter-hockey-information-letter-year-3_4-2022.pdf (pinehurst.school.nz) Hockey Year 5/6 Winter North Harbour Hockey Primary School League winter-hockey-information-letter-year-5_6-2022.pdf (pinehurst.school.nz) Netball Year 0-6 Winter Kidzplay Primary League https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/media/2771/primary-winter-netball-years1-6-2022.pdf Registrations for both Primary Winter Hockey & Netball close at 9am on Tuesday 22nd March 2022. Late registrations will only be considered where team numbers allow.
Pinehurst Primary Sport Programmes – Term 1A friendly reminder all Pinehurst Primary Sport Programmes continue to run at school in Term 1. If for any reason a before or after school session needs to be cancelled or postponed, we will contact the parents of students involved to advise – otherwise the session will be on (at times this may be with a different coach/es, but as much fun and learning as always !) If a lunchtime programme needs to be cancelled or postponed, students will be advised via notices / their class teacher, and wherever possible a makeup session will be provided later in the Term 😊 We have had questions about students who are currently choosing to learn from home attending a sports programme. Provided the student is not isolating and is well, parents can send students
in for before or after school sport programmes (that they have registered for). Our lunchtime programmes are however only available to students who are learning in school. If a student is coming in for a before school programme, students are to please be dropped off at either the front or back carpark (depending on where the programme is) and they can be collected from in front of Reception after the session. A friendly reminder that, in the mornings, parents may not come onsite / to the session to either drop off or to collect students. For afterschool programmes, parents may drop students at either the front or back gate from 3:15pm to go to the programme, and then collection arrangements as for all students in the programme apply for pickup afterwards. A reminder no refunds / makeup sessions can be offered to students who do not
attend a scheduled session/s in Term 1. It is absolutely wonderful to see many students already taking part in the wide range of Term 1 sports on offer here at Pinehurst, and we are really looking forward to welcoming many more students back to their sport programmes over the coming weeks. For any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact kelly.lindsay@pinehurst.school.nz Message from the Principal of CollegeKia ora, It has been a very settled week in the college as you would expect at this time of term. Students are busy with the business of learning and for many students they are reaching the first significant assessments of the term that will provide valuable feedback on their progress to date. On assessments, later today parents in Years 11 – 13 will receive an email from me outlining the planning that Cambridge has in place for the year should anything interfere with the external assessments in October/November. Please read through this document and do not hesitate to contact me should you or your child have any questions. Today our students in Years 9 – 13 will receive their new student ID card. This will make their previous one invalid. The card is a very useful item for students and can be used for the following things: release printing at the photocopiers, pay for items at the school tuckshop, borrow books from the library, use for signing in and out at the student sign-in kiosk (this is particularly useful for senior students during examination leave), and students can use it as proof of student status on Auckland Transport buses and trains. It is important that students keep their id card in a secure place. At Pinehurst we have designed our classrooms to be open spaces with lots of visibility. Students will also be very accustomed to a range of teachers moving through their classrooms during lessons. Over the next month or so this will become even more evident to students as we go through a cycle of teacher appraisals. Our teachers are always looking to improve their practice and so these formal observations at this time of year provide vital feedback on some of the goals that they have set for themselves. As part of this process teachers will be seeking student feedback on how lessons are going. This is obviously a vital source of information for our teachers and links into what I spoke about last week with regard to the relationships that students and teachers build throughout their time in the college. Tomorrow we are hosting our first College Open Day of the year for visiting families. We have moved these events away from the school day for the time being so that we can still provide people the opportunity to learn about our school, while still managing everything in a cautious and safe manner. It will be a bit of a different experience for visitors as normally the highlight of most tours is seeing our students in action around the school. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt. Year 7 Team Building DayOn Tuesday all Year 7 students took part in a team building day on the school fields as a part replacement for their postponed camp. A big thanks to the Bigfoot Adventures team for leading the outdoor activities. “Dream Your Life and Live Your Dream”International Women’s Day (Tuesday 8 March) was marked at Pinehurst by a group of 25 young women from Years 11-13 taking part in a Livestream Panel Event hosted by Air New Zealand with a keynote address from Alexia Hilbertidou of GirlBossNZ. The theme was #BreakTheBias and the panel was hosted by Nikki Dines (Chief People Officer) and included Thyra Blaom (Pilot/ A320 Training Captain), Carly Arnold (GM Digital, Operations and Corporate Products) and Emily Munro (Design Engineer). The Pinehurst young women who attended found it inspiring and enjoyed hearing from these women in leadership roles. Their take home messages were many – including “Dream your life and live your dream”, “Take ownership of your own life” and “Always remain authentic to yourself”. Year 9 Mathematics - Letterbox ProjectOur Year 9 students worked on designing the letterbox project looking at their Turangawawae. Turangawawae means ‘standing, place where one has the right to stand – the place where one has rights of residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa’. Students designed their own letterbox to express their identity and culture with drawing the net and calculating the surface area and the volume. Here are some of the results. Pinehurst Internal Volleyball League Week 2
This week, Boys 2, Girls White and Girls Grey played each other after school. For some, it was their first volleyball match ever and they came on the court and gave it their best shot. Some great volleyball was played and thank you to all the supporters who came to watch. Boys 2 managed to win both their games this week, just beating Girls White 2-1 in a tight third set. The results table for the season so far is below: Year 7/8 SportRegistrations are NOW OPEN for the following Year 7-8 Winter Sports League Teams (see the noted link for the relevant information sheet). CLICK here to Register: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School It is important you carefully check the information sheet (at link’s posted below) BEFORE registering for a Sports Programme, to ensure you can meet all required game / training times / costs, equipment requirements, etc. Please note – if your son/daughter is already participating in the Term 1 Hockey or Netball programmes, they will need to register again for the 2022 Winter Season. Hockey Intermediate Winter League (North Harbour Hockey) yr7_8-winter-hockey-information-letter-2022.pdf (pinehurst.school.nz) Netball Intermediate Winter League (Netball North Harbour) https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/media/2772/netball-information-letter-year-7_8-2022.pdf Registrations for Year 7/8 Winter Hockey & Netball close at 9am on Tuesday 22nd March 2022. Late registrations will only be considered where team numbers allow. Primary wheels... Year 2 Maths... Year 9 PE... Fun in the playground... RAT Testing this week.... Jeremy Year 2 creating his own science lesson in school... Social Coordinators for 2022Each year our Primary Classes have parents who volunteer to be Social Coordinators for their class. For the past 2 years we have extended this out to all Year 7 and 8 classes too. Their important role is to ensure the parents in their class feel connected to the school. Social Coordinators use WeChat to connect to their class to put out reminders, set up social initiatives, pass on important information and to organise class initiatives. Our class coordinators this year are:
Thank you to all our volunteers for your great efforts so far! If you are interested in being a Social Coordinator for your class, please contact: Year 9-13 WeChat GroupPinehurst WeChat has been so successful in Primary and Junior College, that there have been requests to create groups for college too. So, this week we started connecting our College Parents with an official Pinehurst WeChat Group for Years 9-13. If you are interested in joining your year group WeChat group, you can scan the relevant QR code below. These groups will be a place to share information relevant to each year group. Posts can be made by parents, as well as staff and will be in English – like our other Pinehurst WeChat groups. School information will still be emailed to parents as they have been, but additional ‘social information’ may be posted here that are ‘parent’ driven, eg: the 24-hour Covid fundraiser ran last week. If you are interested in connecting with parents in your year group or keeping up with information around the school, you can scan the relevant QR code below. If you are joining WeChat for the first time you can download the app and follow the prompts to register a new account. Please contact sylvia.lum@pinehurst.school if you have any problems.
Olivia Wang wins Dance CompetitionOn Friday 4th March, Olivia Wang (Year 7) entered the NZDA Dance Competition – competing against dancers across Auckland. Olivia won Gold for Lyrical, Silver for Contemporary and has qualified for the Christchurch NZ Top Dancer Nationals for 2022. Congratulations Olivia for an astounding effort! |