Newsletter Term 2 Week 10

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

Dear Parents

What a wonderful way to end the term with a whole school Mass celebrated together in Taamaua (school hall) with one of our Parish Priests, Fr Mike Wooller. A time to reflect on our term and to remember in particular the virtue of forgiveness – To Forgive is Divine. Our students participated in prayer and song as well as being witnesses to special blessings. Fr Mike blessed two significant artworks which will be treasured in our school. One is the Rublev which is a popular icon of the ‘Trinity” and the other an image of our Mother Mary and Jesus.

Staffing

Last week, we received a resignation from Ms Andrea Charlesworth. Andrea is currently teaching in Learning Community Awa with Mrs Julie Kippen. Andrea has accepted a position as a Resource Teacher for the Deaf with Kelston School for Deaf Education. As a school community, we are sad to say farewell to Andrea, but this is a wonderful opportunity for Andrea to grow her educational expertise and we wish her well as she begins a new career pathway. Andrea received a special blessing from Fr Mike at our school Mass this week.

Mrs Lainee Davies will be joining Mrs Julie Kippen as the teachers/kaitiaki in Learning Community Awa from Monday 24^th July, the commencement of Term 3. Lainee has been relieving in our school across the past two terms so is known to us in this role. We welcome and look forward to Lainee working with us from Term 3.

Mr Jerremy Williams is also joining our school community in the Deputy Principal position at the beginning of Term 3. Jerremy and his family have been living in Taupo, where he was Assistant Principal at St Patrick’s School. We look forward to Jerremy joining the Senior Leadership Team and welcome the expert teaching knowledge, skills and experiences that he brings to our learning community.

Fr Mike also blessed Ms Margaret Ker Barnaby who has been working alongside Learning Community Moana for one day each week of this term. We thank Ms Ker Barnaby for her wealth of knowledge and experience that she has shared with our senior learners.

Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences

Thank you to all our families who attended the Conferences this week. Once again we had 100% involvement from our parents, a great effort! This creates a real sense of purpose when we are able to have shared, focussed conversations about each child’s learning. Early next term we will be running parent/student workshops where we will share and learn ways to support reading, writing and maths at home!

Scratch Programming

On the last day of the term, I helped my Dad teach the children in Learning Communities, Awa and Moana about Scratch programming. I was scared at first but then I was fine to walk around and help the children because my Dad was there. The children made a maze and chose their own sprite. They had to make their sprite move towards the mouse pointer and all the way to the finish line. I like Scratch because it is fun making the maze and it is exciting to make the sprite sing and change colour. By Rebecca Thorpe

Our thanks to AUT personnel Dr Stephen Thorpe, Glen, Liam and Nicholas and Kirstie Thorpe for organising this fantastic, fun learning activity – the children thoroughly enjoyed creating their own computer game!

Mufti Mania

Today we came to school in our warm PJs and onesies to celebrate our ‘Warm Winter’s Day’ for Mufti Mania. As part of our school vision of ‘Learn Love Serve’, today we are demonstrating a small part of our christian service and witness in being Christ-like through reaching out to others by helping Nawi Catholic Primary School in Fiji through a gold coin donation.

De La Salle College Visitors

What a wonderful opportunity it was for our school to be one of the pit-stops for the De La Salle College staff “Amazing Race” event.

It was lovely to meet some of the staff and to show them around our lovely school. Thank you Andy Thompson for thinking of us, it was certainly a creative way to network and support our Across the CoL Schools.

School Bell Time Changes

From Term 3, we will trial different bell times for our teaching/learning block times. The start of day and end of day bell times remain the same.

Belltimes will be:

8:50am Start of Day

8:50am – 10:30am Block 1

10:30am – 11:00am Morning tea

11:00am – 1:00pm Block 2

1:00pm – 1:40pm Lunch

1:40pm – 2:50pm Block 3

2:50pm End of Day

Uniforms

NZ Uniforms in 28E Lambie Drive, Manukau are the stockists of our school uniform. They have assured us this week that they now have in stock the large size school socks and the long sleeved shirts. Please check in over the holidays with NZ Uniforms to ensure the children commence Term 3 wearing the correct Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School uniform. Thank you for your patience as we “iron out” stock issues.

Activities for the Holidays

Try out some of these fun ideas to keep busy over the holiday period … cut out pictures from old magazines and use them to add speech bubbles to, write letters using cut out letters, make a calendar for term 3, design a quiz about New Zealand, create an advertisement for our school, learn to finger knit, learn to plait using string or wool, make a photo storyboard of your holidays, decorate a plant pot, visit the local library, draw a map for a family walk, play board games … enjoy time together as a family!