No images? Click here 12 November 2021Pinehurst School NewsletterOpening Words from the Executive Principal...Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 Underneath my message today, you will find a couple of photos. Look closely, and you will see two weatherboard huts on stilts. These comprise a third of the ‘Village’, our boutique collection of, er, army barracks purchased from the Ministry of Defence over twenty years ago. They leave for their new home in the early hours of Monday morning, soon to be followed (to different destinations) by their brothers and sisters. We have donated them, largely to local state schools, as part of our community work, and we wish them well! They have been part of Pinehurst College for its entire existence, and I think I may even have seen a gentle tear meander slowly down Mr Verryt’s cheek. I’m sure Mr Davies, our Chairman of the Board and Pinehurst’s Founder, hesitated a little too. An emotional moment. And a very exciting one! This means that the work has begun on College 5 and the Pinehurst Theatre. Our property team have been enjoying playing with big machines this week, breaking up the concrete of unusual size (that’s a deliberate Princess Bride reference for those in the know, because the concrete was 200mm thick, making it a real beast) and preparing the ground, ready for handover. On Friday 19th, the day that students return to school, we hand the site over to Aspec, our builders. We will be running “donor events” from quite early next year, so I’m looking forward to welcoming those parents who have contributed to the development onto the site to track progress. Look out for an invitation or two in the new year. As you know, we are opening to students in Years 1-10 from Friday next week. I wrote in some detail about this yesterday, so I’ll just ask that, if you haven’t already, you complete the form at https://pinehurst.nz/covidstudentreturn Let me know if you have questions. I will write again on Monday with the option we’re going to be using in Primary, and with any other changes we will be making after receiving your full responses about whether or not you will be sending your child or children to school. There will be further details about some practical matters too. The only other comment I want to make is that Covid-19 is here to stay in our community for the immediate future. It will be with us when we start back at school next year, and we are now at the stage where we have to learn to live with it, protecting ourselves as best we can. If you have decided not to send your fully vaccinated child to school, have a think about what you will do in January, because we are not likely to be in a Covid-free environment then either. I do understand that it is a more difficult decision if your child is too young to be vaccinated, but I do think our children need to have the company of other children and, as we’re as safe as possible in our school, it would be good to see as many of our older children in school as possible. And to confirm: all staff on site will be fully vaccinated. And, with some answers still come in, 96% of students eligible for the vaccine are either fully vaccinated or will be soon be getting their second dose. I hope this figure offers a little reassurance. Tomorrow evening, we raise an online glass to our 30th Anniversary. We’ve re-booked our 30th Anniversary Dinner for next year (making it our 31st Anniversary Dinner…), but we’re going to see out this year with a glass of champagne. Next Thursday, we’ll be raising a glass to our Year 13 Leavers, also online (there’s a theme here, I know). And I want to publicly thank, in this newsletter, Charlotte Toumadj and Jaewoo Son, who have been committed, kind leaders of our students this year. I’m looking forward to saying goodbye properly on Thursday. To all of the Year 13s! They’re such a sweet, charming group of young people, and we will all miss them. Kia kaha, and enjoy the 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
Dates for your DiaryKia ora, Our students continue to amaze us with their resilience and willingness to engage in their online learning, especially as this time of year is usually spent outdoors enjoying visits, Waterwise for Year 6 and social experiences. As teachers we are missing these aspects too and making fun memories with the events that we would usually do, as we reflect on the past year. We are continuing to change things around to add in as much fun as possible whilst continuing to deliver our programmes as planned. This week there was plenty of activity around the online school. Our New Entrants were writing descriptions to bring the setting of a story to life for the readers. They used similes from a Big Write game they played and followed the success criteria of: say a sentence, read the sentence and check the sentence. High level stuff for 5 year olds! Our Senior Year 1 were exploring the world around them in Global Perspectives. They have been looking at the jobs people in our community do and how do they help us? They learnt how to group different jobs using a venn diagram and decided on a label. In Year 2 there was a lot of creative thinking taking place and students were challenged to make a musical instrument to reflect their favourite character from the Three Little Pigs. Is the character sneaky, scary, little, big, clever or foolish and how can we tell? Year 3 have been working on capturing the reader’s attention when writing a Roblox setting description. Working collaboratively in break out rooms, they used key questions to guide discussions. They focused on how to write a setting description to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. Year 4 have been developing financial literacy and talking about money. What is the purpose of money? Working in break out rooms, they were set a challenge to create a class currency that reflects our community, history and connects with our surroundings. Year 5 have been reading detectives. They learnt how to search for key information within the text and explain the key ideas of a text to others. In Science, groups are creating a, ‘Guide to Venus? Would we want to travel there in the future? Sounds fun to me! Year 6 have been channeling their inner artist, creating pop art images with a focus on cropping, enlarging, use of colour and line thickness. We are very proud of the breadth of our programmes and all of the learning opportunities our students are having online. We know these are uncertain times but by providing some structure to the day we can gain some level of normality which is good for everyone’s wellbeing. Kia pai to rā whakata, have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary
Primary Bubble this weekP1's FlowersP2 Stars!P2 has been busy learning all about plants, what they need to survive, how they grow and their structure. The students have been growing plants from seeds and propagation. Just like Botanists, we have been carefully observing the changes in our seeds and plants and recording our results. In Literacy, we have been exploring many traditional fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk. This week we read the Wolf’s side of the story in ‘The True Story of the Three Little Pigs' by Jon Scieszka. In this story, Mr Wolf asks for help sharing his version of events. For our Big Write, we wrote a newspaper article reporting on the Wolf’s Story. P2 was fantastic at identifying and using all the different text and language features required to write a successful news report. There are so many stars in P2 and they all shone brightly on Tuesday afternoon as the children shared their many talents. We had magicians, gymnasts, signers and amazing Lego builders. In phonics, the Year 1 children have been busy learning their split vowel digraphs and using their ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell words that contain our new sounds. The New Entrant children have been focusing on digraphs (two letters working together to make one sound) and are enjoying spelling and reading a wider range of words with the help of their ‘Fred Fingers’ of course! Well done P2! Yet another week of amazing online learning, you continue to delight your teachers with your smiles and your work effort. Next week we are off to explore a new Fairy Tale – Goldilocks and the Three Bears! A little bit of this and a little bit of that… in P8By Jasper Chen By Jennifer Yang By Chris Shan By Eddy Deng Art fun... This week in P10P10 celebrated Diwali last week by reading stories to deepen our knowledge about other cultures, drawing and colouring Rangoli patterns to practice our lines of symmetry and to revisit our knowledge on measurement and weight we had an online cooking class during our Maths lesson. We made a sweet Diwali treat which was very tasty and sweet! Milkshake Monday in P11!On Monday, the students of P11 took part in Milkshake Monday! The students combined their knowledge of following a set of instructions with their understanding of measurements to make their very own milkshake. It was a very interactive lesson and the students were able to share their thoughts and ideas throughout. As you can see, we were all delighted with our delicious, sweet treat at the end of our lesson! Learning in P14 during Term 4P14 have continued to be enthusiastic and creative in all areas of their learning. The students have developed knowledge and proficiency using a range of online tools to share their learning with others around them. Writing We have been focusing on adding information and detail to create a range of sentence types, deciding on what to include using subordinate clauses. Halloween provided us with a rich experience to write about…
The activity afternoons have continued to provide us with many creative ways to explore. The NED Show was inspirational as Oliver Yang shows… This is a snapshot of life in P15…In Art, we have been busy exploring and creating patterns. In Writing, we have been designing theme parks for villains and creating leaflets describing the rides and activities we designed. We enjoy the Tic Tac Toe afternoons and many of us made some origami. In Digital Technology, we have been coding using blocks and Java script. Felicia played the piano for our Year 5 cohort assembly. Alex has been practicing his mad yoyo skills. This week in P16In our writing mission we had to help create a theme park for villains, which would be exchanged with the ‘Collector’ for his stolen theme parks. We had to develop ideas for rides that would appeal to villains and activities that would be stimulating for them. We were asked by the Big Writing Agency to write an information leaflet to explain what the theme park would be like. To help us, we first explored the structure and language in a model leaflet that Agent had provided. This week P16 integrated subjects to create our own board games. Creating board games involved researching, reading, maths, creative thinking, logical thinking, experimenting and more... We kept in mind that most inventions don't work instantly but need trials to perfect them. After going through the design thinking process and creating a draft which included the theme, rules and challenge cards, our board games came to life. The next step is to play the games with our families! P23 this weekWe have had a busy start to Term 4 in P23. Nine wonderful new students joined us and have been very busy working with Ms Turner in the mornings and then joining in with Ms Walton and the rest of P23 in the afternoons. Together, we have been working so hard with our phonics. We are really clever and can write a lot of tricky words and we are superstar sentence writers now. This week we have learnt the ‘ch’ diagraph and have been practicing words that have that sound. Ms Walton has been helping us with our reading and we are enjoying reading books together online. In Literacy we have had to help our friends, Cat and Tiger. Their magic watches stopped working and they were trapped in Tiger’s Garden. We had great fun imagining what minibeasts they might have seen and how terrifyingly large they would have looked to the small children. We wrote some directions to help our friends and Fizz dropped a map down to them. Luckily, our directions were accurate and they managed to get out. Cat asked us to write a thank you letter to Fizz and we were able to practice writing full sentences. We also wrote some thank you letters to our parents, siblings, teachers and friends. Tuesday was ‘Be a Star’ afternoon. We had such fun learning some dance routines, making some music, singing, and acting. Primary ArtBy Abigail Ge P7 By Charlotte Situ P9 By Queenie Gu P7 By Devin Bu P9 By Hayley Mulder P9 By Daisy Yu P7 By Annie Li P7 By Mikayla Soh P9 Year 5's AssemblyPrimary GymnasticsThis week we wrapped up our 2021 gymnastics programme. The students have worked hard and trained tirelessly at school and even during lockdown. It’s been an eventful year even though we didn’t manage to compete. We celebrated coach Georgia T’s 21st birthday with a surprise party with cake and balloons. During lockdown we had fun and challenging games like twister, paper scissors rock, scavenger hunt, red light green light, animal yoga and bingo to name a few. We are determined to do well next year because we are now much stronger and more flexible than ever. We want to thank all our College student coaches and teachers who gave up their lunchtime to help us train when we were at school. Music in the PrimaryIt has been an eventful week for music in the primary. All students have been invited to submit their Christmas Performances for our upcoming (virtual) concerts, assemblies, and the newsletter. Detailed information on this can be found in the students’ Teams under assignments. Year 1-2 After exploring the elements of music through storytelling in Carnival of the Animals and Peter and the Wolf, students are now working on designing their own musical instruments made of ‘bits and bobs’ around the home to represent a character from The Three Little Pigs. Sid has made a fantastic start on his guitar! Students will be sharing their instruments in class and explaining how they play their instrument helps to tell the audience about their chosen character. Year 3-4 In preparation for the Christmas celebrations, some Year 3 classes have been writing a ‘Christmas Rap’. We have enjoyed listening to some old-school hip hop and feeling the ‘beat’ of the music. Some students practiced free styling to a hip-hop beat and will continue to compose and perform their Christmas rap in the coming weeks. Year 5-6 Students have been working on their compositions in Noteflight. After practicing transcribing a known song, they have now composed a two-chord song developing a motif using repetition and sequence. Some students have begun adding harmony to their pieces. We look forward to sharing and performing these in the coming weeks. Years 7-8 Students are continuing with their compositions in the software Bandlab. Many students have discovered new possibilities using the software and have been experimenting with adding additional instruments such as drum tracks and strings harmonies. Students are also working towards their music performance on their chosen instrument. We have explored ‘chair drumming’ as a performance option. Trees for SurvivalThis week some of the students at school have been helping to plant the seedlings for Trees for Survival. There are 800 seedlings to plant! They will be looked after at Pinehurst until they grow into little trees then they will be taken to a volunteer's land where they will be re-planted again to grow into big trees, then planted in places where trees are needed. Trees are vital for our planet and Trees for Survival is helping to sustain the native bush in NZ by replacing as many trees as possible that are cut down for industry. And, Pinehurst School is part of this! Thank you to all the super tree-planters this week, and there will be more helping next week. We planted native Karamu and Manuka. Term 4 New Entrant Buddy Pen Pals!Term 4 brought us 9 New Entrant children who joined P23. Our new, enthusiastic 5-year-olds joined Pinehurst while we were still in Level 4 Lockdown. Not quite how they probably imagined starting school, but they adapted well to online learning with Miss Walton, Mrs Turner, and the children of P23. Normally our New Entrants would have been introduced to their Senior Year 1 Buddy on a Friday afternoon for their Buddy Meet and Play. But whilst in lockdown we had to be a bit more creative and managed to still make it fun and a nice surprise for our New Entrant children. Last Saturday, our New Entrant children each received a home delivery gift bag from their Buddy. This included a small gift, a personal message, photo, and a little introduction of their older buddy. So even though they couldn’t meet in person, we managed to get something out there to remind our New Entrants that when we get back to school, they will have an older buddy waiting to meet and play with them at school. Kia Ora, It would be fair to say that it has been a varied week in the college. While students have been sitting examinations there has been studious silence as they have worked through their papers. When there hasn’t been any examinations, the ground staff have been working with concrete cutters, diggers, and heavy trucks as they have torn up the college staff carpark in preparation for College 5. It looks as though the grounds staff have particularly enjoyed their week and they have made great progress. Jon Horne, the schools Business Manager, has loved being out of his office driving a heavy truck to help get the job done. In the junior programme we have mixed it up this week with students in Years 7-9 coming off timetable to complete a range of team-based projects on Thursday and Friday. These have gone brilliantly, and I would like to thank the teachers involved for once again being creative and providing different opportunities for our students. In the articles below you will be able to get a glimpse into some of the things that students have done these last two days. We are delighted to be able to welcome our students back to school next week. We have done a lot of planning around this. I will be writing today to give you some broad outlines of what we are doing, and I will follow that up with more detail on Monday. For our Year 10 students, the return to school for the final three weeks of term are important as they are able to engage in aspects of the practical work that they have been missing whilst we have been online. This practical work is an integral part of their IGCSE programme, and it is important that they take every opportunity to practice and develop the skills required, particularly across the sciences and all of the coursework subjects. Our Years 7 – 9 students will also have the opportunity to reengage in some practical work in science as well as engaging in more practical lessons in the other core subjects. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College
Year 7 Social Science – Travel OperatorsYear 7 Social Scientists were tasked with the opportunity of creating a high-end travel tours for schools. The brief required them to offer an overseas experience that catered for a wide range of student interests, including - history, art, science, technology, culture, nature & sports. Before deciding on their destinations, they conducted virtual tours through some of the world’s most visited museums, landmarks & monuments, as well as tours through the International Space Station and along the Great Barrier Reef. When destinations were decided on they worked collaboratively in small groups to create a tour package slideshow. Creative Writing in ScienceLast week the Year 9 students had online assessments in the mornings and online lessons in the afternoons. During an afternoon Science lesson students were challenged to a 15 minute creative writing task with a Science theme. This was to help them to prepare for their English examination the following day. There were many excellent and diverse pieces created and shared by the students
The sun and the moon The sun loves the moon, quietly observing unable to get too close fearing that he may burn her, yet everyday he would chase after the moon in an attempt to get closer to admire her glow, but she would run away, taking his heart with her. The sun continued to love the moon so much so that he died every night to let her breathe and shine brightly in the night sky.
The moon always chases the sun, missing the gorgeous light he would continuously emit. His blazing fire always warms her heart. Though he may run, she would always chase, Not caring that she may get burnt, for all she wanted was to gaze at his gleaming features. His light shining down upon the faces of all those who bathed in his warmth.
By Eleanor Saunders 60 hour challenge outside activitiesYear 8 & 9 Science and Commerce COP 26 ProjectOn Thursday and Friday of this week Year 8 and 9 have been working on an innovation project related to COP 26. COP 26 is a UN conference happening in Glasgow this week, which aims to set international targets to lower the impact of climate change. World leaders, climate scientists and other key figures have been working together to help find ways to solve one of the biggest problems facing our future. Our students have been working with their Science and Commerce teachers to complete a STEM challenge: research and identify a problem related to climate change and use modern technologies to help solve that problem. The students have been working in groups and have found some interesting facts. Did you know the first electric passenger vehicle was developed in 1880, or that the average pet dog produces 770kg of CO2 per year? At the time of writing the students are still working on their solutions to the challenge but some of the exciting ideas they’ve suggested include using the internet of things to monitor and reduce power use at home and inbuilt coffee makers to entice people to buy an electric car. I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished ideas the students come up with and will announce the winners and tell you about their winning ideas next week. Year 7 Generation Earthshot ChallengeThis week the Year 7 students took part in the Generation Earthshot challenge. The Earthshot prize is an initiative set-up to try and generate big ideas towards protecting the Planet. Students got the chance to learn about the challenge as well as putting forward some big ideas of their own. Who knows, perhaps there will be an Earthshot Prize awarded to one of our Pinehurst Alumni sometime soon! Live PE workouts with Year 7On a very warm Thursday afternoon, Year 7 students all met at the same time to take part in an online workout together. All the PE teachers joined in (some of them realising that lockdown has had a significant impact on their fitness) and a determined bunch of Year 7 students took part enthusiastically. Well done to everyone who pushed themselves to complete the workout and have a little fun watching their PE teachers get out of breath too! Year 10 PE ChallengesOn Thursday, Year 10 were set some challenges based around the Māori concept of Hauora (wellbeing). Students were given 25 challenges to complete with prizes for whoever completed the most by Friday at 3:15pm. Students completed tasks in 4 areas: taha tinana (physical), taha whānau (social), taha hinengaro (mental/emotional) and taha wairua (spiritual). They were then asked to submit evidence of the completion of tasks in the form of photos/videos or screenshots. Here is a selection of evidence which shows the students taking part at home in their bubbles. We will announce the winners of the challenge next week. New Zealand Mathematical Olympiad ResultsDuring the lockdown in Auckland, Michael Ma (Year 11), Kevin Xu (Year 10), and Jax Jiang (Year 10) were invited to participate in New Zealand Mathematical Olympiad and the results have been outstanding. This is deemed as the toughest mathematics competition that high school mathematics has to offer. Congratulations once again for representing the school and mathematics community at Pinehurst. We would love to see more participation in the upcoming years. Here is a sample problem from the Olympiad for you to try! This weeks Maths problemThe Solution to last weeks problemAnnie 2022Pinehurst College is excited to announce we will be presenting Annie as our musical production next year. Information on how to audition as well as rehearsal and production dates, synopsis and character briefs is currently available on the Schoolbox’s Annie page, all eligible students, and their parents, will have already received an information pack via an email. Next year’s musical will run from the 29 - 31st July, with three 7.00pm shows and one matinee. Cast auditions will be conducted via online video submissions and the deadline to submit is the 30th of November. Sibling PhotosIf you put a Sibling Photo order through to Photolife during lockdown, this is ready for you to collect from reception. Please remember to come in with your mask and sign when you enter. If you are unable to collect this, please email kirsty.robertson@pinehurst.school.nz to arrange for these to be posted to you. Our Office Hours are 8.30am – 4.00pm Monday-Friday and we will be open until 9th December.
Sports Cups & TrophiesWere you presented a Year 5-8 Sports Trophy or Cup in 2020? Is it still at home with you? Mrs Lindsay is busy organising this year’s Sports Awards, and needs to send all our Trophies & Cups away to be engraved for our 2021 award winners soon. So, if you still have your trophy or cup, would you kindly return this/these to Pinehurst Reception, no later than Friday 12th November. Thank you! |