No images? Click here Newsletter - 25 Feb. 2022Message from the Executive PrincipalKia ora koutou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 It’s been an eventful week for us, as everyone is aware. I’m not actually going to talk much about Covid-19 today. Instead, I’ll continue to write emails specifically about the way we’re managing the outbreak, and any cases that we have. These emails will now once again be placed on our website each time I send them so you can access them more easily if you get lost in our communications (easily done!). I do, though, want to repeat what I’ve said a few times: the way our whole community has responded to the cases this week has been amazing, and has showed both how supportive we are as a community, and how resilient too. The teachers and support staff have again adapted quickly and pulled together superbly; our parents have been understanding and supportive, realising that we are a broad community with a range of views, and that we all have to compromise to reach an agreed approach; and our students have just been fantastic, getting on with things, being sensible, embracing opportunities. Thank you to everyone. And school is still motoring along, purring away and accelerating smoothly into the middle of Term 1. On Wednesday morning, for example, I had a great time, watching all the Junior Primary students get stuck into maths and reading exercises. The Year 1 students were very entertaining (I particularly enjoyed a P1 boy who, when asked what number he was building with tens and units, looked briefly at his teacher and calmly told her “I haven’t finished yet”, before settling back into his task: very grown-up!); and the Year 2s were doing some reading responses, developing the ways they could write about characters. I then went to all three Year 5 classes: they were all doing Maths, all doing the same work on large number sums; and they were all incredibly focused, challenging themselves at the levels that worked well for them. I was very impressed. I also wandered into the Young Enterprise launch in the Dance Studio. We have 30 budding entrepreneurs developing companies and products to pitch and sell, the largest number we’ve ever had. I could feel the enthusiasm as I walked into the room, and some of the initial thinking would put many businessmen to shame. Our sporting activities this week have also gone up a notch. I’ve seen gymnastics, football, netball, volleyball, basketball, hockey and tennis this week: great levels of participation from everyone. Last week, we launched our College 5 / Theatre programme online. Thank you so much to everyone who has so far contributed by sponsoring a seat, a brick in the wall or the Grand Piano. Today, as planned, we have opened up the seats so you can sponsor as many as you wish. The link to the prospectus and the form to complete is here: https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/contact-us/donate/ If you have already sponsored a seat and want to see if you can have multiple seats together, please just contact Nicki Williams directly at nicki.williams@pinehurst.school.nz. The project is going well, by the way! Enjoy your weekend. I’ll be in touch if we have to make any other changes for Monday, or any cases emerge. Please be sensible and careful, and I’ll hopefully see you all 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 Tuesday 1 March
Thursday 3 March
NB: Dates may be subject to change at short notice Message from the Principal of PrimaryKia ora, Our online programme was back in full swing on Thursday for two year groups and as ever we were impressed with the flexibility and resilience of our students, families, and teachers. Whilst we might have been a bit rusty at the start of the first lesson and students were very excited, we quickly settled into our virtual classrooms and got on with the important business of learning. Our in-school classes carried on as usual and the children enjoyed a little more space to run around in at break times. About three years ago we introduced a programme called Big Write. I am sure you will have heard your child talking about it and how they do a Big Write each week, usually on Thursday or Friday. It is part of a programme and an approach to teaching writing that is guaranteed to raise standards and is empowering for students and teachers. Big Write is quite structured in many ways but by teaching specific skills, all children can become good writers and demonstrate their creativity through writing. You might have heard your child talking about VCOP which stands for vocabulary, connectives, openers, and punctuation, we run mini lessons each week that help children to build the necessary skills to be writers and to enjoy the writing process. I was in a Year 5 Big Write lesson today and was so impressed by the way the children used vocabulary and could talk about the effect of alliteration and how to up level their sentences. They are nine years old but able to engage with English at a very sophisticated level. Congratulations to the students of P13 and P14 who were our first Maths Whizz trophy winners of the year, closely followed by P18. The competition to see who can make the most progressions within the tutor time is heating up and it will be interesting to see who this week’s winners are. Maths Whizz is homework for all students in Year 1-6 so please help your child to set aside some time each week to make their 4 progressions and get their green tick. It has been hot and sunny this week, please can you make sure your child has their Pinehurst hat with them, Sunsmart safety is so important! Thanks for all of your kind words and support this week, we really appreciate it. Kia pai to rā whakata, have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon. P12 NewsIn Maths we have started learning and explaining topic vocabulary; making sure we are able to use it correctly during pair share. Next we scaffolded our learning to identifying the place value of digits as well as adding and subtracting using correct reasoning. In Geometry, we are learning to identify the lines of symmetry in 2-D shapes and completing symmetrical patterns. In Reading, we are continuing to explore our class novel ‘The Twits’. As reading detectives we are looking for clues, keywords and finding evidence to help us infer deeper meaning. Here is a little bit about our novel ‘The Twits’ by Roald Dahl. The class are all enjoying the rich vocabulary that helps the story come alive. In Writing we continue to work on character descriptions, focusing on Aunt Pol. We are working on using rich adjectives, strong openers and connectives describing what the character looks like and how he/ she behaves. Take a look at our synonym scanning game and read our exciting descriptions too! In Global Perspectives, we are talking about what family means to us, as well as roles and responsibilities within our family. We know a family is where an individual feels belonging, love and security. Our findings and discussions were interesting! Lastly we were able to share similarities/ differences among our class. Superheroes in P5Superheroes with a wide range of superpowers have arrived in P5! This week P5 has enjoyed the story Superhero ABC. We have created our own alliterative superhero name and have had a lot of fun labelling parts of our superhero costume. For our Reading activity we had to give an opinion on what superhero we liked the best in the story and explain why we liked it. Felix liked Hugeman because of his gigantic size! Celine liked The Firefly because she fights felons in the forest! Garvin liked Dangerman because he does daring deeds every day! Jeremy liked Mr Quick because he moved quite quickly! Rayna liked The Firefly because she shoots fire, and she is beautiful. For our Writing we have been describing our own superhero character and explaining their superpowers. We have made our own superhero cuffs and had a parade to share these with our friends in P4. The best part was that we all had to show our favourite superhero pose. In Science we have been labelling parts of the body and have completed a wide range of activities to demonstrate our understanding. We can now independently spell many of the words used to create these labels. Camp Maynard 2022CA CAM CAMP LET’S CAMP! What a fabulous time the Year 3’s had at Camp Maynard last week. Day 1 started with excited students arriving ready to have fun. The obstacle course was an activity that many were looking forward to. Students challenged themselves and persevered to complete the course. Some creative bush art and kite making were also on the agenda. The squeals of laughter could be heard throughout the day as the students used their water guns to shoot water at a target. When the targets were made, the activity turned into a water gun fight, it was a great way to cool off. Friday was an overcast morning and fog had settled down on the tops of the trees. The sun started to break through as the students began to arrive. Shouts of glee and wonderment filled the air at the discovery of the rock climbing wall being setup. Statements of “it’s so high”, “there is no way I am doing that!”, “I can’t wait to do that!” and “I hope our group is the first group to do it”, could be heard. Students were able to make a Pou whenua (totem pole) with fruit and marshmallows, complete a treasure hunt, play group games, and of course climb the rock climbing wall. Our camp came to an end with a big water fight, lots of laughter and tired, happy students. P7 Environmentalists and ArtistsIn Science, Year students in P7 have been sorting and classifying things that are living, never lived or not alive now. We had some interesting discussions about what was living but not now, fruit salad was an interesting topic. Students have enjoyed exploring the outdoors while learning about habitats. They searched areas of the school and investigated what creatures might live in the school environment. P7 listed and drew the creatures that they found. As well as learning about our local Environment, P7 have been learning to recognise the main components of different habitats and how animals and plants adapt to survive in their habitat. We discussed why a penguin wouldn’t survive in the desert and why a polar bear can survive in the artic.
Our shared book has been “There’s a Rang Tan in my bedroom” The students have really enjoyed the message the author is sharing. It is a story about an orangutan who is in a little girl’s bedroom and howls at the shampoo and chocolate. The orangutan finally tells her that there are humans in her forest who destroyed the trees, and the little girl decides to help when she realises it is because of palm oil that the rain forest is being destroyed. It has been great learning about the wider world, and students have been explaining to their parents not to buy things with palm oil in it. Students have also made posters that they want to hang up to spread the word of looking after our planet! In Art, Mrs Fleming has been teaching P7 how to draw a self-portrait. To begin with the students had to divide up their page evenly. This was a guide to use for proportion when drawing our features. We also used pastel and tried to match our hair and skin colour. The students were extremely proud of the successful self portraits and how alike they managed to draw themselves. They were a little different from the typical self portrait as they drew just half their faces! Busy Week in P16This week in Mathematics we have explored 3D shapes. We enjoyed looking at the top view, side view and front view of shapes and then building what we thought they would look like. It was amazing seeing how different people interpreted the view to make different shapes – that were still correct! P16 had a great time playing non-stop T-ball in the sun this week, the children were all so supportive of each other as they worked in teams. In Writing we have been exploring breaking news reports as we learn about animals in danger. This week we learnt of a forest fire which has endangered many animals, Whilst listening to breaking news reports we identified dramatic language and came up with dramatic descriptions for pictures from the fire. In Global Perspectives we have been exploring countries that are important to us. We had lots of fun trying to draw the outline of countries as well as using atlases to find out about the shape of countries. We worked on creating dictionary definitions of an important country to us, whilst learning how to locate information on the internet. Message from the Principal of CollegeKia ora, An interesting week in the College that has felt a little quieter with no Year 7 and 8 students on campus for the past two days. We look forward to seeing them back at school on Monday with all of the energy and enthusiasm they bring. I have been to visit our Year 11 classes this morning and it is great to see that the significant majority of our students are here today, I appreciate the support from parents and value the trust that you have shown in us. I would like to quickly mention that if a student is unwell, they are not expected to attend lessons online. As always student wellbeing is paramount, and if a student is sick, they should take the time to rest, recover and then return to school as normal. As you would expect at this time of term there has been a lot going on at school. In Year 7 and 8 we completed our annual Swimming Sports on Tuesday. Mrs Lindsay was very impressed with our students, and the quality of swimmers that we have continues to improve. Again some records were broken, and you will be able to see more about this event in the articles below. I also had the privilege of working with Mr Reynolds on Wednesday to present our Junior College Leaders with their badges. It looks to be a great group of students and I look forward to the positive influence that this group of students will have on that part of the school. In the Senior College we had an excellent number of students engage in the Young Enterprise Scheme, I look forward to seeing where these budding entrepreneurs end up with their ideas. Our Year 10 students completed Yellis testing on Tuesday, Mr Wiggin will be in contact with parents with more details around this. Also this week the five senior college councils were named. Selecting these councils is getting more difficult every year as our students take on the challenges that we put to them. I know that one of the councils had 70 applicants, which is a fantastic indication of student engagement. A quick reminder that on Tuesday evening we have an online information event for Year 9 parents. We will send out the link again early next week. If you have any questions that you would like to put forward in advance of this meeting, please do contact me, or you can contact Sylvia Lum. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt. Geometry Town ProjectOur Year 8 students recently completed the Geometry Town Project – they created their own town to represent who they are by including their hobbies, interests, family and culture using Geometry concepts. They constructed parallel roads, perpendicular roads and intersecting roads with the compass and the ruler and also the geometric shaped buildings. They put the interesting mathematical street names and each building has a geometric name. Here are some of the great results! Year 10 Yellis TestingOn Tuesday all Year 10 students completed an online Yellis test. This test included questions focusing on English vocabulary, Mathematics and pattern recognition. The test was adaptive, this means if a student is successfully responding to the questions the next set of questions are more challenging and if a student gets a question wrong the next question is easier. These tests are administered by the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) an organisation that is part of the Cambridge (CAIE) organisation which is responsible for the Checkpoint, IGCSE and A level courses taken by our students. CEM aims to help schools improve the educational outcomes of their students. The feedback and reports that we receive from these tests will help us to plan and review our courses. When this current group of Year 10 students receive their IGCSE results in January 2024 these results will be matched and compared with how an individual performed in their Yellis test. This is the start of a long-term project which will enable us to track the progress of Pinehurst students over a significant period. I have reminded all Year 10 students that this is not a test that they pass or fail, they will not receive any score or grade, there are no certificates or awards. The Yellis test does not impact on your child’s mathematics class or effect their choice of subjects. If you’d like some additional information please see the following link which will take you to the CEM parent support hub: https://www.cem.org/parent-student-support-hub Physical EducationThe Year 10 IGCSE group have been focusing on the skeletal system unit. In their lessons they have been learning the correct medical names for the bones in the body, how we categorise bones based on shape and size as well as the different movements at joints. In this practical activity, they were able to apply their knowledge to a blank canvas and work together to label where each bone is located using the correct terminology.
Year 8 Chicken Wing DissectionYear 8 students have been working on a new unit called Health. They have been looking at the various types of bones and joints and the muscles that connect to them. To get a more ‘hands on’ look at how muscles and joints work they have been having fun dissecting chicken wings and relating the bones and muscles they uncover to the bones and muscles in a human arm.
Young Enterprise: KickstarterThe Young Enterprise Scheme, (YES), is a national competitive programme where students form businesses and work towards launching and selling an innovative product to market. In this programme, students take the lead, adding value and – hopefully – make a profit! On Monday, YES companies participated in Kickstarter Day to begin refining their business idea. Usually it is held off-site, but given the current situation it was streamed in to the Dance Studio by Zoom. One of our students, Seina Murakami, won $100 to help kickstart her entrepreneurial endeavours! This year, we have 8 companies competing in this national competition. During the year, they will be learning how to practically run a business. Last year our companies had great success despite the interruptions to their ability to meet face-to-face. YES students experience significant personal growth through working with others to achieve their business goals, especially when they have a business mentor to support them. If you would be interested in being a YES business mentor – or finding out what is involved, please email hillary.mann@pinehurst.school.nz Year 7-8 Swimming ResultsOn Tuesday this week, our Year 7 & Year 8 swimming competitors travelled to Northern Arena, to take part in the 2022 Inter-house Swimming event. Although the event was much smaller than usual this year due to the current restrictions, there was, as always, some incredible talent on display in the pool. All students who took part were involved in 4 or more events on the day, with many students choosing to swim all 9 events – and then the house relay as well! Well done to all students who entered this event, with special mention to the 13 students who also received a 2022 Swimming medal – see below. We also had 8 school records fall yesterday – with Arissa Liu in Year 8 taking 5 records, and Jerry Yang in Year 7 a further 3 records. Sensational effort Arissa & Jerry! Matai were the winning house on the day, just under 40 points ahead of Totara in second, with Kauri in third place. Finally a huge thank you to our parent timekeepers & judge, who all did an outstanding job recording the times and placings for this event, and to our wonderful staff who supported students on the day. The Busy Bean CafeThe Busy Bean Cafe has had an awesome start to the year. The cafe is student run with 2 CEO’s, Zahra and Ryan. This year's baristas have spent time perfecting their art and are producing high quality beverages for the staff and students every morning and lunchtime. They are really learning to perfect their barista skills but also gain experience of working in a coffee shop and running the small business in a variety of ways. The team have been developing new ordering systems and inventory control management while also integrating the eftpos payment. We are very proud of the whole team! It is so wonderful to see the coffee shop living up to its name of The Busy Bean. Diving AwardCongratulations to Noah in Year 7, who was recently awarded the ‘Highest Ranked 11U Boy in a National Competition' by North Harbour Diving Club. Well done Noah! Badminton Success for VeronicaYear 10 student, Veronica, participated in U15 Badminton NZ Summer Series, which was held on 5-7th February. She won the SILVER medal in Mixed Double and achieved CHAMPION title in Girl Double of Division 2 events. Fantastic work Veronica! |