School Newsletter 26th June 2020

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

Dear Families

This has been such a very different term for us as we have all had to adjust to the restrictions of the various Alert Levels, adjust to working and communicating in new ways, adjust to the demands of working from home and learning from home whilst remaining in our family and then extended bubbles. We are so incredibly proud of our families for the resilience, integrity, compassion and unity shown throughout this term. Along with the staff and the wider school community, we have listened, shared, grown, learnt, been open to challenges and to the changes that life has presented! BLESS YOU ALL and THANK YOU for the care of our school community, the support of our staff and our children. BLESS YOU and THANK YOU for sharing in this journey together!

To celebrate the end of Term 2 and to share with you all the amazing learning that has happened both at home and at school we are inviting our Families/whānau to join with us this coming Thursday 2^nd July any time from 3pm-6pm to share in a “Thank You Celebration” for all that Term 2 has been. This is an informal time for students, their families and staff to enjoy time together in thanks and praise, to share learning stories and journeys from home and school and to be looking ahead to Term 3 learning and expectations. Families will also be provided with a hard copy report inclusive of learner comment, teacher comment, key competencies with highlighted indicators ‘consistently/developing’ and Term 3 learning goals for reading, writing and maths. Parents will be asked to record their comments as well. Students and kaitiaki will be making soup and bread during the week to share with families on this evening. It will be an OPEN HOUSE for all so please do come and enjoy!

Term 2 School Reporting

In education, the driver of the changes in teaching and learning pedagogy has been the premise that we need to prepare our children for living and working in a rapidly evolving and changing world – one where the ‘soft’ capabilities and competencies of adaptability, resilience, communication, collaboration, co-operation, critical thinking, problem solving etc are to the fore. It’s these competencies and dispositions that will help us succeed, participate and contribute to our various communities. These past few months have provided an amazing opportunity for all to further develop these competencies.

We have made a decision to report on the Key Competencies for the mid-year reporting to parents/families. For the first time, we will be using hard copy reporting rather than our digital online reporting platform of Linc-Ed/HERO. This gives us an opportunity to capture learner voice, teacher/kaitiaki voice and parent/family voice about each student’s learning capabilities.

When you come to school this Thursday 2nd July for the THANK YOU CELEBRATIONS (any time between 3pm-6pm), you will be able to talk with the teachers about your child’s key competencies development. Parents and families will also have an opportunity to add comments to their child’s hard copy report!

HERO – School Communication and Student Reporting System

On Monday, we launched the upgrade to our student management, school reporting and communication system by migrating from Linc-Ed to HERO.

Click https://hero.linc-ed.com/parents/ for HERO login instructions. If you need any additional help, feel welcome to email the school office at office@holytrinity.school.nz

HERO enables you to keep up-to-date with all school communication through a modern computer browser or through the HERO app. Note, Internet Explorer is not supported.

All the rich learning content from Linc-Ed has been migrated to HERO and our school is working closely with the team at Linc-Ed/HERO throughout this process to ensure that all of our school information has been successfully transferred over!

DRS Report

End of Term School Mass

Next week on Wednesday 1 July, we will be having our end of term School Mass in Taamaua (school hall) at 9:00am. Father Peter Murphy of St Mary’s Parish, Papakura will be leading our celebration as we gather together for Eucharistic Mass for the first time as a school community since Lockdown. We invite you to gather with us as we give thanks for God’s aroha and continuous protection.

As part of our school Mass, we will be acknowledging and praising Father Peter for his 50th Jubilee Ordination Anniversary. Father Peter is very special to our school and often visits our Learning Communities. We give thanks for the gift of Father Peter to our school and wish him many more years of ministering to God’s people.

Father Peter Murphy

Father Peter Murphy experienced what can be described as an inner call to study for the priesthood at the age of 16. He had a loving family for whom the Church was the centre of their lives. Father Peter was ordained on Saturday 27 June, 1970. He came to St Mary’s Parish, Papakura in 1974 to assist Father Tom Ryder and had one of the happiest years of his early ministry. Father Tom Ryder was a wonderful teacher, mentor, friend and brother.

Father Peter went on a sabbatical to South and then North America and it was in North America that Father Peter left the priestly ministry and became committed to Christian meditation. Once he began practising Christian Meditation regularly, he began to experience real inner healing. When Father Tom died in 2000, Fr Peter knew that he needed to return to the priestly ministry. Bishop Patrick Dunn welcomed Father Peter back into the priestly ministry at St Michael’s, Remuera in September 2001. This was the happiest day of Father Peter’s life! He returned to St Mary’s Parish, Papakura ten years ago and to this day shares his love of Christian Meditation with the children both at St Mary’s School, Papakura and our very own Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School. Meditation with children is at the heart of his ministry and Father Peter hopes that the children may learn to be open to the inner call of the Spirit for it is in following the will of God that we find our true freedom.

Catholic Caring Mass

Some of our senior students will be attending a special Catholic Caring Mass early next term on Wednesday 22 July at Christ the King Parish in Owairaka at 11:30am. It’s a special Mass celebrated annually by Bishop Patrick Dunn, to give thanks for the care and commitment to the poor and marginalised, that is demonstrated in many ways throughout our Auckland Diocese. Our students will also be joined by other students from the wider Catholic community as well as special organisations and charities who help to support and look after the vulnerable in our Auckland Diocese.

Papakura & Takanini Community Dinner

The free community dinner held at the Papakura Anglican Church Hall every Tuesday evening from 6:00pm, is now back on. Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School has volunteered to be helpers for the community dinner every last Tuesday of each month. Our first Tuesday to serve at the community dinner is Tuesday 28th July. If you are available and can volunteer an hour of your time to help out, please contact the school office or email Apaula Lautua – email to afruean-lautua@holytrinity.school.nz

Hauora – Health & Well Being

End of Day Procedures

Now that we are in Alert level 1, the teachers will NO longer be bringing the children out to the front entrance of the school for pick up at the end of the day. The children will be released from their Learning Communities at 2:50pm and can be picked up from the Learning Community or as they come out of the school entrance. We are missing seeing our parents waiting outside our Learning Communities! The teachers would like to be able to chat with parents after school rather than having to do traffic duty. SO please park away from the school (in neighbouring side streets) or in the designated carparks at school and walk in to collect your child. There will still be two/three teachers on duty at the front entrance, for end of the day supervision of children who are sitting and waiting to be picked up.

School Traffic – End of Day

PTFA News

Last Tuesday evening, we held the PTFA Annual General Meeting. Unfortunately, there was a very small turnout of parents but a very BIG THANK YOU to those of you who were able to attend on the night. We received  a number of apologies so we know that the interest is there, the challenge is just trying to get us all together at the same time!

At the meeting, we accepted the resignations of both Ginny Marr as Chairperson and Yvonne Pollington as Secretary. They have both been great workers in their respective PTFA roles and we extend much gratitude and thanks to them for their unfailing work as PTFA elected officers. Thank you Ginny and Yvonne for your passion, drive, ability to organise and for your hands on approach. You have been extremely generous with your time, ideas and skill sets. Ginny and Yvonne remain as serving PTFA Committee members which is great news for us!

At the AGM, the Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer’s roles are elected. We congratulate and thank Fiona Rudsits who was duly re-elected to the Treasurer’s role for the 2020-2021 year. Fiona has held this position for a few years now and does an amazing job at managing the finances and accounts for the PTFA. Sadly we were unable to fill the positions of Chairperson or Secretary.

We will be holding our next PTFA meeting in early Term 3 and are hopeful that we may have some parents who would like to step into these roles. Please do contact the school office if you would be interested in these positions. It’s a great team to be part of and hugely rewarding!

Learning Communities Changing Spaces

Recently the Catholic Diocese of Auckland Property Managers informed the Board of Trustees that the relocatable classrooms that were due to be brought on site, will now not be available until the beginning of next year, 2021. This means putting another contingency plan in place to allow for building accommodation as our school roll continues to grow. To make use of every available space, we have been utilising our library as a learning community and the hall/taamaua as another learning community space. To make provision for the new entrants commencing schooling for the remainder of the year, we are going to swop learning communities over. SO Learning Community Whenua (our younger Year 2s and Mrs Rhode) will shift to the hall/taamaua space AND Learning Community Ngahere (our older Year 1s, Mrs Chung and Mrs Davies) will shift to Learning Community Whenua space. The Learning Community names will remain the same for the children and the teachers as they are now – it is just the spaces that they are changing!

Learning Community News

Learning Community Ngahere/Pukapuka

Over the past two weeks, we have been further investigating what the best option is to enable the little children to reach the flying fox in our new playground. This entailed putting all our ideas together and deciding collaboratively what the best option would be. We sat in groups and described the problem and the solution for Miss Lindstrom to look at.

Learning Community Ngahere/Taamaua

Learning Community Whenua

Whenua has been learning about how the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love, peace and joy.  They shared their ideas of what joy is and how they can show it in our learning community, school and wider community.  Words such as happiness, fun, cheerfulness were connected to love, peace and joy.  They know that the sign of the cross shows that we believe in God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit which is why we often start and finish our prayer time with this special sign.

One way Whenua learners show enjoyment is through play.  So … we created our own game called Love, Peace and Joy.  The learners had input as to how the game was to be played and the rules.  Ask your child to explain how the game works and give it a go as a family.  It can be played both indoors and outdoors.  Have fun!

We took this game a step further during our Concept time focusing on Innovation.  Their challenge was to use the Love, Peace and Joy game to either think of a new game or do something in the game a different way, e.g. add Faith, allocate points or play it with a small group only.  They could choose to use equipment in their game and change the rules of the games.  However, the words LOVE, PEACE and JOY had to be included.  A few creative ideas were:  using emojis that reflect the concepts as call out cards, bouncing a ball to ‘love’, run around the circle and be back in time before ‘love’ catches you.  Simple, unique ideas!  Again, ask your child to share his/her group’s game and hopefully you will have fun playing it!

Learning Community Awa  

In Awa, we have been learning the process of thinking like a scientist.

We have learnt to observe (what are our wonderings), hypothesise (make a prediction), experiment (test it out), analyse (look at the results), report (share our learning).

We carried out experiments about floating and sinking in our home groups.

We wondered how we could make heavy objects, such as an egg, float. We made a hypothesis and trialled three different ways of making our egg float.

We learnt that if we put our egg in a small plastic container our egg will float because the plastic container is light and can float on its own.

We found it interesting that when we placed the egg in the bucket of water it did not roll over!

Learning Community Moana

As part of our concept, we’ve looked at the design process and applied it to a situation that was not only a problem, but a problem that was current and relevant to us. And of course, one sticky point for all of us is … what to do during ‘Wet Day lunchtime breaks’ and how do we manage our Wet Day monitors?

Through guidance and constant referral to the ‘process’, we’ve come up with some great ideas to address the following: what to do if it rains during play; what to do with monitors, so that no one monitor is doing it all the time; what music to use to help signify to our students that it is a wet day; activities we could use and implement for our younger students; posters to remind us of what we should do in the case of raining – these are just a few we’ve identified and worked on.

Below are some posters we’ve created and a proposal for ‘Wet Day Alert’ music. Be on the look out for some video messages we’ve recorded and edited together, especially the ‘Rain Rap’.

Sports News

Ki Ora Whānau,

During the July holidays, if you’re looking for a way to keep your child motivated from a physical education point of view, maybe they can maintain training for our our annual Holy Trinity School Cross Country event. The date of this event is in Term 3 Week 2, Thursday the 30th of July.

Where this event will take place?

This event will be held directly behind the school grounds at Bruce Pulman Park in Kuaka Drive. Refer to the map below.

Helpers!

If you are able to assist, and are happy to stand around the course for simple marshalling duties, please let me Mr Brown know on qbrown@holytrinity.school.nz.

More details will be made available through HERO.

Children’s Community Dental Service

(Auckland Regional Dental Service)

Kia ora,

Some of our dental clinics will be open during Alert Level 1. We will be offering appointments to children with the most urgent dental care needs. Our staff will be in contact with the parents/caregivers of these children to book appointments.

We will contact parents/caregivers of children who are due for their routine appointments in due course. We are unable to put a timeframe on this at present, which means there may be delays in routine appointments.

If your child is in pain, or if you have any immediate concerns about their teeth, please phone 0800 TALK TEETH to speak to one of our therapists. The therapist may offer an appointment for your child if required.

We kindly ask that you do not present to the clinics if you don’t have an appointment booked. This is because we need to ask all parents/caregivers and patients COVID-19 questions over the phone before booking an appointment. This is to protect our staff and other patients in the clinic.

If you have any questions, please email ARDS@waitematadhb.govt.nz.

Thank you for your understanding and support during this time.

Kind regards,

The Children’s Community Dental Service.

Internet and Cyber Safety

‘Keep it real online’ campaign

The Department of Internal Affairs with Netsafe and the Office of Film and Literature Classification is about to launch a ‘Keep it real online’ campaign. The campaign will support parents and caregivers to reduce the risks of online harm such as cyber-bullying, inappropriate content, pornography and grooming.

Parents and caregivers can find information including tips on how to have conversations with their kids at www.keepitrealonline.govt.nz.

TV, radio and print ads will commence from Monday 8 June and will run through to the end of July. Printed and online adverts will be produced in English, Te Reo Māori, Samoan, Mandarin and Hindi.

Upcoming School Events

School Liturgy and Assembly – led by Learning Community Awa
Monday 29 June 8:50am in Taamaua/school hall

End of Term THANKSGIVING Mass
Wednesday 1st July 9am in Taamaua/school hall 

School THANK YOU CELEBRATION for Families/Whānau and Term 2 REPORTING
Thursday 2nd July from 3:00pm -6:00pm in Learning Communities

Term 2 concludes
Friday 3rd July

Term 3 commences
Monday 20th July

School Liturgy and Assembly – Whakatau to welcome New Families
Monday 20th July 8:50am in Taamaua/school hall

Catholic Caring Mass
Wednesday 22nd July 11:30am @ Christ the King Parish, Owairaka

School CROSS COUNTRY
Thursday 30th July @ Bruce Pulman Park

Upcoming Community Events & Information

Tots to Teens Digi Magazine

Our first issue post-lockdown! Here’s your school community’s link:  https://issue2006nin.totstoteens.co.nz/

We are so happy that with the support of local businesses we have been able to deliver you our June – August 2020 issue.

What’s in this issue? With holidays on the way, and families looking to travel NZ with kids, we have collated 376 things to do in Aotearoa. Now that the chilly days are arriving, we have the deets on how many layers your child needs to wear, how to keep your family in good health with good food, and we share some helpful advice about common ear, nose and throat complaints. We have two super-simple and delicious recipes with brown rice (you’ll be hooked on the cheese balls, we promise!) and we look at cures for our sporty kids who develop Osgood Schlatter (knee pain) and Sever’s disease (heel pain).

As always, we have many wonderful competitions for readers to enter, and a family fun page for everyone to enjoy.

YOGA & ART School Holiday Programme