Friday 20 May 2016
Naumai e te whanau o te kura Muritai
Tena koutou katoa
This week has been a bit more frenetic than the steady weeks of recent times. Great learning experiences, lots of variety, heaps of visiting experts and the continued pursuit in preparing to be our very best in next week’s Muritai cross-country.
From the Principal -
Pink Shirt Day
We celebrated Pink Shirt day today with a ‘wear something pink day’. Thank you everybody who made the effort to say that Bullying is not Ok at Muritai School. We welcomed Constable Julie to Muritai this week in year 3-4 as they start their Kia Kaha work. We do spend a lot of time across the year in class going over the values and the expectations of good behaviour in class, out of class and our relationships with each other. Being a large school it isn’t always perfect, and just like any family not everyone gets on all of the time. There are times when individuals look to exhibit power over others. We do however continue to talk freely together about how our behaviour affects others. We have a fresh sense of confidence because our focus over the last 12 months has been developing the bystander approach - ‘to step in and step up’ if children see things which are not OK. We feel this is working better.
Things do happen between children from time to time over various disagreements; and we acknowledge that at times children can be mean to others, they can be rude and say hurtful things, and be rough. We think this is not OK and our school policy identifies bullying as a step up from this. We see bullying is “deliberate, hurtful, ongoing actions (striking, intimidation, harassment, name calling) that causes undue anxiety or stress to others.”
Our behaviour management and bullying policies are both on our website under ‘School Information’ for you to review. With high expectations for behaviour, continual conversations within the school and the sharing of information you can be sure that Muritai is committed to our children being the best that they can be and being safe as possible.
Leaving comments on the blogs - feedback to classrooms
We encourage you to read the classroom blogs, and indeed all our other blogs at Muritai which you will find under Our Learning on our website. Please feel free to leave a comment on the blog. This is really powerful feedback for the children (and teacher) to see that someone has taken an interest in what they do and appreciates their efforts. These blogs are designed for us all to keep a visual log of the things that we do at school and our records our annual educational journey.
It is easy to do - click on any blog and at the end of each post there is a highlighted writing which says - Comments. If you click on that you can give some praise or acknowledgement or feedback.
And speaking of blogs - it is always good to have a look at our Senior School Blog which shows our parents what our oldest, most mature, sophisticated learners are doing, as they go through the process of preparing for secondary school. It also gives our younger children an idea of what school is like when they get older…. You can access it here http://seniorschoolmuritai.blogspot.co.nz/
No working Bee tomorrow
The weather is not ideal for the planned working bee tomorrow so it is cancelled. We will reschedule and advise of the date later.
Thank to the outgoing Board
This week the Board of Trustees had their last meeting. With continued stability and many achievements, this group can feel very satisfied with its tenure. In 2010 they had been together for 2 months when we hosted the ERO and came out with a 4-5 year return. In late 2014, the next ERO review acknowledged a school that was well governed and operating extremely efficiently, with high student achievement and quality staff performance. While systems and processes are important, it is undeniable that this skilled, united and cohesive Board, with Stuart Stock’s consistent leadership as Chair, has applied a steady, measured and logical governance strategy (on an extremely tight budget) to Muritai over the last 5 years or so. As a consequence, this Board has taken Muritai forward and passes the governance baton to the new Board, leaving the school in good shape.
So to Stuart Stock, Olivia Paterson, Craig Griffiths, Julie Parker, Phil Fisher, Nick Brownsword, Lisa Allen, Melissa Coton and Carole Lowe - a huge thank you for all you have done for the school over the last 5 years...you should be very proud of the shape the school is in as we welcome a new Board of Trustees in June.
From the Board of Trustees -
Melissa Coton is taking up her Science Fellowship for term 3 and 4 this year. Replacing Melissa in room 22 is Robyn Wellwood. Robyn is an experienced teacher currently teaching in an international school in Indonesia. She is returning to NZ as her 14 year old son is keen to attend high school in NZ.
Robyn has the skillset to work in the senior school with real strengths in literacy. She assures us that she is the type of person that can be 'thrown' into a production term and be unflappable, delivering a smooth classroom programme at the same time!.
At our final meeting last night the Board signed off the property developments to be completed over the next 5 years. This is called the ‘5 Year Property Agreement’ and is a contract approved with the Ministry to enhance our learning and administration spaces. Going forward developments involve extending the staffroom to accommodate the increased staff and as a multipurpose space; modernise the junior school and senior school, and complete internal works to the dental clinic now it is in school hands. We will also complete the spouting replacement programme.
The Board has also completed our strategic document ‘Towards 2020’. Along with our Charter, the ‘Towards 2020’ document will guide all our teams to continue to evolve the learning experience of the children to prepare them for the world they will be going into. The Board will release a focussed newsletter on this shortly but the 7 key concepts of Towards 2020 are :-
- Achievement and success for all
- Thinking globally, acting locally
- Science, technology, engineering, maths
- Growing great citizens
- Lead with pedagogy, accelerate with technology
- Using community expertise
- Using learning spaces and resources to enhance learning
It has been a great process to go through and the Board has meshed government priorities with children, parent, and staff feedback of what they see as future expectations. We are very pleased with the document.
From the School -
ANZAC ESSAYS
Congratulations to Abigail Brownsword (Y8) 2nd place, and Jack Marsden (Y5) who placed 3rd in the RSA Anzac Essay competition held before the school holidays. There was a special presentation on Anzac day where prizes were issued. We had triple the amount of entries this year from Muritai and both Abigail and Jack’s essays were exceptional for their age. The judge was extremely impressed.
FACEBOOK
We are increasing our Facebook postings to share our learning with the community, as well as posting notifications and communications to keep people up to date of the things we do. Please like the page if you want to receive this stream of highlights. Please encourage the wider family to ‘Like’ Muritai to further widen our global reach. We have 388 likes and it would be good to be up to 500 by the end of term so spread the word to help spread our stories’.
SCIENCE WEEK
During Primary Science week, we have focused on inviting local scientists/experts/citizen scientists into the classrooms and our Science Room (Room 17). Our visitors so far have been:
Junior school = Stan Swan in to talk about solar power electricity and Charles Hazelwood - Science of Sound played instruments
Enviroteam = Sally Bain & Mark McAlpine - trapping pests and pest management
Senior school = Mark (Potter) & Lian (Butcher) – talked about animal/human respiration and Lindy Monrad – a registered nurse – talking vital signs, heart rate, temp from a nursing point of view
Staff have also been upskilling at every morning tea. Teachers took the opportunity to complete an experiment that they could share with their children and see the wonders of science in action.
YEAR 7/8 TRIP
On Friday the 1st of May the Senior students went on a school trip to the marine reserve, and to a movie called, I am Eleven. Firstly we went to the Roxy Cinema, where we saw a really cool movie about eleven year olds growing up over the world. We discovered that some children in India were riding elephants at age eleven, and their were some children who were living on their own without their parents, even kids who were living in an orphanage. It was really inspiring to see their beliefs and thoughts about the world, and how most of the kids seemed happy where they were living, and to see that our idea of happy is completely different to some of theirs.
Next we traveled over to Taputeranga, where we visited the Marine Reserve. We had some amazing guides (Judy and Vector) who taught us all about underwater life. We even got the chance to shake hands with an octopus, feed Terrapins, hold a purple crab, and hold smaller sea creatures. Overall we had a great experience, and learnt so much about aquatic sea life.
By Yasmin Kerr
CENTRAL ZONE FOOTBALL
We had 3 teams compete at the Central Zone Y5/6 '6-aside' Football competition on Tuesday. Muritai Fire, our girls team had a good day placing 3rd overall in their competition, they didn’t lose a game or have one goal scored against them - a collection of draws kept them in 3rd place. The Boys Y6 team Muritai City won the A grade competition. The Boys Y5 team Murtai United placed 3rd in their competition. Our teams not only played extremely well but they also displayed high levels of sportsmanship throughout the day...well done all. As always we had awesome support from our parent community who helped on the day - thank you!
Photos can be found here: http://muritaisports.blogspot.co.nz/2016/05/y56-cz-football-results.html
NETBALL
Our netball teams have been playing grading games lately and the results see the Muritai Magic (Y6) into primary 1 grade and the Muritai Bullets (Y5) into primary 2. This is an exceptional performance for Muritai and the highest grading placing in the last 15 years. Congratulations to Arini Poutu and Gretchen Campbell for their coaching of this group over the last few years. We have 7 teams playing Netball for Muritai this year and we are indebted to all the coaches, managers and parents who help the children at every step of their netball careers at Muritai.
POLYFEST
We have had a change in our Polyfest performance date. We are now performing at Walter Nash Stadium on Thursday 30th June. This is due to group numbers of varying size and giving each school the most tickets to watch the performance.
We will advise when tickets are available and the cost involved. There will be limited supply.
JUNIOR SCHOOL PARENT CURRICULUM MEETINGS
Maureen Buckley and the junior team are running curriculum meetings that will give you some ideas on how you can support your child's learning at home and also explain the stages of development in learning to read, write and do mathematics as they go through their first two years at school. They are a repeat of the workshops undertaken last year.
The evenings will be held in room 3 and the following day the meetings will be repeated in the library at 1.30 p.m. Both sessions will be for approximately an hour.
The sessions are -
READING - Wednesday May 25th 7 p.m. or Thursday May 26th 1.30 p.m.
WRITING - Wednesday June 1st 7 p.m. or Thursday June 2nd 1.30 p.m.
MATHEMATICS - Wednesday June 8th 7 p.m. or Thursday June 9th 1.30 p.m.
HUTT STEMM Festival returns for 2016!
Returning after its debut last year, Hutt STEMM Festival is back and bigger than before. STEMM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Manufacturing and the festival celebrates all of the great work happening in these fields, right here in Lower Hutt.
The festival runs from 4-12 June, and there are heaps of free events including many for families, kids and students. You can see the full listing at huttstemm.nz or the programme we are giving out to take home, but a few highlights include Lego Legends at Eastbourne Library, Pop Up Science and Hutt Science Discovery Day at the Dowse, and The Mind Lab by Unitec in Petone. Each of these are fun and hands-on, mixing creativity and science.
CROSS COUNTRY (TUESDAY)
We are all good to go with our annual cross country next Tuesday at the Eastbourne Rec.
The Juniors are looking to leave school to head to the Rec at 9am (approx.) and the other times are -
Year 7-8 - 11.00 approx
Year 3-4 - 11.40 approx
Year 5-6 - 12.10 approx
The postponement date for the Juniors will be Wednesday with the rest of school on Thursday. If Thursday is rained out then we will try for Monday 30th May. Mr McKay will make the call by 8am on Tuesday (and Thursday) if the weather looks unsatisfactory.
Details are on our Sports Blog - http://muritaisports.blogspot.co.nz/2016/05/school-cross-country-event-2016.html
HOT DOGS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
We are still looking for helpers to make hog dogs on Wednesdays during Term 2 and 3. It is very simple with detailed instructions. If you would be willing to volunteer helping out at school between 11.30 and 1.30 on Wednesdays, please see Carole or Jo in the school office.
Scholastic Books
Due to a system fault at Scholastic, we were unable to receive the current issue to hand out to our students and now have a very short window of time if you would like to make an order.
You can look at the brochure online at: http://www.scholastic.co.nz/schools/bookclub/clubs/student.php
Please note you can now only order from issue 3. You can then either print the order form from the brochure and return it to the school office or you may complete your order online at https://mybookclub.scholastic.co.nz/
All orders will close next Friday the 27th of May. Please ensure forms that are returned to the office are named with either credit card details included or a cheque made out to Scholastic NZ. Cash orders cannot be accepted.
Thank you for your continued support with your book orders which help us to purchase new books for our school library.
DIARY DATES (staff may contact you with more details about these events)
Fri 20 May Pink Shirt day / Board of Trustee nominations close
Tues 24 May Y1-8 Cross country race
Fri 27 May School assembly
Tues 31 May ICAS Science Exam
Friday 3 June Board election votes close
Mon 6 June Queen’s Birthday - school closed
Tues 7 June Teacher only day and Central Zone cross country
Wed 8 June Y5-6 Speech finals
Fri 10 June School assembly
Mon 13 June ICAS Writing Exam
Wed 15 June ICAS Spelling Exam
Thurs 16 June Board of trustees meeting
Thurs 30 June PolyFest
Fri 1 July Mid year reports go out
Wed 6 July Celebration of learning 3pm - 6pm
Fri 8 July Last day of term.
TERM DATES FOR 2016
Term 1 = Monday 1 February - Friday 15 April
Term 2 = Monday 2 May - Friday 8 July
Term 3 = Monday 25 July - Friday 23 September
Term 4 = Monday 10 October - Friday 16 December
We have 2 teacher only days this year at Queen’s Birthday and Labour weekend.
Teacher only day one = Tuesday 7 June
Teacher only day two = Tuesday 25 October
COMMUNITY NOTICES
SPCA ADOPTION EVENT AT HVHS
Date: Saturday 21st May
Time: 12pm - 3pm
Where: Hutt Valley High School Hall
We would love to see as many people there as possible even if you're unsure about adopting!
OLD TIMERS' & FAMILY FUN DAY
SATURDAY 28 MAY | HW SHORTT PARK
Mini Touch Tournament
Kids & Adults | Mixed age teams | 10min games | KO 12pm | Prizes
To enter please email junioreastbournerugby@gmail.com with names and ages of players
Final played during senior match half-time
Junior Matches | From 8:30am
Senior Match u85kg | Eastbourne vs Old Boys University
Supervised games | Community Centre
BBQ | Food & Drink | Throughout the day
Music & Entertainment
All past, present and future players, supporters and families welcome
Clubrooms open from 12pm
Cheers, Mark 021 300742
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