School Newsletter 18th September 2020

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

Dear Families

As we come to the end of Term 3, we reflect on the many opportunities we have had for living out our school vision of learning, loving and serving. This term in particular, because of the unusual times, we have faced challenges and uncertainties which makes us even more grateful for our school community … our mums and dads, our grandparents, our uncles and aunties, our children and staff, our parish priests, our Board of Trustees and PTFA, and our many friends of the school who continue to support, cherish and work together with us to help us be the best we can! We wish you all restful holidays and special family times together during the coming October school holiday break.

This September is also the month of the Jubilee Season of Creation. The Season of Creation begins on 1 September with the Day of Prayer for Creation and concludes on 4 October, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi.  The theme for Season of Creation in 2020 is “Jubilee for the Earth: New Rhythms, New Hope.” We are awakened to the urgent need to heal our relationships with creation and each other, as communities and individuals pray and work for protection of the planet and the poor in our midst.

In our newsletter this week, you will see some lovely examples of the work our students have been doing to show their learning knowledge and understanding about the responsibility that we each have to care for God’s Creation. What a great way to celebrate The Season of Creation and to make it real and meaningful for each other.

Creator of Life, during this Season of Creation,
We ask you to grant us courage to observe a Sabbath for our planet.
Strengthen us with the faith to trust in your providence.
Inspire us with the creativity to share what we have been given
Teach us to be satisfied with enough.
and as we proclaim a Jubilee of the Earth,
send Your Holy Spirit to renew the face of creation.
In the name of the One who came to proclaim good news to all creation,
Jesus Christ. Amen

DRS Report

Social Justice Week Outreach

On behalf of Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School, we want to say a huge THANK YOU to you all! Thank you to our school families and friends for rallying together for a great cause in bringing cans of food to our Auckland families this Christmas. May God bless you all and continue to bless you abundantly for your giving heart and generous hands.
The cans collected came to an awesome total of 865 cans. St Vincent de Paul will be distributing these cans across our Auckland families closer to Christmas time. So far, St Vincent de Paul has collected cans from 11 schools in Auckland which has come to a total of 9,900 cans. There will be more cans collected next week from the rest of the schools involved. What an awesome effort!

Our gold coin from our school mufti day on Friday 11 September also came to a total of $411.70. This money will go towards helping to support students at St Francis of Assisi High School in Uganda. Fr John Vianney Makanda was absolutely touched by this outreach from our little kiwi school on this side of the globe. He extends his thanks and best wishes to you all for your heartfelt kindness.

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to reach out and help when we can, with what we can. A gold coin and a can of food to help our brothers and sisters in need. Thank you and may God continue to bless you!

Student Reflection

Social Justice Week helped us to help others who are struggling in their lives. It also means that we are being the face of Christ. If we help others in need, we are being close to God and it’s our chance to show kindness. We also had a Can Drive which was really cool to be a part of because we get to help other children and families. I really enjoyed having a colourful mufti day too as giving a gold coin donation meant that we were helping children at a school on the other side of the world!
By Jacob & Skylar

Religious Education Learning

This week, our tamariki have brought their Religious Education books home to share with you, what they have been learning about in their Learning Communities. This is a wonderful opportunity for your whānau to ask your children some questions on their new learning in Religious Education. We look forward to seeing your comments and positive affirmation on your child’s mahi/work.

Mahi Tahi Conferences at school are Cancelled!

Term 3 Reporting to Parents

Due to the ongoing Alert Level 2.5 restrictions, we will not be able to hold our termly Mahi Tahi Conferences on site (at school). Teachers have completed report comments and evidence for each student in reading, writing and maths. These comments will be published on HERO, our school’s student management system, on Tuesday this coming week. Parents will be able to share and discuss these comments with their children. Teachers will be making contact with some families by email, phone call or a ZOOM meeting to further share and discuss students’ progress and achievement in reading, writing and maths. We will not be able to make contact with all families this coming week, so if you have not heard from us, please do connect with the children’s teachers by email if you have any queries or concerns in regards to the reporting updates.

School Property News

The Catholic Diocese of Auckland Property Management Team has informed us that our Relocatables Building Project is commencing over the school holiday period – exciting news for our school! This means that two relocatable buildings will be brought on site and placed on our school field near the end of the court area. Due to the ground conditions, this is the best place for these buildings to be situated until the Stage 2 building development happens at a later date. Although these are temporary buildings, a construction project team will be onsite during Term 4 to ensure that the relocatable classes are ready for use in Term 1 2021. This work area will be completely fenced off with all health & safety guidelines and procedures in place. We have been waiting very patiently for this next stage of the school’s property development so it is wonderful to see it all get underway! We are extremely grateful to the staff and students who have been temporarily accommodated in Taamaua/our school hall and the library space throughout 2020. Thank you for your positive attitudes in making your Learning Communities ‘shine’ no matter your teaching and learning space!

Staff Only Day ‘Thanks’

Teacher Only Day – Tuesday 8th September

Last Tuesday, our Kaitiaki were able to come together through your support. We spent the day looking at strategies approaches, tools and ways in which our children could keep track of their learning and how they could participate more in the building of their next learning steps. Creating active and responsive learners as well as looking at real and effective feedback was the focus of our day.

Jacque Allen, our professional learning development coach and mentor, helped facilitate a worthwhile day that left us all enthused, determined and with very sore heads 😀 . We thank her for her organisation and smooth running of the day.

We thank you, our whānau for allowing us the opportunity to regroup as a teaching staff to further develop professionally. Please know that the day was very much appreciated and we look forward to the term ahead as we look to action some of our korero, learning and planning.

Hauora – Health, Safety and Wellbeing

Emergency Drills

This week, our students practised two successful Emergency Drills. You as parents and caregivers should be extremely proud of the way the children responded to each drill.

Thursday morning saw our tamariki respond very well to the Emergency Fire Drill – to date it is the quickest and safest that our students have exited from their Learning Communities to the designated assembly area.

On Friday afternoon, our students exercised what to do in the event of an Earthquake – a skill that would most certainly help them survive a real earthquake.

We have one more Emergency Lockdown Drill to perform in the last week of term. We know that practising what to do in an event of an emergency not only helps ensure the safety of our students, it will also give them that extra knowledge in what to do in case an emergency was to occur outside of school.

Have this korero with your tamariki and talk about their ‘drills’ experience. If you have any queries or questions, feel free to make contact with the school.

World Car Free Day

Kia Ora Whānau,

Next week our school is taking part in World CAR FREE day! Learners and their families are encouraged to walk, bike or scooter to and from school every day next week.  You can park in the neighbouring street and walk, bike or scooter the short distance to and from school. Let’s get active!

Ngā mihi nui,
The Hauora Team

Connected Curriculum

We have completed or Connected Curriculum Concept learning of ‘Innovation’ and are currently introducing our new concept of Journey. Our life is a journey where our experiences can become taonga that enrich the way we flourish and blossom as we learn, love and serve.

By the end of our ‘Journey’ learning, we want our students to be able to independently use their learning to flourish and blossom on their life journey.

The essential questions that will help us to explore the big ideas around the concept of Journey are:

• Why go on a journey? 
• How does our journey affect the way we flourish and blossom? 
• How do our experiences make a difference to our life journey?

Science will remain as a focus Curriculum Learning Area and we look forward to the learning and teaching around The Arts curriculum as well.

Please check the HTCPS Home Learning Headquarters google site next Wednesday (23rd September) for some simple learning activities around Journey learning, for all the whānau to participate in during the holidays. This learning will give students a wonderful opportunity to share and build their understandings with each other, when school starts back in Term 4. 

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

Honour the past, celebrate New Zealand’s language and prepare for our future. Together! We celebrated the beginning of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori by participating in the Māori Language Moment event held on Monday at 12pm. It was an open invitation to all New Zealanders to celebrate te reo for a moment, a week, a month or even the whole year round.  The aim is to grow 1 million speakers of te reo māori by 2040 and 2020 is the beginning: even if just for a moment. We chose to celebrate by performing our Papakura and School haka, karakia and singing a waiata.

Our kaitiaki and students have had a wonderful week where they have participated in activities to help them learn everyday basic words, poems and different ways to respond to a greeting in te reo māori. The student Cultural Leadership Team has worked together to plan and capture te reo learning in the learning communities.

Kia Kaha Te Reo Māori – Kia Kaha Aotearoa

The Story of Maui and Tieke by Learning Community Awa

Tīeke was a pet of Maui’s. When Maui and his brothers went to fight Te Rā (the sun), Tīeke went along. Maui was worried about his pet and wanted him to go home. Tīeke wouldn’t leave him. Maui asked him many times to go to a safer place but Tīeke didn’t listen. Finally Maui, his hands super-hot from battling Te Rā, grabbed Tieke and threw Tīeke to a safer place, but burnt Tīeke’s feathers. That’s why Tīeke (the saddleback bird) has red feathers.

Click on the links to view the video clips of some learners from LC Awa acting out the story!

Learning Community News

Learning Community Moana – Tongan Language Week

Drawing on the National Flower of Tonga and the unique art of ‘tapa’ design, students looked to embody themselves in a 3D piece that would pay homage and celebrate the most ‘friendliest people of the pacific.’

With a dose of mathematics, art, pacific inspiration and a fair bit of manipulation of paper, students were able to create a wall of heilala’s that reflected their own personal connections and celebrated Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e Lea Faka-Tonga.

Needless to say, the students were left ‘happy’ after the whole process and seeing their art pieces on the wall of the Learning Community.

Learning Community Moana – Speeches

This year’s theme for speeches was ‘Wisdom’ with students given 4 ways in which they could present their speeches to their peers. They could offer it in ‘Spoken Word’ a poetic way of expressing ones idea of the concept of wisdom; those with a little more rhythm and with musical flair could rap their speech, and then we had the option of using visual aids, where for 30 seconds per picture, students would share their ideas through each image. And last of all was the ‘regular’ speech. Public speaking is a skill. Knowing that the majority of our students find it difficult to speak in front of their peers, we tried something different. Students delivered their speech in small groups, and were assessed by their peers. Those who wanted to really prove themselves were given the option to present to the whole Learning Community. Congratulations to Trey Hennessy, Franxon Villa, Destin Barte, Emeliah Nikolau, Ysabelle Gayatin and Lucas Hancy-Scott for taking on the challenge and presenting 7 fantastic points of view that were appreciated by all. Further congratulations to Lucas Hancy-Scott and Ysabelle Gayatin who will be presenting their speeches, and representing our school at our local Papakura Schools Rehu Tai Speech Competition.

Learning Community Awa

The learners in Awa have been putting their ‘thinking like a scientist’ skills into action. They have observed different issues around our school and have researched how these issues affect our daily life. Learning Community Awa has worked hard to come up with innovative ways to solve the issues they have noticed. 

Firesparks Group

The Firesparks have been putting their ‘thinking like a scientist’ skills into action. We have noticed that there is a lot of rubbish outside the Awa area. We researched why this was a problem for our school and how this is a problem outside of our school. We came up with a range of different innovations to fix our rubbish problem. Some of the innovative solutions we came up with are: possibly changing the school rule so everyone has their food items in a reusable container, creating an art class where we can reuse our rubbish to create an art piece or building a robot who picks up our rubbish. 

Pokemon Group

We explored scientific thinking through looking at how we can make heavy things float and whether ‘mentos’ will explode if you put into fizzy or flat coke. Then we explored the issue in our learning community of pencils going missing or getting broken. We came up with a range of innovative solutions, like putting trackers on the pencils, locking them up in a safe, making students sign a pencil out, and coating them in glitter so they are easier to find.  

Guardians of the Galaxy Group

We have been using scientific skills to carry out our own investigations. Our curiosity stems from the observations we made and this prompted us to ask questions that led us to our inquiries. 

We were concerned about the news that Auckland was experiencing a water shortage, our families were talking about it, we watched it on the news and we talked about it at school. We wanted to help solve Auckland’s water problems in ways that are sustainable. There were two groups who differed in their inquiries but it was all related to water. One of the groups looked into how we can save water to help our planet earth survive and grow, and the other investigated the impact of plastic water bottles in our environment. Their solution was to write a letter to the Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff asking him to ban plastic water bottles and make reusable water bottles affordable for everyone.

We had a group who carried out an experiment to find out how much water flows out from the taps in the toilets by Awa. They found out that the taps are on timers to turn them off. But the timers are set at different times. One toilet had a tap that had water running well after 20 seconds, which is after the required hand washing time of 20 seconds. So they wrote a letter to Miss Lindstrom asking if a plumber could come in to fix the problem so that the timers are set to turn the taps off at 20 seconds, thus saving water. Miss Lindstrom phoned the plumber with the group present and the plumber will be sorting it out this problem. Thank you Miss Lindstrom.

We look forward to more learning opportunities in our new concept of Journey where we can use science skills to help us with our inquiry learning.

Pointillism Art

Learning Community Maunga has been learning about pointillism art which is a technique of painting with distinct dots of colour applied to form an image or symbol. The children used this technique to present their symbol that they have chosen to represent their journey in 2020. This technique was developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in 1886. We had lots of fun drafting our symbols and discussing colours that would effectively present our images.

Reminders

End of the School Day ‘Pick Up Time’

Please DO NOT park on Airfield Road on the opposite side of the school entrance at the end of the day. We have been advised by the Police and Auckland Transport to ask our school community NOT to do this practice as it is too dangerous. We do not want our children and parents crossing Airfield Road due to the speed and volume of traffic on this road. Please wait patiently in the queue to turn into school – this is a much safer practice and is only a few more minutes of your time. We are doing our best to move the school traffic through the pickup/ drop off bay as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience, consideration and use of good traffic practices that keep everyone safe.

Health and Nutrition Guidelines

Our school’s Health and Nutrition guideline states …  ‘at Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School, we promote a healthy lifestyle to our community as part of our commitment to a safe school environment. Educating students about nutrition and encouraging healthy eating habits contributes to their personal success and well being and to a healthier community for everyone. We action this by having water as the only drink option at school for students. It is great to see everyone bringing their own water bottles from home! We also request that students do not bring chocolate or lollies, chewing gum or bubble gum to school as part of their morning tea or lunch packs. If students do receive ‘birthday treats’ from their friends, we are encouraging these to be distributed at the end of the day so that they can be placed straight into school bags and eaten at home with families. Thank you for supporting us with  these requests.

Swimming Water Safety Programme Term 4

Next Term, in Weeks 2 and 3, all our students will be involved in a school wide Water Safety Swimming Programme that will be delivered at the Massey Park Pools in Papakura.

Our qualified instructors will equip our students with the skills, experience and knowledge that would help them survive tricky situations that may occur in our local rivers, water holes and at the beach. These water safety skills would also involve some basic swimming skills, as well as being able to identify key hazards that could be dangerous for swimming.

We will be travelling to Massey Park Pools every day during Week 2 (October 19th – 23rd)  & Week 3 (27th – 30th of October) of Term 4. Students will be in groups on the bus, take the swimming lessons and then head back to school afterwards. 

Each day, students will need to come to school with their togs. They will also need a towel and a swim bag to take their wet gear home in. Caps and goggles are optional, but the students may find it more comfortable for the swimming sessions to wear goggles, due to chlorine in the water.

Holy Trinity School will follow all Ministry of Health / Ministry of Education  advice closer to the time, regarding CO-VID19 Alert Levels and any implication this may have on our planned Water Safety / swimming programme.

This Water Safety Swim Programme is fully funded by school. We look forward to your support when we begin the programme next term. More details would be made available closer to the event.  If you have any questions please email or come in and see us at school. 

Mr Brown quentenb@holytrinity.school.ac 
Sports Co-ordinator

School PHOTOS Day

Individuals, Siblings/Family and Learning Communities and Staff group photos will be taken at school on Wednesday 14th October (the first week of Term 4). Children will be bringing home a Photolife flyer this coming week with all the information in regards to requesting a siblings photo and outlining the procedure for the online ordering system.

Upcoming School Events

PRE-RECORDED School Liturgy and Assembly – led by Learning Community Moana
Monday 21st September 9am pre-recorded on HTCPS Home Learning Headquarters google site

Term 3 Digital Reporting to Parents
Tuesday 22nd September – published on HERO

CANCELLED Term 3 Mahi Tahi Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences 
Wednesday 23rd September 3pm-6pm @ school

Board of Trustees Monthly Meeting
Wednesday 23rd September 6pm @ school

Rehu Tai Speech Competition Year 5/6 & Year 7/8 representatives
Thursday 24th September @ Hingaia Primary School

Term 3 concludes
Friday 25th September

Term 4 commences
Monday 12th October

School PHOTOS DAY (Learning Communities, Families/Siblings and Individuals)
Wednesday 14th October @ school

Beginning of the Term School Mass on site led by Father Peter Murphy
Thursday 15th October 9:15am in Taamaua/school hall

Water Safety Swimming Programme commences
Monday 19th October @ Massey Park Pools, Papakura

Labour Weekend Holiday – school closed
Monday 26th October

Water Safety Swimming Programme continues
Tuesday 27th October @ Massey Park Pools, Papakura

Beginning Experience Grief Resolution Weekend Retreat

6 – 8 November 2020

ALONE AGAIN? Widowed, Separated or Divorced? The Beginning Experience is a non-profit organization with the motto a “Weekend Away for a Lifetime of Change” for adults. The retreat  will help you work through your painful loss. The participants find new hope, increased emotional health and renewed energy. Date Friday evening to Sunday afternoon 6 – 8 November. Cost $350 or early bird price of $325 if paid by 25 Sept.  Includes accommodation, meals and materials. Contact Kelly 027-686-4416 or Bev (09)298-9943 & 027-248-1631 www.beginningexperience.org.nz   

Upcoming Community Events

Counties Manukau Cricket Programme

Counties Manukau Cricket are running Holiday Cricket Programmes for children to attend. This programme is designed for any children who would like to learn cricket and improve their skills in a fun, game based environment. Sessions are FREE to attend! Session times are the same at each venue. Years 5-8 – 9am-1pm Years 1-4 – 1.30pm-4pm .

For a list of venues, and to register, please go to www.countiesmanukaucricket.co.nz/cc/holiday-programmes/ or email development@countiesmanukaucricket.co.nz     

Basketball Holiday Programme