School Newsletter Week 7 Term 1 2018

Greetings, Kia ora, Kia orana, Talofa, Mālō e lelei, Namaste, Ni Hao, Bula, Hola, Kumusta

Dear Families

Thank you to our wonderful school community for your attendance at the Mahi Tahi Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences last week. It was great to hear the excitement of families sharing in and contributing to their child’s learning maps. Our Home/School partnership is so important and we do appreciate the support from our school families as we endeavour to work together. This encourages all of our young ones to seek and achieve excellence in all that they strive to do – “mahi tahi” they know too that we are all in this together!

Prayer for Fifth Sunday of LENT – source CARITAS

E te Atua
Help us all to be signs of the Glory of God,
to shine out in a darkened world,
to give hope to those who know no hope.
For it is in reaching out to share this life with others
that we will become the best and the truest
image of God that we can be.

Amene

Catholic Special Character Self-Review

In November 2017, our families/whanau gathered together at a school community meeting. We reflected on some areas of our Catholic Special Character and asked the community to respond to some focus questions. From the collated responses, families/whanau identified the need to strengthen the connection between our local Parishes and the school.

To help gather further information and data about what and how we can strengthen the parish/school relationship, please click on this link Community survey that will take you to a Google form survey.

The survey will take 5-10 minutes to complete and needs to be submitted by Thursday 29th March. We really value your time, thought and commitment in completing this survey.

Thank You!

A big thank you to our families who came along and worked solidly for the afternoon to help maintain our garden areas and to clean and tidy up in the playground area, verandah areas, central stairwell and learning community areas. Our school was sparkling at the end of the day. We do appreciate your time and “helping hands” – it really did make a difference!

Message for School Families/Whanāu – source NZEI

You may be aware of the nationwide NZEI Te Riu Roa union meetings that are being held over the next two weeks for primary and area school principals and teachers.

Teaching staff from our school will be attending one of these meetings on Tuesday 20th March at 1:30pm to discuss solutions vital to addressing the growing crisis in recruiting and retaining teachers. There has been a 40% drop in the number of people going into teacher training in just the past six years.

Without bold interventions, we could see class sizes growing rapidly over the next few years.

With teachers and principals throughout the country, NZEI members at our school will be discussing a number of initiatives to ensure quality teaching for every child and how to make teaching attractive and sustainable as a career. These include:

Reduced class sizes in year 4-8 (From 1 teacher to 29 students down 1 to 25)
Funding for a special needs coordinator in every school, to meet the needs of every child and free up classroom teachers to teach
A significant pay jolt to encourage new people to enter the profession and stay in it. Along with reduced numbers entering teacher training, a large number of teachers leave the profession within five years of graduating.

Children need teachers with enough time to teach so they can give each child the attention they deserve, and children need talented and inspiring people to be attracted to teaching. Children are missing out on some opportunities to learn because teachers are bogged down in administration or are struggling to get enough support for children with additional learning needs.

Our children deserve the best education in the world, and New Zealand can afford to provide it. It’s just a matter of priorities.

We value your support for this important issue.

Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School staff will be attending the local meeting to be held on Tuesday 20th March at 1:30pm. School will remain OPEN. You are welcome to collect your child from 1:00pm otherwise it will be a normal school day with school finishing at 2:50pm.

Easter Holiday Period

School will be closed for the Easter holiday period inclusive of Friday 30th March to Tuesday 3rd April. The sKids School Holiday programme, based at school, will be open from 7am – 6pm on Tuesday 3rd April. You are welcome to contact Rose on 0800 546 475 to arrange a booking for this day.

Positive Parking

The Travelwise Team enjoyed planning and implementing their very first activity this week. The students were hugely excited to be out and about early on Monday morning chatting to drivers. Part of their role was to present rewards to all our parents who demonstrated safe and positive parking behaviours as they entered the school car-park. Thank you to our parents for driving slowly, parking correctly, using the correct car-park spaces and for showing courtesy to other drivers! We are very proud of you!

Reminders

The school office is open from 8:30am – 4:00pm Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and from 8:30am – 3:00pm Thursday and Friday. Both Mrs Quarterman and Mrs Harvey work part-time so you may find the office unattended outside of these hours. Please ring the bell on the counter and one of the Senior Leadership Team/Manutaki will respond to you.

Use of the Bus Bay parking area

If you are using this area, please note that we are promoting this area as a ‘KISS and GO’ park area only. Please park, stop the car and say goodbye to your child/ren and then once they have alighted and are safely clear of the car, please drive on. This will allow the drop off area to remain free flowing and less congested. If you wish to come into school or walk your child to their learning community, then please park in the other designated carpark areas. Once again, thank you for parking positively!

DRS NEWS

St Patrick’s Mufti Day

St Patrick’s Feast Day falls on Saturday 17 March and today we celebrated St Patrick’s ‘green’ day with a gold coin donation going towards Caritas. Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is the Catholic Bishops’ agency for justice, peace and development. They work on behalf of the New Zealand Catholic Bishop’s Conference for a world free of poverty and injustice. Today our school managed to raise $239.90! All proceeds will go towards Caritas. Thank you to all of our whanau for your support of this worthy cause.

Holy Week Celebrations

Holy Week is coming up and Easter is looming near. Our Holy Week celebrations will begin with Palm Sunday Liturgy on Monday 26th March in Taamaua (hall) at 9am. Our children will also be involved in the Stations of the Cross held on Holy Thursday 29 March at 1:40pm in Taamaua. You are warmly invited to attend and witness these special events as we journey with our Saviour Jesus Christ towards his death and Resurrection.

Religious Education

During Holy Week our children will be bringing their Religious Education books home to share their learning with their whanau. Please take time to have a look and talk to your children about what they have been learning about around our school Charism, Lenten Season, Caritas and the Church. (Please refer to the Family Whanau Books: LC Whenua pg 18, LC Awa pg 21 & 24, LC Moana pg. 27 and LC Maunga pg. 33) It would be wonderful if you are able to write an encouraging comment to celebrate their learning this term.

Learning Communities

Maunga

Softball
The Year 7&8 Softball team will be off next Friday – 23rd March. The event is held at the fields next to Papakura Normal School on Walters Road. We will be walking to the event just after the bell, the first game is at 10am. We would love to see you there to cheer on the team!

Student Leaders

Congratulations to our student leaders. We will be commissioning them at our end of year mass on Thursday 12th April. The leaders will be engaged as Role Models across the school working with younger students in their leadership positions.