We hope that the holidays have been good at your place. It's time to dig out that sun hat ready for the new school term, when spring returns on Monday. Read on for some important messages and a brief glimpse at what lies in store for this term.

Headphones:

It is important that every child has their headphones or earbuds at school from the first week back. A stationery check, especially pencil, eraser, ruler, glue-stick and pen, would also be appreciated. Please check that the sunhat is packed too.

Missing a lunchbox?

We have a collection of lunch containers at school. The food remnants have been removed and they have been washed. If you spot one of yours in this photo, please remind your child to collect it, on Monday, from the maker-space.

Writer’s Club

Following the success of Maths Club on a Wednesday morning, we are offering an extension group for writers for the duration of Term 4. This is an optional group session that will meet on Friday mornings at 8:20 in the Breakout Space. Maths club will continue as usual on a Wednesday morning at 8:20.

2019 Leaders:

For your diary:

Oct 22:  Labour day (school closed)
Oct 24: Volleyball league begins
Nov 1:  School athletic sports
Nov 2: Long jump at Hillview
Nov 7:  Summer tournament
Nov 12: Zone athletics
Nov 13: Top Team (parent helpers required)
Nov 14: 'Be Inspired' leadership course for 2019 House captains and student council exec.
Nov 16: Show day (School closed)
Nov 26: Staff only day
Nov 28: Canterbury triathlon
Dec 5: Canterbury athletics
Dec 10: Kauri production. All Year 7 & 8 students will be required at school for this evening show.
Dec 12: Kauri production. All Year 7 & 8 students will be required at school for this evening show.
Dec 14: Trip to Corsair Bay (parent helpers required)
Dec 17: Walk to Victoria Park (parent helpers required)
Dec 19: Year 8 Graduation Assembly, starting at 11am. Year 8s finish school following luncheon.
Dec 20: Final day for Year 1-7. School closes at 12:30.
We have one more trip that is yet to be confirmed and will tell you about that one next week.

Parent help required:

As you can see it is a rather busy term! We have at least three events that can only go ahead with parent support: Top Team afternoon on November 13, Corsair Bay trip from 11am on December 14 and our Walk to Victoria Park from 10am on December 17. Please click here to find out more and let us know where you can help. 

Upcoming sports events

Wednesday the 24th October - Kiwi Volleyball Year 7/8 league starts

Continuing our newly found love of volleyball, we have two teams entered into this after school league which runs for 7 weeks at Hillview Christian School.

Thursday the 1st November - School Athletics

The children will compete in Mid Distance, Sprints, Shotput, Discus and High Jump. We started our training for this event at the end of last term.

Friday the 2nd of November - Long Jump

Our long jump event will be held at Hillview Christian School again this year. This will be an optional event for the children. Children enter this event by completing a Google Form that is shared on Google Classroom.

Wednesday the 7th of November - Summer Tournament

We are putting together teams in touch, orienteering, tennis and slow pitch this week. Children who are interested will need to complete a Google Form. Many thanks to the parents who have volunteered to take a team.

Monday the 12th of November - Zone Athletics

Qualifying children will travel by bus to Hansen Park to compete against our neighbouring schools.

Wednesday the 28th - Canterbury Triathalon

This is a fantastic event held at Pegasus, involving a swim in the lake, a bike and a run round the lake. This is an optional event for children with a good level of fitness who want to embrace an extra challenge. Children have had an amazing time at this event in the past.

Wednesday the 5th of December - Canterbury Athletics

There is a change of venue for this event this year. Children who qualify for Canterbury’s will be amoung the first to enjoy the new facilities at Nga Puna Wai.

We are looking for some adult helpers for the above athletics events. If you are available to help out at any event, please, email Jenny.

Mountain Biking Passion

Organisation for our mountain biking passion is well underway. If your child is part of this passion group and you have not yet completed the google form, please do so asap.
We are still looking for an additional parent to come with us to Halswell Quarry on Thursday the 25th of October. This is more about transporting bikes, we have plenty of adults on bikes to run the session and just need to get the children to the tracks. A non-biking parent would be just fine.

A big thanks to all the parents who have supported our learning this week. It has been quite a week, with lots of highlights.

Volleyball at Koru Games:

A spark of enthusiasm for volleyball was ignited when we were playing against Carisbrook School in Dunedin at the end of term 1. Our team was well and truly beaten, but really enjoyed the friendly mixed session that followed the game. Jenny kept that enthusiasm going by running a volleyball passion group in term 2. With more skill and experience under their belts, the children were keen for another challenge. That came in the form of the Koru Games, a South Island multi-sport tournament for Year 7 & 8s. We sent two volleyball teams to the three day tournament this week. They had a great time and thrived on the competition. Our B team won four games and lost three, finishing in 10th place. Our A team won 6 and only lost the final, finishing in second place overall! Thanks to Carisbrook for selecting volleyball as one of our tournament games and starting us on this road to success.

'People must act to sustain what is valued'

... is our key conceptual understanding for inquiry this year. We are in the midst of a focus on sustainability around food. This week that took the form of visits to the supermarket to undertake research and the making of re-useable beeswax food wraps.

Next week's programme:

Touch Canterbury will be working with us Monday - Thursday next week to teach and play Turbo Touch. Each group will have a half hour session each day.
On Thursday we will be having a passion day, so that we can complete passion projects that are looking to take more than 90 minutes to wrap up.
Technology will be on Friday next week. This means that Tuesday is a normal start time and on Friday children will need to be at school by 8:30am.
We wrap up the term with the school talent quest on Friday afternoon.

This week creative juices have been flowing in the Intermediate Hub, as we have been busy creating calendar artwork. We continue to be very impressed by Te Whānau Mahi Tahi. This week they performed for the group of Chilean students who visited as part of our language programme on Monday, and welcomed a large group of teachers who were meeting in our hall on Wednesday.

Parent help needed:

Next week we are planning on visits to New World supermarket for each home-group, as part of our inquiry into sustainability issues around food.  We will also be making wax food wraps at school. For each of these activities we require some parent help. If you are free and willing to help out on either Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, please fill in this form. 

Congratulations:

We were super proud of our representatives at the zone speech competition on Tuesday evening. Both delivered highly entertaining speeches and both were placed third!

Te Whānau Mahi Tahi

Lots to celebrate this week and a few important messages.

Te Whānau Mahi Tahi

Our senior kapa haka group are looking forward to their performance at the Cultural Festival on Monday evening. A reminder that these children have a rehearsal at Horncastle Arena on Monday afternoon. They will be leaving school at 2pm and the bus will return between 3:45 and 4pm.

Headphones at school

This week we will be encouraging a number of children to upload a google extension, ReadWrite, to support their learning in writing. This extension reads text, that the child has written, back to the child. It pauses for punctuation. By using this extension children will be able to pick up sense and punctuation errors in their writing more readily. In order to use this, headphones (or ear buds) are required. Please remind your child to have these with them at school.

Speech Competition

We had a very exciting and entertaining speech final at school on Monday afternoon. A huge well done to everyone who took part. The English teachers from Cashmere High, who judged the competition, were very impressed with children's enthusiasm and talent for public speaking. A special congratulations go out to Vienna and Lily who won their competitions. These girls will go on to the South Speech competition on Tuesday September 11, starting at 6:30pm in our school hall.

Cantamath

What an exciting day we had last Wednesday at Cantamath. A large number of our entries in the display competition gained Highly Commended and Excellence awards. In the teams section our Year 7s did a great job for their first time. The Year 8s were very pleased with their result, scoring 80 / 100 (double their score from last year) and with only 9 schools scoring a higher result. The official results sheet, certificates and badges are yet to arrive.

Mosaic Art Project

GirlBoss Workshops

The girls who took part in the GirlBoss workshops last week, which explored future options in STEM subjects, came away very inspired. We will make the most of this opportunity in the future. Below is some feedback from the girls.