No images? Click here 19 November 2021Pinehurst School NewsletterOpening Words from the Executive Principal...Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好, 안녕하세요 The last two days have been emotional for me and, in many different ways, for many of Pinehurst’s students, parents and staff. We had the final Cambridge examinations yesterday: A Level Economics, AS Level Physics and IGCSE Chemistry rounded off the series with a flourish, over a hundred of our senior students in school. The exams started in the September holidays, just over a month after we went into lockdown, and we have been running our intricate, super-safe bubbles every day since then, even when we were no longer required to do so. Thank you to our amazing staff for their exemplary organisation, and to our parents and students who trusted us to get it right, and who approached the exams in such a responsible way. I’m very proud of the whole community, and will be waiting with anticipation for the results to arrive in January! Last night, we capped the end of the exams with a virtual toast to our Year 13 Valedictorians. It was a lovely way to mark the end of the year group’s time at our school: some of the students have been with us for 13 years; most have been here for at least 7 years; and a few joined us in the last couple of years. I will miss all of them, but I know they have exciting futures ahead of them. And, of course, we have this morning welcomed back over 300 students into our school for the first time since August 17th. When Primary teachers arrived yesterday morning, they saw classrooms that were pretty much exactly as they had left them three months ago, “August 17th” on whiteboards, work prepared for a Wednesday morning that didn’t quite happen. I’d say that there was an atmosphere of great excitement and a little trepidation around the place, but by the end of the day, everyone was completely ready for the students, both in school and online. The students this morning were a delight to see. I can’t express this strongly enough: a school without children just doesn’t feel right. Hearing the sound of their laughter and seeing their smiles again gave me, and every other adult at the school, a simple, powerful burst of happiness. As you know, we are now running both full-time online and full-time in-school experiences for our students. The details are on our website, and both Mrs Coxon and Mr Verryt have also written home to explain how things will be working over the next three weeks. It’s obviously quite a bit more complex than when we were completely online, and there are some compromises that we’ve had to make, but our guiding principle has been to ensure the best possible experience for our children and young people, both at home and in school, and I’m very grateful to our committed, imaginative staff. Next year – just as a heads-up! – we are expecting all students to be in school if we are in the traffic lights system. The last three months have reinforced once more how important it is for young people to learn together, to experience the buzz of excitement that comes from lightbulb moments with their friends. The school does, of course, feel a little different: masks, temperature checks, bubbles… and yellow-and-white signs everywhere. But it’s still our school, our place, and it’s great to have some noise around us. 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, It is a beautiful morning, and we have children on site! We are so happy to see them and to be able to connect in person, even though it is at a distance. Plans are in place for working off screen as much as we can and enjoying the outdoors, sports, and the arts. School should be a happy place to learn, and it certainly feels like that today. Online classes are also in full swing, and teachers are continuing to make those as engaging as possible. All our staff are onsite and enjoying the classroom environment even if they are teaching online. I had the pleasure this week of watching and judging the Year 6 Speech Competition online. The topics were varied and well-rehearsed and it was a fantastic way to spend an hour. There were nine finalists: William Wen told us why gas cars are better than electric; Jerry Yang told us why children shouldn’t do chores; Dylan Morgan explained why we should have pets at school; Millie Wang told us why we shouldn’t have speeches; Peter Shi why video games are good for children; Maddie Soh explained why her dad shouldn’t tell dad jokes; Daniel Singh told us what humans need to do to save the earth; Zoe Qin explained why you should not have a younger sibling and Tiger Niu persuaded us that people should lie. It was a difficult task for Mrs Jones Hill and me but in the end the winners were: In third place Daniel Singh, second was Maddie Soh and the overall winner for 2021 was Jerry Yang. Congratulations to Jerry who will be receiving the Speech cup at our upcoming Y6 Prizegiving. The speech finalists were very impressive, many have been finalists in previous competitions and have honed their skills over the years, but there were also some new faces who have learned from the skills taught in class. We were impressed with their confident delivery as well as the sophistication of topic, vocabulary, and the effect of carefully selected language features. We loved to see how well the audience responded by showing their applause on screen and messages of appreciation to their peers. This group of students have really worked well as a team throughout their years in the Primary and as we prepare to say farewell and best wishes for the College, we will all reflect on how special they have been as young people. I am off to classes now to see everyone, there were a lot of smiling faces on the gate this morning. Kia pai to rā whakata, have a good weekend. Ngā mihi, Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary
The last few days of our Primary Bubble!P1 have been ‘growing’ their learning whilst online, connecting their Science, Literacy, Art and MathsLiteracy: During Literacy lessons we are using Traditional Fairy Tales to engage the children’s three key areas of reading and writing: learning the code, making meaning, and thinking critically. Learning the code: Means developing their ability to decode and encode written forms of language. Making meaning, involves developing and using knowledge, strategies, and awareness to understand and convey meaning when reading or writing. Thinking critically: For a five-year-old involves responding to texts, and beginning to reflect on them. Thinking critically, they have been introduced to “The Real Story of Three Little Pigs”, which offers the story from the Wolf’s perspective. They created a story map with the key elements of the story and produced a ‘newspaper’ article for their Big Write. Maths We want all our children in Pinehurst to succeed in maths and find holding high expectations for everyone right from New Entrants encourages their growth. Whilst working online, assignments are the way we are assessing the students learning from the lesson they have attended. Observing the students both online and their returned assignments enables us to modify and re-evaluate our lesson content. Whilst working online students have been shown how maths is connected to the world around us, they have been busy weighing toys and items around them to decide which is heavier and which is lighter. Communicating in maths helps students process new learning and build on their thinking. Spotlighting students for everyone to see during online conversations allows them to describe to the class how and why they solved a problem in a certain way. Science In Science we are learning about the functions and parts of a plant. The teaching and learning strategies include a range of whole class, and individual activities to accommodate the different abilities, skills, learning rates and styles that allow every student to participate and achieve success. Some practical experiments are modelled to the students and some are suggested as Tasks during our Topic lessons to integrate across the curriculum. The budding scientists had fun predicting and observing their experiments at home. Art As children manipulate a paintbrush, their fine motor skills improve. By counting pieces and colours, they build on the basic foundations of maths. When children experiment with materials, they dabble in science. Most importantly perhaps whilst learning online, when children feel good while they are creating art helps it helps to boost their self-confidence. P1's art was showcased in last weeks newsletter. What's new with Year 2This week the Year 2’s embraced the theme “Lets Get Physical” taking time to break away from their screens and opportunities to do something active. Some of the teachers sang a song to their class “lets get physical, physical…” by Olivia Newton-John although none of them dressed up like her. Popular among the students were making their own poi and bottle flipping. The student’s practiced swinging their home made poi. Many of the Year 2’s were flipping water bottles in their kitchen until they finally managed to master the bottle landing the right way up. There were some creative inside activities such as inside confidence courses and wonderful outside activities such as walking in nature. It was wonderful to see so many family members joining in and getting active as well. Some students made their own hopscotch with chalk on the concrete while others made string patterns. The students all loved creating activities and getting physical at the same time. Thank you to Mrs Jones-Hill and Kirsty for the wonderful creative Tic Tac Toe ideas! What’s the latest in P11?!Wow! What a week we have had! In Maths, the students of P11 have been learning how to recognise and calculate equivalent fractions. We made our very our fraction walls and used them to identify fractions that are equivalent to each other. In Global Perspectives, the students have been developing their financial literacy skills. We have been exploring currencies used in different countries. This week, we made our very own school currency! We came up with a name, made various denominations and even included a detail to prevent the currency from being counterfeited! The students of P11 have also taken part in a physical challenge this week! From balloon volleyball to Nintendo Switch ballet (and just about everything in between!), the students embraced the “Let’s Get Physical” challenge with determination and perseverance. As always, they brought their enthusiasm and imaginations to the activities and the outcomes speak for themselves. Check out some of our videos! Primary Year 2 & 3 School bubblePrimary Year 3 & 4 Online LearningPoetry Presentationsusing Powtoon from P20Year 6 have been developing their multi-media skills over the last few weeks after we had the amazing Mrs Watters teaching the students how to use a programme called Powtoon. Firstly, she introduced the students to a poem called ‘The Visitor’ by Ian Serraillier and the students analysed the style and mood of them poem. Then they turned the poem into a comic strip, focusing on using images and speech bubbles to retell the poem. After this, the students then used multi-media skills to create a presentation of the poem that used images, text, voice recordings and music. It was important to retain the spooky, creepy mood of the original poem. There was a huge amount of learning in this as they were combining many features; adding suitable fonts, selecting small pieces of text, timing the transitions and adding in their voice recording of themselves reciting the poem. The Powtoon programme proved difficult at times and the students showed perseverance and resilience when dealing with technical issues. It has been an amazing learning journey! Click on the links below to watch some incredible movies made by some students in P20.
Jerry Yang -https://www.powtoon.com/c/eB0JjtzdA9t/0/m Lena Chen -https://www.powtoon.com/c/dPXxrElZG8D/0/m Amber Kim -https://www.powtoon.com/c/bUYTdJIRpRO/0/mJ
Year 6 SpeechesThis week in Year 6, the students were excited to be able to deliver their speeches in an effort to persuade or change the way others think. Online Learning has changed the way in which we have delivered our speeches. Everyone adapted to the challenge of delivering their speech with an online audience and did an outstanding job. There were nine Year 6 finalists, who were judged online by Ms Coxon and Mrs Jones Hill on Wednesday morning. The judges commented on how engaging the topics were and noted the ability the finalists had to be able to look into the camera and visualise a real audience. They were impressed with how the finalists linked their arguments at the end of their speech and recapped the key points – very important speech techniques! Another comment by the judges, was that all the speeches had great audience appeal, gripping introductions, humour, research and facts to support their ideas. The three winning speeches for 2022 were Daniel Singh 3rd, Maddie Soh 2nd , and in 1st place was Jerry Yang. Congratulations to the finalists and all the students in Year 6. Jerry – Why children shouldn’t do chores Peter – Why video games are good for children Dylan – Why we should have pets at school Tiger – Why we ‘should’ lie! William – Why gas cars are better than electric cars Daniel – What humans need to do to save the earth Millie - Why we should not have speeches Maddie - Why my dad should stop telling dad jokes Zoe - Why you should not have a younger sibling RoboticsDuring home learning, the Year 4 and 5 Robotics students have been exploring unplugged coding. We have been learning how to write, run and at times debug algorithms. Our codes have included repeats and loops to challenge our skills. We have looked at how to write smart codes that limit commands. These codes have helped us to solve mysteries, stack cups, create critters, decode secret messages, and create pixel art. We have had a lot of fun and been very creative with our resources from home. Kia Ora, What a brilliant morning to stand at the front of school in the sunshine and welcome back 200 students into the college this morning. Some students came bouncing off buses and out of cars saying hello to everyone they came across. Others were a bit more reserved and apprehensive about being back. In some cases I saw parents drive into the carpark with their children and drive back out of the carpark with children still in cars, only for them to come back into the carpark and the students tentatively step out. This shows the spectrum of emotions that our students feel as they are able to return to school after such a long break. We will do everything we can today to ensure that our students have a great day in a safe and secure environment, so that getting out of the car or off the bus on Monday morning is a little bit easier and done with a little more confidence. With Cambridge examinations now finished and junior students back, the noise levels around the college will ramp up as they should do. I know that the teachers are excited and have worked collaboratively to create vibrant and engaging lessons. Over the next few weeks you will see the content of our newsletter begin to reflect this change. As Mr Reed has mentioned above, last night we hosted our Valedictory Toast for our graduating class of 2021. The event gave us a small chance to reflect on the journey through our school for our students and their parents. From photos of smiling Year 1 students in the former green Pinehurst Primary uniform, through various sports days, concerts, camps, tramps, and finally to young adults looking incredibly sharp in their Ball gowns and suits at their final school Ball. The brief walk down memory lane brought tears of joy and laughter in equal measure. We are looking forward to hosting the graduates onsite for an informal event later in the term where they will receive their Valedictory Book and their school leavers gear. We are then hopeful of hosting our formal dinner early next year before our alumni, as they will be when the event happens, take flight, and spread to all corners of New Zealand and beyond. Nga mihi, Kieran Verryt, Principal of College
College MathematicsThe Year 7 and 8 Mathematics classes participated in an activity's session last Friday. They were tasked to create an origami design of their choice at varying levels of difficulty from beginner to advanced. We received many photos and videos of their work. Here are just a few of the amazing creations our students submitted. COP 26 Innovation ChallengeLast week Year 8 and 9 students competed to design innovative solutions to climate change issues facing us today. The standard of work was impressive and Mr Stafford and Mrs Mann had a tough time judging whose was the best. We lots of creative solutions presented and have included a selection of “Highly Commended” examples below. The winners receive a $20 gift card for each member of their group and should make contact with Mrs Mann to collect their gift card. The winners of the Year 8 challenge were Abby Li, Alex Shepherd, Lucia Yin and Emilia Lotze and they named their project the Eco Planter Box. The winners of the Year 9 challenge were Charles Shen, Miso Ryu & Wanyu Liang with their robotic tree-planting and maintenance robot. Online toast to our ValedictoriansWelcome back to school.... Music in PrimaryThere has been a lot of sharing of ideas for the Christmas Concerts in classes. A big thank you to those children who have recorded and sent in songs, dances etc. Year 1 and 2 It feels like Christmas is coming with the singing of familiar songs like Jingle Bell Rock and Jingle Bells. It would be great if the younger children could have some form of jingle bells to play with this song. Some DIY suggestions will be in lessons this week. Some of the Year 2’s really got into a rap by Kyle Exon – ‘Trap -The Three Litte Pigs Rap’. This has led to the fun of keeping up with the very fast lyrics, and writing Christmas themed sentences that can be put to a beat. Year 3 and 4 The students have been reading and clapping 3/4 and 4/4 rhythms using notation and word patterns to the background theme tunes of Minecraft and Harry Potter. From this activity the Year 4 students created codes using Harry Potter themed word ostinatos that had to be clapped or said correctly to enter secret passages in Hogwarts castle. The students are now working on their own Christmas raps. Check out these rappers below. Year 5 and 6 The students have been identifying and analysing musical features of raps such as - ‘I can’t Wait for Christmas’ and ‘The Night B4 Christmas’ and ‘the Basshoven rap’. The students are writing lyrics to a Christmas themed rap with the challenge to rhyme the lines and perform in a rhythmical way that works with the beat. Some Christmas performances will be coming from these! Annie 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. Pinehurst Family Quiz NightPlease do advise if you would like to join us by submitting your details here. If there are any questions regarding the online event, please contact michelle.alves@pinehurst.school.nz Online Toast to 30 YearsAs our 30 Year Anniversary Dinner has been rescheduled to the 12th February 2022, we decided to hold an online event to toast the occasion with our attendees. The toast was held online on Saturday, when our dinner was supposed to take place. Scholastic book club Issue 8Thank you for your continued support of the Scholastic Lucky Book Club throughout this rather unusual year. Our school has chosen to participate in the final issue for 2021, however, we will not send flyers home. To participate in this issue, please follow the link below and select the books you would like from the online catalogue, and place your order as you normally would. https://www.scholastic.co.nz/parents/lucky-book-club/ All orders will be sent directly to your home address and will incur a $7.00 freight fee. For assistance at any stage, please call 0800 266 525 and chat to the friendly customer care team at Scholastic, email bookclub@scholastic.co.nz or click on the help button at the Book Club platform.. Please do not contact the school this time, as we are not receiving any orders through LOOP.
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.
Art ExhibitionAlumni Art Teacher Linda Gair has an exhibition at the Depot Artspace Galley, Devonport.
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