Dear Parents and Caregivers, 

Welcome to Term 2. We hope you have had a wonderful holiday and have enjoyed spending time together with your children. We are all really looking forward to welcoming them back to school for another busy term ahead. Teachers have been busy planning some wonderful learning experiences for them to be engaged in and are looking forward to getting underway. 

With regard to Covid settings, we wanted to give you an update on what the move to Orange means for Muritai School. 

Our continuing focus is on the health, safety and wellbeing of our staff and students at Muritai School. The announcement from the Ministry of Education has removed some of the restrictions that we have seen previously at the Red level response to COVID 19. It is highly advised that many of our protection measures are maintained in the operation of day to day schooling. We will continue to keep other appropriate health and safety measures and protections in place at school that we know slow the spread of COVID-19. These include ensuring our indoor spaces are well-ventilated, maintaining good hand hygiene and cough and sneeze etiquette, appropriate physical distancing whenever we can, CO2 monitors and Air purifiers in each classroom and, most importantly, staff and students staying at home if sick. 

Covid remains present in our community.  Our measures for protecting our students, staff, parents and wider community members are at the heart of all decisions made.  Whilst there is never a perfect fit for these protection measures for all members of our community, we have continued with what we believe offers due care under the current guidelines and also enables us to begin to offer some additional activities of connection and togetherness.  

At Orange, face masks are no longer required at school. However, public health advice is that masks continue to be strongly encouraged when indoors. 

Even though face masks are no longer required at school, we are advised that wearing a mask is a key health measure that slows the spread of COVID-19 in indoor settings. Therefore…

• We strongly encourage face masks to continue to be worn by children and staff in Years 4 and above when indoors. All students, including Years 1-3 are supported to wear a mask if they would like to. 

• We also ask that your child (if they are Year 4+) continues to bring a mask to school every day. There may be times that we’ll ask them to wear a mask, too – for example, when we are having an assembly in the hall. If there are a high number of cases at school or in the community, we may ask that masks be worn in classrooms for a time.

• All students 12 years and older must wear masks on all buses, including public and school chartered buses. 

• Visitors, including parents and caregivers, are strongly encouraged to wear a mask when coming indoors.

We are pleased to invite you back on our school site before and after school each day, and we know you’ll be keen to step back into the grounds!  One of the positives that we’ve been made aware of from many parents over the past two years, are the comments around the independence and self management children have demonstrated by being dropped and picked up at the school gates - or even making their own way to school each day.  We encourage you to do what is right for you and your whanau, however we do strongly encourage you to wear a mask when coming into Muritai School. 

With Orange having no limits of indoor group numbers we are excited to be having Muritai school planned events this term, such as assemblies, Learning Partnership meetings, Matariki celebrations, buddy classes etc. Children will be able to mix across classes for team and whole school assemblies, EOTC events and we welcome the Kahu team back across the road during lunchtimes. 

Here are some Muritai School events for Term 2 

Learning Conversations Term 2

Early in Term 2 we will hold our ‘Learning Conversations’.  These are meetings to meet with the teacher to continue to build a connection between whanau and school, and to share beginning of the year achievement and progress, share any celebrations and needs, and together come up with goals for the year.

Date Week 4 Tuesday 24th / Thursday 26th May from 3:10 - 5:30

Please check your emails for details of how to book 

Competitive Cross Country Term 2

Children will be spending time over the next 3 weeks building their fitness through daily PE and running. We are excited to be running the Competitive Cross Country on Thursday 19th May from 9:30am-12:30pm. The Year 4-8 South/East Zones Cross Country event will be On Tuesday 24th May week 4. More information will come home in the following weeks about these events.

 

Whole School Assemblies 

We are thrilled to be able to have whole school assemblies this term and look forward to meeting you and celebrating all the amazing learning happening around school. Here are the dates for each of the whole school assemblies this term.

Week 2 Friday 13th May 1:45pm - 2:30pm - KĀHU

Week 4 Friday 27th May 1:45pm - 2:30pm - TŪĪ

Week 6  Friday 10th June 10:00am - 10:30am - Mihi Whakatau (Welcoming any new students to Muritai) 

Week 8 Thursday 23rd June 1:45pm - 2:30pm (Friday Matariki) - KORORĀ

Week 10 Friday 8th July 1:45pm - 2:30pm - KERERŪ

To be able to manage the amount of people in attendance we will invite the parents and whanau of the team leading the assembly only to be audience members. We strongly recommend that masks are worn for these assemblies

 

A Moving World Inquiry #1

We will be carrying on with the current inquiry for another 4 weeks of Term 2 before we hold our WOW Week and launch Inquiry #2

Please keep your eye on the school newsletter for any upcoming events!

We are looking forward to a few less restrictions and returning to school life that is a bit closer to normal.

 

Ngā mihi,

Muritai School Senior Leadership Team 

DIARY DATES:

2 May         First day of Term 2

19 May         Dental Van at Muritai School

25 May         BOT meeting at 6.30

6 June         Queen’s Birthday holiday

13-17 June School Photos

22 June         BOT meeting at 6.30

24 June         Matariki holiday

8 July         Last day of Term 2

TERM DATES 2022:

Term 1  2 February to 14 April

Term 2  2 May to 8 July

Term 3  25 July to 30 September

Term 4  17 October to 15 December