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WAIKOUAITI PRIMARY SCHOOL NEWSLETTER
11 February 2015 Term 1 Week 2
Dates to Remember - Term 1 2015
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13 Feb.
16 Feb.
20 Feb.
23 Feb.
27 Feb
2 March
3 March
5 March
9-13 March
School Picnic 5-7pm
Board Meeting
Assembly - Rimu
Camp Meeting 6-7pm
School Triathlon
Cricket Yr 5-6 11-12.30pm
Cluster swimming - seniors
Cricket - Festival Day
School Camp Yr 4,5,6.
Ngā mihi nui kia koutou / Greetings to you all
I am so pleased to say we have our working areas all back
to normal! The breakout rooms look fantastic. For those
who have not seen our new work spaces please come
along on Friday to our school picnic and you will get a
grand tour. We will start our picnic at 5 – 5.30pm having a
look around all the classrooms including the new library.
At 5.30pm we will all come together outside the main
office area for introductions of all staff. Mrs Ritchie will
also be introducing you to the new PMP gear and then
have a few games while the adults get their picnic dinner
prepared for eating about 6.15pm. Everyone home at
7pm. There will be a sausage sizzle available if you would
like to have a sausage.
There is a workshop for parents being held in Dunedin
for SUPPORTING YOUR RELUCTANT LEARNER on the
31st of March. “ Everyone wants to learn. If there is
reluctance, there is a reason. Our mission is to bring back
the joy into learning – for both child and parent. “This
workshop will take you on a journey of how learning
blocks become established, and give many practical
solutions for unlocking your child’s learning and creating
positive, effective learning strategies.” See Trudy if you
are interested or email info@learningwithdifference.nz .
There is the opportunity to get a group discount as well.
Cost $245 9am till 4pm.
After School Club is going well. A message to parents
and caregivers from Lauree Brown who runs this programme. If you can pay on the day and ring Lauree
021 1196689 the night before or earlier she will be happy
to take children after school on the Monday, Thursday and
Friday. If there is a demand we will look at increasing to
daily. There will be paperwork to fill out so please allow for
this.
Don’t forget to look at the Parent and Teacher School
Calendar App for activity dates happening in term 1.
School holiday dates are also on the app for your phone.
You can download this for free.
There is a special Board of Trustees Meeting on Monday the 16th Feb at 6.30 in Room 3, Rimu. Cleave Hay
from the New Zealand School Trustees Association will
be there to talk to us about becoming a board member,
what is expected of board members and how we can
govern our school the best we can to achieve our goals
and increase student achievement. We have a by election coming up and need 3 parent representatives to
join the board of trustees.
Ngā Mihi
Trudy Pankhurst
PIKO PIKO
Kia ora from Piko Piko
What a great start we have had to the new school year!
The children are all working hard at thinking about making
‘strong’ decisions opposed to ‘weak’ decisions and asking
themselves if they made the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decision. The
children have easily taken to using this language in both
the class and school environment. We have found using
this language is a great tool to get children to take responsibility for their decision making and to actually do the
thinking for themselves. This is a school wide programme
and is called ‘Play is the Way’.
This week the children have begun to take home reading
books. Please remember reading at home should be a fun
activity with no pressure. The children have worked on
these books in class and they should be able to tell you
what they are learning to do e.g. “I am learning to point to
each word” or “ I am thinking if what I am reading sounds
right and looks right.” All children will usually look to you
as parents to tell them what a word is if they get stuck. If
this happens you could ask questions rather than telling
them outright e.g. “What can you see happening in the
picture? So what would make sense?” or “How can you
figure out what the word might be?” I am only too happy to
help with more strategies for homework, just pop in to see
me.
It is great to see the variety of fruit and vegetables coming
in for the children’s morning tea snack to share. It looks
like some people have very healthy vegetable patches at
home. For those who are new to school we ask that you
provide one packet of crackers (rice crackers are the
healthiest) plus 5 pieces of fruit or vegetables for the
week. This is a lovely sharing time for the children where
they sit together and eat together.
As always I am here for both you and your children, so any
questions or comments are always welcome.
Kind regards
Louise Ritchie
HARAKEKE
Howdy!
Yea-ha it’s the beginning of a New Year and Harakeke
class is filled with lovely, smiley faces and lots of enthusiasm. We have been busily creating self-portraits and
thinking about how special we are, starting to fill our beautiful new walls up and make the classroom ours. We began our daily reading this week and it’s great to see children practising every night. We have been looking at collecting data and displaying this on Picto and Bar graphs.
What a lovely time we had sitting on the bank in the sun
collecting tally marks on the different coloured cars
beetling past! We will be creating bar charts from these to
see which colour is the most and least. We have welcomed Mungo the Monarch caterpillar to our room – he is
quite well-behaved and is constantly eating! We watch
eagerly to see his developments. The Cricket World Cup
is approaching and we are beginning to learn new skills so
that we too can play and understand the ‘lingo’ involved.
Go the Black Caps! Thank you for all the work you have
put in to getting your children settled into school, it’s always hard after a lovely long break and I appreciate your
efforts! Until next time!
Cheers!
Lisa
RATA
Kiaora from Rata Class
What a great start to the year the children in Rata class
have had! It was great to ease ourselves back into school
life and begin to settle back into classroom routines. The
children sound like they all had a lovely holiday and enjoyed the great weather we have had. We are enjoying
our new and improved classrooms and the children and
teachers are looking forward to using the new learning
area this week between the senior classes.
Last week a majority of the time spent in class has been
on establishing routines, setting goals and expectations
for the classroom which ties in nicely with this terms topic
on “Ourselves and our Environment.” The children will be
doing a range of activities within the school as well as
learning about some our local environment and later on in
the term the 175 years celebration of Waikouaiti.
Last week I sent home a letter with information on some
of the things the children are doing in class. Please do
not hesitate to come and ask if you have any questions or
queries in particular with homework. I realise people have
commitments outside of school time and sometimes
homework cannot be completed. I have also put the information on our class blogpage which is http://kidblog.org/
Rata-2/ If you have any problems accessing the site let
me know.
Lastly, all of the children in Rata class will be swimming
each Monday and Wednesday and the 8 year old children
will be participating in the senior cluster swimming sports
this term. It was great to see the children in action yesterday and displaying some excellent skills. Thank you to all
the parents who have provided fruit and crackers for
morning tea. If you have anything that you would like to
discuss regarding your child please do not hesitate to
come and ask. I may look like I’m running, getting organised most of the time, but I can arrange a time to chat!
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Mrs Hurst
RIMU
Kia ora koutou
Well done to all the students in Rimu for responding well
to new routines and procedures. We have been really
impressed with their attitude towards the new school term,
and the maturity they have shown towards working
together as a new, large, group. Discipline and behaviour
has been excellent, and we are reminding them that this
has a huge impact on their learning. So keep it up Rimu!
Homework has gone out, and we are keeping it fairly
straight forward as we get them into the swing of
things! It will get more challenging for some as the weeks
progress, but never unachievable.
In the process of getting to know one another, we've
been focusing on some of the key competencies of the
national curriculum. We've been discussing how they
should treat others, how they feel when they have made a
weak decision and how they deal with situations when
they need to persevere or be brave.
With the help of Angel, we've also been brushing up on
our sign language. Ask your child if they can remember
their sign name.
It was great to see most students in the pool this week so don't forget togs on a Monday and Wednesday. And
more tin cans for the Rimu bank please.
And finally, we welcome Morgan, Jamaica and Briston to
Rimu class and the Waikouaiti school community.
Hei kona mai I roto I nga mihi, Goodbye for now and
thanks. Kate and Rebecca
Waikouaiti School
Board of Trustees By - Election 2015
Nominations are invited for the election of three
parent representatives to the board of trustees.
A nomination form and a notice calling for nominations will be posted to all eligible voters.
Additional nomination forms can be obtained from
the school office.
Nominations close at noon on February 26 2015
and may be accompanied by a signed candidate’s statement.
The voting roll is open for inspection at the school
and can be viewed during normal school hours.
There will also be a list of candidates’ names, as
they come to hand, for inspection at the school.
Voting closes at noon 12 March 2015
Jill Brocket
Returning Officer
FUNDRAISING - CYSTIC FIBROSIS
On Sunday 22nd February a local team of 3 women
are competing in the Challenge Wanaka 2015.They
will be doing the half ironman team race and are
raising funds for Cystic Fibrosis. They will be doing this
race for one special little girl. Her name is Sophie and
she is only 5 years old living with CF every day of her
life. Sophie attends Waikouaiti School. If you would
like to donate towards the fundraising for Cystic
Fibrosis please follow the link below.
http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/KatrinaMcAra/
EAST OTAGO GYMNASTIC CLASSES
Event Centre - Waikouaiti
Sundays during school term $80 per term
Kiwi Gyn Fun (4-8)Year olds) 1-2pm Sunday
Sport Gym ( 7yrs +) 2-3pm Sunday
Register online www.dunedingymastics.co.nz
TICKETS FOR ICC CRICKET WORLD
We have been given 20 free
tickets to the:
Afghanistan v. Scotland game to be
held at the University Oval on
THURSDAY 26th FEBRUARY 2015 11am start. If you would like tickets
please phone Jill 4657 225.