No images? Click here Newsletter - 18 Feb. 2022Message from the Executive PrincipalKia ora koutou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 There have been some excited – and some very tired – young people around school this week. The whole of Year 10, as well as some enthusiastic teachers, popped in to Reception on Sunday as the wind created whirlpools of leaves in the car park. We ran nearly 110 RATs (all reassuringly negative, of course), the sun came out, the tropical air disappeared, and they headed off to Tawharanui to surf and hike and camp. Lovely. They came back a little tired, and I did hear a few complaints about the length of the hike, but I’m taking that as a sign that they need to build up their fitness after a long period at home. For the last two days, the whole of Year 3 have also been having fun at Camp Maynard; and we have had “Conscious Kids” in this week too, running our “in school camp” for Years 0, 1 and 2. In other words, because we have been in control of our environments, and our students have been in our Pinehurst bubble, we have been able to get on with things pretty much as normal. A huge thanks to all the staff who are managing to make everything happen for our young people. And our parent helpers too, of course! We formally launched our Pinehurst Theatre / College 5 project this week as well – online, of course. Many thanks to Mr Peter Davies, the Chairman of the Board, for providing us with a great sense of the school’s history and the place of the Theatre within that. Thank you as well to all the parents and children who attended online, and who asked such great questions. As you will know, we are offering three ways to support the Theatre, including sponsoring the purchase of our Grand Piano (probably a Steinway). The details are all on our website - https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/contact-us/donate/ - and you will find a link to our fundraising prospectus there. If you have any questions, just let me know. The building, which will have eight new classrooms as well as the Theatre when completed next year, has started very well, and we’re all excited to see its development. I’ll be sending out my next Donors’ Newsletter in a few weeks’ time, and we have both a model and very cool video to look at in Reception. One decision we’ve made this week is to allow parents who wish to sponsor multiple seats to do that. We had previously limited this to one per family, but from next Friday, 25th February, you will be able to contact Nicki Williams to sponsor as many seats as you wish. On Covid-19 quickly: you will have seen my email earlier in the week (https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/media/2739/15-february-2022.pdf) that explained how we are going to handle cases or close contacts in our community. Essentially, I need to know if you or your child, or a member of your household are positive or a close contact of a positive case. We will then act quickly to identify contacts and take actions. Please do not wait for the Ministry of Health to contact me: this could take up to 2-3 days, so I need you to tell me directly. Once again, I can confirm that we have had no cases of Covid-19 in our community; it will happen, though, and I want to reassure you both that our systems are fully in place to manage it, and that our health measures, including masks in every year, will mean that there is very little transmission in our school. We have, as you will know, had a small number of children and staff self-isolating this week: this is because we continue to be exceptionally cautious, and take action earlier than the Ministry requires us to, using RATs as an additional precaution. When this happens, we give students access to online learning, both in Primary and in College. Can I ask that College students bring headphones with them to school? They need these because, if a teacher has to self-isolate, they may teach their lesson from home to students who are in the class. This means that students may need to wear headphones. Have a lovely weekend! 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 Tuesday 22 February Year 7-8 Inter-house Swimming Sports Thursday 24 February
Message from the Principal of PrimaryKia ora, On Thursday I spent some time on the fields with our New to 2 students, who were having a wonderful time playing. Some of them asked me if they were going to be playing all day, yes, how exciting! Of course to them it looks like play but there is so much more going on beneath the surface. Every year we ask an organisation called Conscious Kids to come along and work with our little people. They bring a variety of junk items, ropes, bungy cords, pipes, surfboards, you name it and they probably have it. The day looks like organised chaos but it is actually very structured with new elements added to the play after each break. So what is the point? Education outside the classroom gives children different opportunities to learn a range of skills that will support them in the classroom and their lives. Through free play they learn self-confidence and to trust themselves. The facilitator talked about feeling butterflies in your tummy and deciding whether that meant you were excited or going to do something a bit daring that you needed to think about first. They learn to problem solve, how do we join the pipes together? What can we use to pull the trolley or make a tree hut? Children were learning social skills, negotiating, team work and engaging in lots of imaginative play. The game of, ‘let’s pretend,’ is so powerful for developing oral language and vocabulary too. Mrs Boniface had a particularly funny moment with a girl in her class who was pretending to be a baby. They decided to take her to the daycare and asked a little boy if she could come to the pretend daycare in his house, to which he replied, ‘No I’m far too busy for that!” There were lots of precious moments and there will be plenty of posts for parents to see on Seesaw. Year 3 are also having a fantastic time at Camp Maynard with bush walks, climbing, art, and a confidence course to name a few of the many activities on offer. Again, they will be developing self-confidence, problem solving and social skills whilst at the same time having a lot of fun outdoors. Camps and experiences like these are so important to a child’s development. Unfortunately we weren’t able to run our usual Year 6 camp this year but we will be organising other opportunities for those children to spend time outside of the classroom developing vital skills. Well done to our Year 5 and 6 students, they have been taking Cambridge progression tests this week in Maths, English and Science. They have coped so well, given their best and given us some really good data to use to help us when we are planning programmes. We are looking forward to seeing what they will achieve this year. Kia pai to rā whakata, have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon. Growing Great Learners in P14The focus in P14 is ‘Growing Great Learners in 2022’ as our students transition into the Senior Primary. Mrs Prance aims to nurture and encourage the feelings of independent thinking, learning and decision making. In Math and English, she will be aiming to ensure that the children know and understand key skills. Apostrophes, commas, times tables, and key spellings are just some of the things children in Year 4 are expected to use accurately. Overall, perhaps the single most important aspect of becoming a Year 4 student is to develop the children’s increasing independence and confidence in what they can achieve at school. P14 are being encouraged to start to think about their own learning. They need to make decisions on how to present work, how and when to complete homework, and how they learn best. They have been busy growing their learning, thinking about what makes them unique, “All about me” was the first opportunity to describe themselves to someone else. They have been working on quizzes to find out exactly where they all are individually as learners and have used these results to craft their Term 1 GOAL’s. Year 4 Symmetry has been so exciting, students ‘grew’ the idea and designed their own vertically symmetrical butterflies. They have planted their grass, “seeds of learning” and are waiting patiently for the first signs of green to appear. A Wonderful Week in P6!What a wonderful week we have had in P6. We have enjoyed the sunshine and played a game called ‘zombie’ with Mr Taylor in PE. We were learning kicking skills, teamwork and sharing when we participated in this game. In our Literacy Programme we have focused on the story ‘There’s a rang-tan in my bedroom’ a story that explores what is happening to the habitat of the orangutans and what foods have palm oil in them. We have also been doing a range of activities around this book such as creating story maps, finding adjectives to describe a character, retelling the story in our own words and discussing WOW words and their meaning. Addition and subtraction and their inverse relationship has been the focus this week in our Mathematics lessons. We have enjoyed playing a range of games that link to this topic. We brainstormed, shared and gathered ideas about what different creatures we may find in our school. We had a few funny ideas like snakes and cheetahs but after more discussions we came up with a list of the creatures that we might see. We then went outside and documented what we saw. This is part of Global Perspectives, our helping animals topic, that we are currently investigating in Year 2. Finally on Monday we had a little bit of time to be creative and make something special for the ones we love for Valentines Day. Outdoor Education Experience DayMa te rongo ka mohio / Through perception comes awareness Ma te moio ka marama / Through awareness comes understanding Ma te marama ka matau / Through understanding comes knowledge Ma te matau ka ora / Through knowledge comes well being Great excitement was in the air as our Year 0 to 2 students and teachers set off for a day of outdoor learning. A row of marquees set up as base camp, hats and sunblock on, they were ready for action. Our outdoor day was facilitated by ‘Conscious Kids,’ an education provider who aims to provide children with the opportunities for play in nature, within a framework of respect for themselves, others, and the environment. Through creative play the students were provided with opportunities to:
We all enjoyed working together in the outdoors. A fantastic start to the year in P1Everyone has been very excited to start school and we have settled into our classroom routines superbly, welcoming 10 new friends to Pinehurst School. It has been a busy few weeks in class and we have been working hard. During our Literacy lessons we have met some of The Mr Men and Little Miss Characters. This week we loved finding out about Mr Clumsy and all the accidents he has throughout his day. We have drawn our favourite part of the story and Mr Clumsy saying, ‘Whoops’ as he is always getting himself into a pickle. We are working hard in phonics and have been practising lots of new sounds and letters. This has been helping us with our reading as we can use sounding out to figure out tricky, or new words. So far we know letters, s,a,t,p,i,n,d,o and g. These letters can be used to make lots of words. In our Maths lessons we have been practicing forming our numbers correctly as well as counting on and back from any given number to twenty. Using base ten, we have been building numbers up to twenty and matching the number with visual representations. Numbers can be shown in lots of different ways and we have enjoyed exploring this. Conscious Kids came on Thursday and we had such a great time using junk to create really cool things. We were able to use our imagination and come up with ideas to turn the junk into anything we liked. Our team work skills were important and we had to make sure we shared and took turns. It was so much fun. On Friday we will take our first trip to the library, which we are really looking forward to. We will get to choose our own book and take it home for the weekend. We have been enjoying listening to lots of stories, and our favourite so far is Superbat. We can’t wait to discover more. Teamwork makes the Dream WorkWhat a fabulous start to the year the students have had in P18. They have all been super excited and enthusiastic to be back at school, seeing their friends and teachers, and to begin their final year in the Primary as Year 6’s. Our class theme this year, which flows through all of Year 6, is “Teamwork makes the dream work”. We will be focusing on teamwork, collaboration and supporting each other through the year. So far this year the students have been busy building our learning community which has included discussing and identifying how a Year 6 learner demonstrates the five Key Competencies of Thinking, Participating & Contributing, Relating to Others, Managing Self and Using Language, Symbols and Texts. The students generated lots of meaningful ideas through excellent collaborative work and engaged in valuable discussions with each other. Some amazing, and interesting, self-portraits have been sketched, mihimhi’s written and read aloud using great pronunciation, cubes and cuboids have been made developing geometry skills and we have began our new writing mission, “The Time Capsule Challenge”. The mission involves convincing a sceptical Head Principal to allow his school to take part in this challenge. So much learning and so much fun - Year 6 is just the best! Year 2/3 Gymnastics, Term 1 – new session added (Tuesday lunchtime)Due to the overwhelming demand for our school gymnastics programmes, we have opened an additional session on a Tuesday lunchtime for Year 2 & Year 3 students. If your son/daughter has not already had a place confirmed in one of our Term 1 Gymnastics programmes, and they would like to do Gymnastics at lunchtime (starting next Tuesday, and running weekly until the end of Term 1), please register here: Sports Registration | Pinehurst School New Entrant Buddy Meet ‘n’ PlayThis year we welcomed 23 New Entrant children to Primary, for their first school experience. On Monday 14th they received their first message from their buddy, who introduced themselves with a little information about themselves, a photo and for some, a personal message. A couple of days later they meet for the first time for their Buddy Meet ‘n’ Play. Each Year 2 Buddy presented their ‘little buddy’ with a small gift, and they spent the next 30 minutes getting to know each other and having a play whilst everyone else was in class! A great comment from our Year 2 Buddy Richie Liu: “When I started, my buddy was Dan-Dan. I’m going to be a good buddy to Austin, just like Dan-Dan was to me.” The buddy initiative has been a part of Pinehurst for 3 years and now an integrated programme recognised as part of the Pinehurst culture. It aims to promote positive attributes in our young children and teach them friendship, kinship and mentoring values. Our senior buddies will be looking out for their little buddies on the playground and around school. They are very excited for their next event….The Buddy Pizza Party! Message from the Principal of CollegeKia ora, Our first full week of school may have felt very long for some of our students, particularly Year 10 who managed to enjoy their Duke of Edinburgh expedition on Monday and Tuesday. It was fantastic to see the commitment of students as 94 of them headed away on Monday morning. Students and staff had a brilliant time in a beautiful location, as you will see in the photos below. It was really pleasing to be able to run this camp, and it gives us confidence for such activities moving forward. Next week we have our Year 7 – 8, and Year 9-13 Swimming Sports. Both of these events are optional for students this year and we will manage them differently to how we normally would. With the high quality of swimmers coming through the College I am sure that we will see many of the school records broken again. Thank you to the parents that were able to join us for our Year 7 Information evening on Monday. I hope that you found the presentation informative and useful. We will be doing something similar for Year 9 parents on Tuesday March 1, and I will be in contact with Year 9 families closer to the time. At yesterday’s assembly I spoke about making the most of the opportunities that are available at school, something that I always do at this time of year. We have had a very positive start to the year in regard to extracurricular sign up. The School Production of Annie has been cast and everyone is already working hard to prepare for the performances at the start of Term 3. We have had 50 students sign up to play tennis, either for the school or as a new sport that they are training for. We have 5 Volleyball teams and will be running our own internal competition including a staff team. Mrs Mann has had 39 students sign up for the Young Enterprise Scheme. There are a lot more opportunities to come for our students, so do ask them about what they are interested in involving themselves in this year. We finish ID photos for Years 8, 10 and 11 next Thursday. I spent part of last Wednesday in the Arena as all of the other Year groups had their photos taken. Our students were wearing their uniform very well and I would like to thank parents for your support with this. It is one of the little things that are important that we get right as I believe it sets a good tone for how we conduct ourselves at school. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt. Tiny HandsYear 7 students have been learning about enlargement and scale factor in Mathematics. They completed an investigation to see what would happen to their hands if they enlarged by a scale factor of ½. Here are the results of their ‘tiny hands.’ A2 Physical EducationOur class have been applying our knowledge of the principles of training and aerobic capacity this week. Miss Murray has found the ideal candidate – her Aunt Jackie, who is a recreational runner looking to improve her 5km Parkrun time. Students have developed a profile, found out information about Jackie’s current level of fitness, training habits and strengths and weaknesses. They held a conference call to establish the information and ask some questions to ensure that the programme best suits the needs of the client. Next week, Jackie will start following her plan and we hope to see some real improvement in her run times over the weeks to come. 猜(cāi)灯(dēng)谜(mí)House ChallengeTuesday, February 15th marked the end of the fifteen days Chinese New Year celebration. This day is commonly known as the Lantern festival or 元(yuán) 宵(xiāo) 节(jié). Apart from displaying and admiring lanterns, another common activity during this festive day is guessing riddles. Riddles are normally hung beneath lanterns at festival stores. In China and Asia, riddle guessers can win prizes from solving a riddle. This week, Year 7, 8 and 9 had the opportunity to take part in this event. Students published riddles and hung them in the Junior College Street for others to guess. For each riddle they solved, students earned a point for their House. At time of print, Kauri was the winning House and Year 7 was the winning year group. DOE Bronze Practice TrampI arrived at school and hauled my bag down to the arena, nerves settling in. We waited around and got on the bus. I’ve gone camping before but the idea of camping with my friends, on my own was quite nerve rattling. Arriving we had a meeting and debrief, and we walked a short way to camp. Choosing a section, we set up the tents and unpacked all our sleeping bags. My nerves were wiped away and replaced with excitement and energy. As a group we decided to go for a hike before we were due to come back and go surfing. We hiked around the Tawharanui Peninsula and got very hot and tired but enjoyed ourselves immensely. At 4 o’clock we went to the beach to go surfing. The instructors talked us through how to paddle and lay on the surfboard. Getting out in the water was super exciting. I’ve done a little surfing before but never got up. However this time I managed to get up consistently and it was exhilarating. All of my friends consistently got up too. We got back and made dinner using a little burner I had, I made pasta with tomato sauce. It was delicious. We messed about for the evening playing a big game with a ball and hanging on the beach, there was a lot of laughs. Lights out was around 9:15 and we collapsed into our sleeping bags. In the morning we went on another hike, climbing some hard hills and seeing some amazing views. After lunch we packed up our tents and our bags and decided to walk along the beach to a beautiful bay. It really amazed me that this place was only 40 minutes away. Going home I was extremely tired but super happy. Overall, I loved the camp and am super excited to do another at the end of this year, I had loads of laughs and fun. – Zoe Atkinson Super soccer skills in Year 2 P.E..... Finding key words in P10.... Year 3 learning to use a phrase in their writing.... Roza taking all the beautiful roses to give out on Valentine's Day! Road Patrol Crossing TrainingOn Thursday, 17th February our Year 10 and Year 6 students undertook their Kea Crossing training under the guidance of our community constable, Louise Nicolas and our teacher in charge, Kelly Clark. A Road Patrol controlled crossing provides children with a safe place to cross the road. They're installed around schools so school patrols can control traffic and safely guide children across the street. Our road patrolled crossing only operates when our school team of 4 patrollers (1 adult, 1 Year 10 student and 2 Year 6 students) and two fluorescent orange crossing point flag signs (one on each side of the road) are present. The school patrol operates before and after school when the school patrol displays their STOP signs, traffic must stop. This helps keep our children and families safe when they're going to and from school. When there's no school patrol and no crossing signs, the crossing point is just like any other section of road. What features does our Controlled Crossing points have? When the patrol crossing team is operating, two types of removable signs are used. These signs include two fluorescent orange 'Children' flag signs and the swing-out orange school patrol STOP signs. When the school patrol finishes operating, the fluorescent orange crossing point flag signs, and orange school patrol STOP signs are removed. The crossing site then becomes an ordinary section of road. Who supervises the Road Patrol crossing? The school supervises the crossing site. Kelly Clark arranges the patrol's schedule and ensures an adult supervisor is present. Terry Shepherd is one of our permanent adult supervisors. How do children know what to do at the crossing? Our school patrols are trained by Police to control the crossings safely and to ensure that our community uses the crossing with care. Trophy for HadleighWell done to Hadleigh Tucker in Year 3, who won a trophy over the weekend for last year's season with his Northcote rugby club. Excellent Running PerformancesDespite the cyclone last Sunday, some some of our students ran 5km as part of the Coatesville Half Marathon. For Sophie McKenzie it was her 5th year in a row that she had run and was awarded a trophy. Ivy Roodt finished in 18 minutes and was 4th overall. Zoe Lloyd, Lily McCabe, Zara Roodt and Maia McKenzie all finished in the top 10. Gold for Jack in Banana Boat NZ Ocean Swim SeriesYear 11 student, Jack Potier, recently competed in the 3.2km Open Water Swim, winning the GOLD medal in the AKSS 14–15-year males and placed third in the Open Category involving 258 swimmers! An outstanding achievement. We are very much delighted and can't wait to see how Jack performs in upcoming events. Congratulations on an excellent performance Jack! |