Message from the Executive Principal
Kia ora koutou, good afternoon, 下午好, 안녕하세요 The Chairman of the Board had the great pleasure earlier this week to introduce Mr Michael Waller, Pinehurst School’s new Executive Principal, to the whole school community. Mr Waller was kind enough to record a short introductory video for us, and I hope you enjoyed the first step in getting to know him. He and his family will, I’m sure, love being part of our community, and I know he will make a huge contribution to the school’s ongoing development. So a huge welcome to Mr Waller from all of us! This week has been a gloriously sunny one, and the skies lit up a wonderful, much-rearranged
Year 1-4 Cross Country event on Wednesday. The children were brilliant: competitive (we had a couple of contested photo finishes!) and full of smiles, loving the claps and cheers of parents and staff as they sprinted along the finishing straight. Thank you to all of those parents who came along to support. One observation from me on this: it’s clear to all of us that our younger children have become fitter over the last few years, despite the lockdown. I think it’s connected to a number of factors: one of these is the growing strength of our PE programme, led by Mr Taylor, but it’s also because of the increased number of sports and other physical activities that our students are engaged in. Just about every child takes part in these regularly, and it’s great to see the result. Book Week has been great fun too: thank
to Mrs Coombridge and her team for making it happen. Reading dogs, visiting authors, book parades… it’s been a riot of colour, costumes and books sales (!) as well. A passion for reading, a love of books is, for me, just about the most important part of a young person’s development. It fires up our synapses, takes us deep into worlds we couldn’t otherwise imagine, teaches us empathy and openness, and provides a life of learning. Thos afternoon we have the Cultural Evening: I’m looking forward to seeing the students in action. This is one of our student-led and organised events, watched over by Mrs Hawthorn, and is always a real pleasure. Next week, College students are again hard at work, making the most of the last couple of weeks of Term 3. In Primary, it’s also mainly a quieter week, with a focus back
in the classroom. The main exception is, of course, Year 4 Camp, which heads out on Wednesday. This is a big one! The first overnight school camp for our children and parents, and always full of initial nervousness and a great deal of excitement. Finally from me: I enjoyed taking a small group of parents around the Pinehurst Theatre and College 5 site last week, and would love to take as many parents around as you would like. A reminder that seats can be sponsored, and we have spaces on our Donors Wall for parents to make a contribution too. Our Grand Piano can also be sponsored, and all the details can be found on the website. We’ve so far raised just over $200,000 – thank you! – and we would love to have more of our parents’ and children’s names on our seats and on the Donors Wall. Please just ask Sylvia Lum
if you have any questions (sylvia.lum@pinehurst.school.nz) or have a look on our website: https://www.pinehurst.school.nz/contact-us/donate/ Have a lovely weekend and see you 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
Wednesday 21 September - Year 5-6 Super Cluster Netball (selected students)
- Year 4 Camp
Thursday 22 September
As the year has progressed, so has the construction of the Pinehurst Theatre and College 5. The walls are finally up, and the site is beginning to take real shape, looking less like a construction site and more like the theatre we have only been able to imagine through artist impressions. The state-of-the-art facility is still on track for completion in March 2023 and we can’t wait for the Theatre to offer regular musical and theatrical performances, whilst giving our students a unique opportunity to gain valuable skills – both on and off the stage. The site tours will take parents into the heart of the construction (yes - time for hard hats and hi-vis!), to see in real time how things are progressing; take a sneak
peek into the future of Pinehurst and of course learn about the ways in which you can support us We currently have the following tour dates and times available (spaces are limited):
Friday, 28th October at 4:00pm
Friday, 11th November at 2:30pm
Friday, 2nd December at 4:00pm
If you would like to attend, please RSVP to carmen.stella@pinehurst.school.nz for more information.
Message from the Principal of CollegeKia ora e te Whānau o Pinehurst School Kia ora e te Whānau o Pinehurst School Te wiki o te reo Māori has been celebrated with lots of different activities in the College including a very popular daily POD quiz which tested student’s skills in te reo. Whilst the week has been an important reminder for us to think about the taonga of this unique language and culture, our students have also been working on House waiata over a number of weeks which will
culminate in a waiata challenge towards the end of this term. This is the first year we have run such a challenge and it has been the plan of a group of passionate student leaders who have driven the initiative and persevered to get this underway. Senior college years are a perfect time for students to experience leadership opportunities. Student leaders are able to develop many skills including conflict resolution, communication and how to collaborate effectively. They also learn lots about themselves including how they work under pressure and how their own personality interacts with others. It is important for students to experience leadership opportunities at school in order to help them think about their life goals, to develop self-confidence and to develop skills in a safe and
supportive environment. At Pinehurst we have numerous opportunities for our students to experience leadership throughout their school years. This week we have started the process of deciding on our College Leaders for 2023. College students and staff will be able to view slides on Schoolbox which introduce each of the candidates; they can then vote for Head and Deputy Head Boy and Girl and one other student for a leadership position. Voting closes on 23 September after which candidates will be interviewed and decisions about College Leaders will be made. On Monday, we welcomed back students who attended AIMS games last week. These students represented us wonderfully and they all worked hard in their sporting events. Yesterday a group of Year 11 students and three teachers headed off to National Park for the students to
complete their qualifying tramp as part of their Silver Duke of Edinburgh award. These students will experience white water rafting as well as a 17km tramp around Tama Lakes, a fantastic opportunity for them to develop perseverance, teamwork and self-motivation. Yesterday at our Year 9-13 assembly we heard from our rock band, Mack Five, who entertained us with a great rendition of the classic Shadows tune Apache. This group of musicians; Jackson Edwards, Alex Lindsay, Linghan Meng, Wen Yao Zhong and Samuel Qian have worked hard to develop their musical skills together and I am looking forward to hearing their future performances. Today at lunchtime the staff will compete against the students in the final interhouse dodgeball competition which should be lots of fun. After
school today we have our cultural evening which has been organised by the student Cultural Council. There will be a number of student performances, food and competitions with all donations going to UNICEF. A nice way to end the week. I hope you have a lovley weekend. Ngā mihi nui Dawn
Last Saturday we hosted our annual KPMUN at Kristin school. Here is a little snippet of the day from one of our club members, Natalie Raphael: "To sum up Model United Nations, it is an assembly where young people are given the opportunity to help develop their confidence in their own abilities and go out into the world feeling empowered to make a positive change as global citizens. One way UN Youth does this is through a mock UN assembly where students can represent a country and discuss world issues. UN Youth is such an amazing and insightful group to be a part of. Last week we had our annual Kristin and Pinehurst Model UN collaboration held at
Kristen (KPMUN). At KPMUN we debated on worldwide issues to make amendments to the following resolutions: - Covid -19 and its impact on Refugees and Migrants
- Technology and Climate Change
- Political Corruption
I was the Canadian delegate and so I spoke on behalf of Canada on the resolutions that were raised. It was so fun to take part in and I encourage people to have a go to join this awesome group – sign up next year and come have an UN-real
experience!!" Special thanks to the HSAs who organised this event, it wouldn’t be possible without you. Yeonsoo and I had so much fun organizing this event and it was great to see so many enthusiastic passionate students debate about ongoing social and political matters. It’s definitely a highlight and a great milestone within the club. Thanks to Mrs Sullivan and Mr Reed for helping us make this day possible. Here are some photos from the event, and thank you to everyone who came! - Yeonsoo and Lisa
College Mandarin Monday morning brought rain and a forecast of thunderstorm. Not a good sign for our planned walk to Yum Cha. But luckily the sky cleared just in time for our forty-four senior Mandarin students to work up an appetite on their walk to lunch. Students had practiced and pre-ordered the food the week before, so we didn't have to wait for long before steaming hot food arrived for our hungry tums. Picking up large bao buns and slippery dumplings with chopsticks was a challenge overcame by all. Some students were very adventurous and tried new dishes like chicken feet! It was a great opportunity for all students to share and learn about dining etiquettes together. As we
were finishing up our meal, someone asked “Can we please have hotpot next time Ms.?”
Year 8 Physical EducationCreate a game is a unit which focuses on students’ creativity as well as their ability to work in small groups. It gives students a chance to express their ideas allowing them work on their social skills. Students work in small groups and create a game that will then be introduced to the class for the everyone to play. The students have been thoroughly enjoying participating these original games.
Pinehurst Hockey, Boys v Girls 1st XIOn Wednesday afternoon, the boys’ and girls’ 1st XI hockey teams played a friendly match against each other. The girls started out strong, scoring within the first minute of the game, putting the boys under immense pressure. They fought hard to come back, scraping through with a win in the end despite the girl’s domination throughout the game. We were super grateful for all the supporters who came to watch, and we hope that they enjoyed it as much as we did. Well played everyone, looking forward to a rematch next season.
Auckland Cross Country ChampionshipsOn Tuesday 13th September, Zara Roodt competed in the Auckland Zone Cross Country Championships. Zara qualified for this event at the North Harbour Zone Cross Country in which the top 10 go through to the Auckland Zone Cross Country Championship. Zara was the only Pinehurst runner that placed in the top 10. It was a tough race however Zara did exceptionally well and placed 36th in the Year 7 race. This is an awesome achievement as every Zone in Auckland sends the best 10 runners from their respective Zone race.
North Harbour Table Tennis After School LeagueA huge congratulations to Pinehurst Blue who has once again been crowned the champion team of the A Division for the North Harbour Table Tennis Year 5-8 competition. Pinehurst Blue are the defending champions after taking out the competition in Term 2. Pinehurst Blue is made up of the following students: Keitaro Yoneda, Youngmin Kim, Matthew Heng. Matthew Heng was the overall winner of the boys A division, which is an amazing achievement, especially only being Year 5. Our Pinehurst teams will now compete for the School Cup to finish up the Term 3 competition, we wish them all the best.
AIMS Games 2022Last week, 63 students from Year 7 & 8 attending the phenomenal AIMS Games. This was the first year since 2019 that Pinehurst has competed in the games, so it was a very new and exciting experience for many students and staff. AIMS Games kicked off on Saturday 3rd September with the hip hop competition. Our hip hop team did exceptionally well in their performances, and we are really proud of the girls effort and commitment to their team. Cross Country was the next event on Sunday 4th September with Maia Mackenzie and Zara Roodt competing in their respective age groups. The course was very tough but
both girls did their best. Swimming also started on Sunday which saw our first medals being won, which started a domino effect of top placings. Golf, Hockey, Netball, Basketball, Gymnastics, Badminton and Tennis all kicked off on Monday 5th September. The week ended on Friday 9th September with most sports hosting finals. We are extremely proud of all of our athletes. Not only for the outstanding performances, placings and medals but for the sportsmanship that was showed. Every student demonstrated respect for their team mates, coaches, managers and opposition. A huge thank you to all of the coaches and managers that gave up their time and put in countless hours of effort to prepare our teams. Also, a huge thank you to all of the parents that travelled down to support their children.
Please see some of the placings below of students who have placed in the top 3 in their respective sport which is out of all of New Zealand: Badminton Singles Div 1 Girls: Elsa Lu placed 2nd overall
Div 2 Girls: Emily Prasteyo placed 2nd overall Doubles Div 1 Girl: Emily Prasteyo and Elsa Lu placed 1st overall School Placing: 3rd Overall TennisLeo Chung – 3rd place Div 3 Singles GolfYicheng Wang – Placed 1st for the 18 holes boys
gross and overall gross
Renee Park – Placed 3rd overall in the 9 holes girls SwimmingJade Lyles - Placed 1st in the 100m Individual Medley, 200m Freestyle
- Placed 2nd in the 50m Butterfly
- Placed 3rd in the 50m Backstroke, 100m Backstroke, 200m Backstroke, 100m Freestyle, 50m Freestyle
Arissa Liu - Placed 1st in the 50m Backstroke, 100m Backstroke, 200m Backstroke
- Placed 2nd in the 200m Individual Medley
- Placed 3rd in the 100m Freestyle, 100m Butterfly, 50m Butterfly, 100m Individual Medley
Gymnastics Artistic Gymnastics – Twisters BOYS:
Noah Atkinson – Placed 1st Overall Tumbling – Flyers BOYS:
Noah Atkinson – Placed 1st Overall
Callum Morgan – Placed 2nd Overall GIRLS:
Jessica Drescher – Placed 1st Overall Table TennisYoungmin Kim – placed 3rd overall out of 128 people.
Pinehurst Alumni VisitIt was lovely to welcome back Anna Li and Linda Tang this week, both of whom have completed one year of study in UK. Anna is studying Biological Sciences at Imperial College and Linda is studying Medicine at Cambridge. They held an informal chat session at lunchtime, where they talked about the application and admissions processes, their move to the UK, their courses and their day to day life as a student. Our current students had lots of questions and made the most of having them with us.
Chang Liu, Pat Hanly Award Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki hosted the annual Pat Hanly Creativity Awards on Thursday night the 8th September recognising 88 talented senior visual art students from 47 secondary schools throughout the greater Auckland region. Y13 student Chang Liu, was award the Pat Hanly Creative Award and a Highly Commended Award of Excellence for her oil portrait painting. Chang is an exceptionally talented student whose work was a standout on the evening. The Art Department and school are proud to celebrate Chang’s achievement.
2022 Year 9-13 College Sport Prize GivingThursday, 29 September Seated by 1.45pm ready for a 2pm start 2pm – 3.15pm followed by afternoon tea for parents and all award winners
Message from the Principal of Primary Kia ora, This week we celebrated Te wiki o te reo Māori, Maori Language week, through stories, song, history and including te reo, the language wherever we could. In the Primary we learn place names, numbers, greetings and basic nouns and adjectives as well as the myths and legends that have been passed down through generations. Stories are such an important part of our culture and in turn our identity. Myths and legends were often created to explain the world before the science was available to help us to comprehend natural phenomena. Stories can help to keep a culture alive and are told by adults to children
as part of the traditions that surround family life. There are many beautiful stories written in Māori, rich with incredible language, that we aim to introduce to young children to help them learn about the culture of their country Aotearoa. Alongside Te wiki o te reo Māori we celebrated books of all kinds, especially stories throughout our very own book week. This year our wonderful librarians Michele, Deb, and Sharon along with the teachers of the Year 3 and 4 syndicate really took the celebrations up a notch. We have had daily competitions from a, guess who is reading the book to a poetry slam, visits to the library for stories, bookmarks, and the beautiful reading dogs which you will see plenty of pictures of below this article. We have joked that we must be good at teaching phonics if we can teach dogs to read but no, the
dogs are part of an international programme where dogs are taken into libraries for children to read to. It helps to calm them and gives them confidence to read out loud. I met Olive today, a silky-smooth whippet who was so gentle with the children in P8 as they were with her. Sorry parents if you get asked for a puppy on your child’s next birthday but we loved having the reading dogs visit us. It was a wonderful experience to be able to see so many students dressed as their favourite characters for the Book Parade on Tuesday afternoon. Everyone enjoyed the excitement and parents waved and took photos as we all paraded in a big line across the playground. We were all enthralled by the real-life story of Swoop written by New Zealand firefighter Matt Owens. Matt read the story to us of the magpie he rescued and how swoop became part of
his family along with Mowgli the cat. He also answered questions about being a fire fighter and got us to make fire engine noises as loud as we could. A great time was had by everyone! We were finally able to have our Y1 to 4 cross country competitions and I have to say they were amazing. One of the things that impressed us all was the fitness level of our students and how much that has improved over the years. Every child ran all the race, even the five-year-olds and every child gave their very best effort. The team spirit was so high, they cheered for each other and clapped every runner. Our Year 5 and 6 marshalls were brilliant, most of them running the courses several times to support younger children. Their leadership was outstanding as was their kindness. It was a fun day where we got together as a community to support each other and
enjoy some time outside again. Kia pai tō rā whakatā. Have a great weekend. Sian
Winter Netball What an amazing winter season of netball in 2022. It has been a great experience to be back for the entire season and develop our skills through trainings and game time. A huge thank you to our wonderful coaches, managers, side line supporters and our Primary netball co-ordinator, Anita Botes. We look forward to our Spring League and welcome any new players to the netball family.
Special visitor in P23P23 had a special visitor on Tuesday as part of our Book Week celebrations. Candice’s grandfather came to visit and brought his guitar to have a ‘sing-a-long’ with our youngest students. This was a special moment as Linus is one of the original foundation members of staff here at Pinehurst School. Linus was one of the first teachers and he taught the very first year 2 and 3 class. It was a lovely moment as Linus comes back to Pinehurst as a grandparent.
Year 4 Big Day Out! Auckland Art Gallery Trip What a day! And what a destination! Year 4 had the best day ‘ever’ on Friday when the whole year group, teachers, lovely mum’s and Grandma helpers boarded a double-decker to head into the city.
Once we had waved to everyone and anyone as we left school, the exciting journey began. So much electrified chatter as they recognized famous landmarks after zooming down the bus lane bypassing the motorway traffic. We met with the AMAZING educators who told us more about our day and what three rules we had to remember. Then we split into 4 different groups and worked on either a scavenger hunt or went off to draw as we ‘expanded the frame’.
The scavenger hunt involved us walking around the abstract and still life parts of the gallery, looking closely at the different art works before completing various tasks such as finding a portrait and copying the posture or facial expressions.
Expand the Frame was a popular activity in the animalia section of the gallery, the children were given a worksheet with one of famous works of art in the room copied into the bottom right hand corner of a ‘frame’, they had to ‘expand’ what was in the art work adding their ideas of what would be there if the frame was expanded. What an experience, laying under a work of art imagining what else the artist could see!
We met up for morning tea then went off in our small groups with our parent helper to explore all of the other treasures. Most groups spent lots of time in the Creative Learning Centre where Zoey even created a Haiku (From the Lego day learning, thank you Mrs Jones-Hill) to give to the staff at the gallery as a thank you from all of us.
Several of the gallery staff commented on what a fabulous group of well-behaved and polite students they were I am proud to say! The journey back was just as thrilling as the journey there, lots of animated chatter about their day!
All in a week’s work in P8Wow, what a week it has been… We started off the week with our amazing ‘Book week dress up’ parade and then were spoilt with a talk from the author of the book Swoosh, aka Fireman Matt. This was a highlight in our week to meet a real author and fireman. We then had our fantastic Cross country on Wednesday and thankfully the weather held out for us. We had some real superhero’s running in this race. On Thursday during our library time we had a special visit from Olive the dog and the
children so enjoyed reading to Olive and having her spend the lesson with us. Lastly these past few weeks we have had many discussions around kindness and the importance of being kind to everyone. We made our super ‘kindness shirts’ and here is our kindness display.
Life in P17What a fun and busy week we have had with Bookweek. We loved the dressing up in costumes – check out some of our awesome costumes! In Health we have been discussing relationships and how they are built on respect, empathy, kindness, active listening, kindness, and forgiveness. Mrs Jones Hill also came in and talked to us about Kindness and why it is so important. Here is an acrostic poem one of us wrote about relating: Respect everyone no matter who they are
Empathy is important in every way
Look for win wins all the time and make the right decisions
Active listening helps to engage conversations
Try to forgive it is important to fix relationships
Interest in others, be curious
No more snap judgements, get to know them first
Give, give, give, if you give one day it’ll all come back to you. In Reading, we have started a novel, Alex Rider, Stormbreaker. We are analysing the text as we read and thinking about how this can help improve our own writing. This week in particular, we have been focusing on guessing meaning of unknown words using context clues. In Writing, we have been appealing to members of the public via a newspaper article to get more information about strange events happening at Victor Rowley’s Red Cafe. You can read two of these below. In Design Technology we are learning about construction of structures. We had a ‘build the tallest tower’ challenge, we have investigated types of joins
and bends used to build a marble bridge, and we will eventually be designing and building our own marble runs.
Year 5/6 Trip to Encore Theatre Collective Last week Year 5 and 6 dove deep under the sea when they went to see Encore Theatre Collective’s production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid at the Bruce Mason Centre! It was great to be able to go on an excursion again after such a long break. We were all dazzled by the astonishing costumes, backdrops and stunning flying effects. It was truly spectacular, with incredible performances from all the young people involved. Pinehurst students left feeling enchanted and inspired and had just one question: “What should our next production be?”
Once upon a time in P7…After reading The story “There is No Dragon in this Story” by Lou Carter the students were curious about fairy tales. P7 decided to write a list of fairy tales and at the end of each day listen to a different one.
Cynthia says that fairy tales always start with Once upon a time. There are always fake characters and they aren’t real.
Yinuo thinks that fairy tales are kind of long stories that start with Once upon a time.
“Some fairy tales can be short as well,’ added Katlynn “and have animals that can talk in them.”
Ashton said “fairy tales aren’t true, and that there are good guys and bad guys in the stories.”
“Fairy tales are definitely fake” nodded Edward “inside fairy tales there is stuff that is not real and kids shouldn’t trust fairy tales as they aren’t true.”
The students retold fairy tales and illustrated a book cover for their favourite fairy tale. We discussed the theme or idea behind some of them, or if they were for pure enjoyment. We learnt that fairy tales are a children's story involving imaginary, magical or fantastical beings
Year 5/6 Music Year 5 have been analysing the Elements of Music used to represent space. We have studied space music including ‘The Planets’ by Gustav Holst, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ by Alex North and (my personal favourite) the Star Wars Main Theme by John Williams. We have listened carefully to how the different characteristics of the planets are represented through the music. Students are now working towards composing their own space-themed pieces using techniques they have identified from the previously mentioned composers. These include: a low drone, use of synth pads, slow crescendo as the texture builds, higher long duration notes on
brass/metal instruments such as horns, chime bars or chimes.
Year 6 are exploring bass lines across a range of genres this term. In this practical unit, students have been using the guitar as a bass; the bottom four strings of a guitar have the same tuning as a bass. All students have had the opportunity to play on an electric bass guitar. They have developed their picking technique using their first and second fingers and learned to rest their thumb on the ‘pick-up’ or the string below. Some classes had a visit from our bass guitar teacher, Will Goodinson, for a demonstration of the bass guitar. We have subsequently had a number of students sign up for bass guitar lessons.
Term 3 Year 4-6 Spanish This term's topic for our Year 4 is "La comida"- FOOD! We have been learning food vocabularies and how to form sentences like…: I am hungry, I want to eat… (tengo hambre, quiero comer...), I am thirsty, I want to drink... (tengo sed, quiero beber...), and I like/love/hate/don't like... (me gusta/encanta/odio/no me gusta...). Listen to some of us speak Spanish! Can you guess what they like? In Year 5, we are leaning about "la ropa"- clothing. We have been learning clothing item vocabularies and we understand
masculine/feminine form of nouns with correct articles. We are also able to say what we are wearing in first person verb: llevo/me pongo, what others are wearing in third person verb: lleva. Some of us are even able to add some details of the clothes (...es de color...)! Listen to us sing “U la la” song! The Year 6 classes have been focusing on "los deportes y los pasatiempos". We know a lot of sports vocabularies, when to use “juego al/ hago”, and we are learning how to say what we like to play and give a reason to it (me gusta jugar al baloncesto, porque...)
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