Friday 30 August 2019





Kia Ora, Talofa Lava, Greetings, Malo e Lelei, Kia Orana, Bonjour, Nǐ hǎo, Hallo, Hola, Kon'nichiwa, Namaste, As-salāmu ʿalaykum


A warm welcome to Seb Pickering and Thor Daisley to Room 1.

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Tena koutou Muritai families, 

What a wonderful world! We had an amazing time at our Art Exhibition last week celebrating the finale of our ‘What a Wonderful World’ inquiry unit.  Thank you for attending our art exhibition, we were so delighted with the fantastic parent, family, and wider community attendance.  We received such incredible feedback from so many of you -  and we, like you, are so proud of all of the learning  on display from every class in the school. 



If you were unable to come along last week, take a tour around the exhibition by clicking this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EzverjZH01e8uA6WPmKkDwURcULdNbLc/view

Our next unit is now beginning to take shape and is called No Place Like Home ...you may like to check out the video that we are using to launch the unit for the children! 


We are very excited about the prospect of redesigning the playground that used to house our old fort and can’t wait to see the children’s new and creative ideas!   We would like to thank the Home and School team who, through their fundraising efforts, have given us the opportunity to redesign this play space.  We are very grateful for all their hard work.

I look forward to seeing some of you at the disco this evening which our amazing Home and School volunteer team are running - see you on the dance floor!

Ngā manaakitanga,

Bec Power, Principal



FROM THE BOARD

Hello Muritai Families 

The Board of Trustees have met again and as part of our meeting the Senior Leadership Team presented the achievement statistics for terms one and two to us. Our students are showing strong results which are a true reflection of our excellent teaching team and leaders at our school, not to mention our hard working students! Please see below for our up to date data. Our teaching team are working hard to help all students achieve as best as they can and we were encouraged to understand how many different interventions Muritai has at hand for learners of all abilities to help them reach their potential and be engaged and develop a thirst for life long learning. 

On Monday 19th August the Board was hosted by our Student Leaders, Scarlett, Ned, Paris and Theo. They took us for a tour of our school and we visited all of the classrooms and other resource rooms. It was great to see the school in action and all the interesting and varied tasks being carried out by students. We also talked to them about the highlights from their schooling so far and any changes they thought we could help make happen. More to come on this!

During week nine we have our ERO review. This is a significant review that all schools in NZ have and it happens to be our turn this term. Bec and our entire staff are working hard to ensure we are ready for ERO to come and see all of the work that goes on at our school and to ensure we are fulfilling our obligations to our learners. 

One final exciting update….as you will be aware, our hardworking Home and School committee have been raising money for our new play space outside the library over the last 18 months and we are now in the design process to make this a reality.  This term our whole school inquiry focuses on technology and STEM and it is called No Place Like Home. Our students will have a chance to participate in the design process of the new play space by taking part in research and prototyping. We look forward to seeing the designs mid way through term four. 
Our new playspace would not have happened without the Home and School focusing their efforts on such a big goal so we would like to thank them for their hard work and commitment. We would also like to thank the school community for participating in all the various fundraisers that have made this happen, every hot dog, pizza and disco counts, so thank you.

Student Learning and Achievement 

Please find below our overall student achievement data for terms one and two. The Board of Trustees were pleased to see how well we are progressing towards our targets and the provisions in place for those children who are not yet achieving the end of year expectations. 

National Education Guidelines require us to report on the progress and achievement of our Māori students. Our students who identify as Māori have tripled in numbers over the past three years and now make up 7.4% of our school, 30 students. We are delighted to see a growing diversity of students within our school. 

 
While reading achievement towards our end of year expectations are up on previous years at mid year results, writing and maths achievement results are similar to this time last year. As a result the Board has agreed with our senior leadership team that we should continue our focus  on maths and writing. Both areas continue to  receive additional resourcing, including professional development for staff around maths in particular.  As we have reported previously, this is undertaken by Julie Roberts from NZCER on behalf of the funding we successfully applied for from the Ministry.  We have appointed additional staff in our learning support team who will continue to facilitate the following programmes at Muritai School in 2019:

  • Learning coaches and teachers across the school who will run additional interventions, e.g. early intervention groups, support groups for specific learning difficulties, Reading Recovery, Quick 60, Steps Web. (These interventions are  designed to teach students the skills required to become competent readers and spellers). 
  • Maths support groups 
  • Writing support groups
  • Team interventions focusing on specific needs identified from termly data collection
  • Reading Eggs groups
  • Support groups for children who have English as a second language
  • A wide range of teacher aide support within classrooms to assist teachers in catering for our learners’ wide and varied needs.  

This data is based on individual data and observations specific to each child.  The teachers have made an OTJ (Overall Teacher Judgement) which involves drawing on and applying the evidence gathered up to a particular point in time, in order to make an overall judgment about a student's progress and achievement. Teachers have used a range of assessment tasks and observations in order to accurately indicate each child’s achievements. 

From your Board of Trustees - Jeremy, Andrew, Kaye, Kurt, Marni, Deane and Bec


FROM THE SCHOOL

Onesie Day
The Year 8 Charity Ambassadors have organised a ONESIE and/or DRESS UP Day next Friday September 6th. Your child/children can come to school dressed in a ONESIE, their pyjamas or dress up clothes.  Please note - there is no wacky hair please! 

Your child needs to bring gold coin donations as we are raising money for Wellington Free Ambulance to help make sure they remain uniquely free and that they are there when people need them most.

The charity ambassadors will be collecting the donations from your child's classroom. Please support this!
I am looking forward to seeing all the colourful outfits! 
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Maureen Buckley.

Scholastic Book Club
Issue six is now available and orders will be closing on Friday the 13th of August. Your order can be done either online at this link https://mybookclub.scholastic.co.nz/Parent/Login.aspx or by filling in the paper form in the catalogue and sending it with the payment back to the school office. Please make payment by cheque to Scholastic NZ as unfortunately we do not accept cash payments through the school. 


NETBALL
The winter netball has come to an end with some great results, lots of new players and 
plenty of fast action on court for the spectators!

Year 7 and 8 Allstars
After the school holidays and off the back of an unbeaten round one we were
moved up a grade into Intermediate grade 6 and found the second half of the season really tough going.  These girls are all amazing individuals and really came together to find an incredibly strong team spirit, when the going was good and even more so when the going got tough, always trying their best and never willing to give up or let each other down.

I am so extremely proud of you all. 
Roger Moore
Head Coach - Muritai Allstars

Marshmallows
This team are here to remind us why sport is so great to get involved in. Friendships, bonding, working together and getting a fair few wins along the way !  We will miss you next season!

And from the Marshmallows mascot - hello, my name is Gareth and I am the Marshmallows mascot. You may have seen me on the side lines. I am the pink, soft thing that looks remarkably like a giant marshmallow. . Our hoodies were specially made so that half the team wore white hoodies with Marshmallows written in pink down the arm, the other half wore pink hoodies with Marshmallows written in white. Just like a bag of marshmallows! The Marshmallows were, in my opinion, such a happy team. The people who were off court were always cheerleading on the side lines or shouting at the people on court. We also had the privilege of having Stu as our coach, when he wasn’t sunning himself in Fiji or skiing. While we may not have won every game we always had a ball.
Year 5 and 6 
Well done to both our year 5 and 6 teams. For some it's your last year before 7 a side and it was a great chance to hone in some your skills in preparation for next season.
Some great wins, willingness to try different  positions and learning from any losses. 

Year 3 and 4 
Wow! Three amazing teams in this year group. We were thrilled to see so many new players. 
Well done to our yr 3 team Magic who overcame injuries and loss of players to finish the season with an amazing burst of fast  footwork  and speedy passing for some great wins to finish on. Tino pai! 

Our yr 3/4 mixed team of Mantarays have gone from strength to strength. The first round saw natural athleticism and competitive drive make the team unbeaten. Round two showed how working together,  building your ability as a unit made you unstoppable. Loved all the smiles on court !

Our third yr 3/4 team comprised of all yr 4 players and one very determined yr 3 superstar, Benji Farndale.  Placed in the top grade, Meerkats had an incredible work ethic. Never missing a training, playing in gale force winds and rain. They were hard to get off court!! 

Their desire to always improve as individuals and a team led to a clean sheet of spectacular wins! Looking forward to new challenges next season. Fantastic work !


Well done to all the year 3 and 4 players  who were always so willing  to help out other teams who needed extras. You demonstrated a great sporting attitude and made some new friends along the way !!
A big thanks to the parents who have supported you all. A special thanks to the many hours given by all the coaches and managers. There wouldn’t be any teams without your time and effort.
 



WHANAU HUI @ MURITAI
This year we have had two Whanau Hui.  They have been great! During our Hui in Term 2 we discussed some priorities with our whanau and have developed an action plan for these. 

We are really keen to seek assistance from our community in realising these objectives.  If you have an interest or are able to help out with any of these we would love your support.  Also if you know of somebody that would be able to give us further guidance in any aspect of the above then we would be very grateful.  

The objectives are:

1.Building the capacity and capability of the staff
  • Increase confidence in personal use of Te Reo Maori
  • Become familiar with resources e.g. He Reo Tupu, He Reo Ora
  • Know and understand the Tataiako document

2. Establishing a relationship with iwi (kaumatua)
  • Make contact with Pekaira and/or Karepa
  • Connect with Waiwhetu Marae
  • Extend an invitation for an opportunity to connect Iwi, Whanau and BOT
  • Staff/students Noho marae
  • Feedback from Muritai cluster enviroschool 

3. Bilingual signage
  • Identify signs needed/wanted (and how many)
  • Getting brief for specifications
  • Sending out and getting quotes/look to community for expertise
  • Think about foyer and welcome area
  • Explore, Connect, Contribute in Te Reo - appropriate translation, locally translated

4. Kapa Haka

  • Begin Junior-Middle school Kapa Haka
  • Employ a tutor for the Senior Kapa Haka group

5. Develop the ‘Muritai School’ protocols (Kawa)  - Linked to the ‘School Values’
  • Powhiri

This whakatauki is a good reminder of how powerful we can be when we work closely together for the benefit of our tamariki.

Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi 
With your basket and my basket the people will live

Nga mihi nui
Deane McKay



TERM 3 2019 DATES
15 August
BOT meeting at 6.15pm
16 August
SE Zone Swimming
30 August
School Disco
4 Sept
Starting School @ 5 at 7pm to 8.30pm in Room 1
5 Sept
Waterloo Exchange
6 Seot
Whole School Assembly - Tui led
6 Sept
Inter Zone Swimming
10 Sept
EHS Sports Exchange 1pm to 3pm
12 Sept
Board Training from 6pm to 7.30pm
16 Sept
Year 5-8 Girls Futsal Tournament
17 Sept
Artsplash Performance 5pm to 7pm
19 Sept
BOT meeting at 6.15pm
19 Sept
Waterloo School Exchange 1pm to 3pm
19 Sept
Artsplash Dance from 7.30pm to 9pm
20 Sept
Whole School Assembly 1.30pm
27 Sept
Last Day of Term 3 - usual finish time of 2.55pm
14 Oct
Start of Term 4

KELLY CLUB
BEFORE SCHOOL CARE is now available!
We are offering two sessions in the morning. 7.00am - 8.30am (includes breakfast) or 7.45am - 8.30am.  You don't need to enrol for every day during the week, you might like to enrol for 3 mornings a week.

Each morning has a range of activities from craft to cooking to building creations, as well as a chance for the children to come along and enjoy a great start to the day. You can see all our activities on the weekly planner.

REMINDER:
Booking is super easy for Kelly Club and everyone can enroll! See below if you have something coming up and need childcare help.  
1.  Online at www.kellyclub.co.nz/muritai (you have until midnight the night before to enroll)
2.  Drop in and see us for an enrollment form
3.  Email us at muritai@kellyclub.co.nz
You do not have to enroll for a full week, you can enroll for one before school care morning and two after school care during the week, once a fortnight, or once a term. 
We take casual bookings which means that if you get stuck with childcare arrangements, we are here to assist you. If you have something pop up, we can take your child for that afternoon, please let us know via phone (027 218 4489) or email (muritai@kellyclub.co.nz) as soon as possible so we can ensure we have enough resources and staff onsite to maintain the safety and enjoyment of all children on the programme. 

Cancelling bookings is also super easy. If you need to change your booking you are able to do so online up to midnight the night before the booking. Alternatively, you can contact us via phone or email before 12 midday on the day of the booking to cancel. Cancelling bookings within the above time frames is important as it means you will not invoiced for that session and it also opens up space for another child to attend After School care. 
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards
Grace Gillard 
Kelly Club Muritai - Programme Co-ordinator



TERM DATES FOR 2019
Term dates for 2019 have been confirmed by our Board of Trustees as follows:-

Term 1             Monday 4 February to Friday 12 April
            Teacher only day on Friday 15 February
Term 2 Monday 29 April to Friday 5 July
Term 3 Monday 22 July to Friday 27 September
Term 4 Monday 14 October to Thursday 19 December
           

COMMUNITY NOTICES

2019 National Sport Stacking Championships
The 2019 National Sport Stacking Championships (cup stacking) are being held at Cullinane College Gymnasium, 15 Peat Street, Whanganui,  on Saturday 21 September 2019. The tournament is for all ages from 3-60+, for Novice and Experienced stackers. Registrations and all details of the Championships are on the Speed Stacks (NZ) website Tournaments page: www.speedstacks.co.nz/pages/whanganui
Early registrations end Friday 06 September. Entries close Friday 13 September.


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