December 7th

Wednesday 7th December

We welcome Oliver Sanderson (16), Patrick Nugus (21) and Shona Nugus (13) to Muritai School.

Events schedule for the final 8 days

Thursday 8th  -  Y3-4 fishing rod challenge; Y6 road patrollers fun day at McKenzie pool, Y7 first aid training
Friday 9th    - Y3-4 fort building at beach, Y7 Hang Dog climbing experience; Y8  return from Abel Tasman; Reports, portfolios, class lists issued
Monday 12th  - Visit new class day
Tuesday 13th  - Parent helper’s morning tea
Wednesday 14th  - Year 8 formal evening 6.00pm
Thursday 15th  - Y3-6 Xmas concert 1.45
Friday 16th   - Final assembly 11.00; Last day – school finishes at 1.00

Art Auction
Last Friday we held a very successful art auction to raise money for the green Gecko school in Cambodia. We raised a total of $3700 for the school. The art was tremendous and the children and teachers need to be congratulated for producing work of such high quality. Many teachers brought in ‘experts’ to help and the children benefited from this experience. Our thanks to Hayden Ray and Kirsten Berry for driving this project and special mention to Adrian Ormsby and Blue Carrot catering for the wonderful food on offer.

New classes
Children will be eager to find out who they will be sharing a classroom with in 2012 and who will be their teacher. Over the years “Class List Friday” has settled down dramatically and we appreciate this and a pragmatic approach to this organization. 

We have used our parent information and teacher observation throughout the year to form classes that look as though they will be very successful. There will be some changes for some children as we look to expand their friendship groupings and make sure that the classes are even and have a workable dynamic about them. Generally there are limited surprises and lots of fresh starts and opportunities. If I may ask that you be supportive of the school through this process. What may seem as a disappointment to some children needs to also be seen as an opportunity for them. They have all been placed with lovely children and excellent teachers. Fresh starts are often the best and with a positive attitude nothing should stand in the way of the children having another successful year at Muritai.

Putting 400 children into classes is extremely time consuming and many variables go into constructing the classes. A particular challenge will be for the year 4 and 5 classes who go into year 5-6 composite classes and so their class make up will be quite different from what they are used to. The classes have a very balanced look to them however with a nice cross section of personalities, skills and attributes.

Reports and reporting
With the class list will be the achievement reports and portfolios. We hope that you will take the time to sit down with your child and allow them to share their portfolio of learning and talk about strengths and weaknesses in the achievement report. The report also informs parents of student achievement against the National Standards and teachers have provided general commentary of classroom performance.

Choir
Our year 5-6 choir performed recently at St Ronan’s for our elderly community. Ruth Hooke tuned them up nicely with some of the classics from times gone by and they were very well received.

EOTC programmes
Thank you so much for your continued support for our EOTC programmes over the last fortnight. Our year 1-2 and year 5-6 had a wonderful week last week and really appreciate the parent support to help these programmes operate. I would like to praise our teaching staff for positively making a difference at such a busy time of year. A summary of events were–

Year 1-2 – art and folk dancing; cross country; Avalon park; beach day and athletic sports;
Year 3-4 – football tournament; something different day; beach technology; fishing rod challenge; games and picnic
Year 5-6 – Inter-zone athletics, Days Bay beach day; Amazing race; Maori sports; Triathlon;
Our intrepid year 8 group are experiencing a damp adventure down south but remain in very high spirits. Year 7 returned last night from their Mt Holdsworth experience.

EOTC is a very valuable programme and enables the children to experience something different and challenging in the wider community.

Christmas concerts
Today we had a very successful Christmas concert for the junior school. Next Thursday the year 3-6 children will be having their concert starting at 1.45.

Holiday programme
School breaks up next Friday. Our holiday programme is running up until Christmas and again from the 24th January. Details of what is on offer can be found by clicking here http://muritaiafterschoolcare.blogspot.com/

Inter-zone athletics
Our year 4-6 children who qualified for the inter-zone continued to achieve outstanding performances at Naenae Park last week. Our place getters were –

Year 4             Macey Caughley – 1st  sprints and long jump;
                        Phoebe Evans – 1st high jump, 3rd shot put; 4th discus; 4th sprints
                        Andrew Sutcliffe – 1st long jump
Year 5             Charlotte Wilson – 3rd high jump; 3rd long jump; 3rd sprints
                        Relay team – 3rd  (Charlotte Wilson, Milly Griffiths, Mary Heath, 
                                                      Ruby Brandwood)
                        Ben Grenfell – 1st long jump, 2nd sprints
                        Relay team – 1st (Ben Grenfell, Jack Healy, William Langley; Liam Lamb)


New teacher day
On Monday the children will spend an hour or so with their new teacher until morning tea. Sadly Deane McKay is not able to be here but Murray McMillan and returning teacher Mikaela Cody will. Hopefully many of our newly enrolled children will be able to attend.

Parent morning tea
Next Tuesday at 10.30 we will host a ‘thank you morning tea’ for parents, in particular those parents who have helped out in 2011. We are lucky to draw on a committed group of caregivers and so this is just a small token of our appreciation.

Community Notices –

Eastbourne Community Carols and BBQ – This Sunday 11th December, 5pm at Muritai School with special guests the Hutt City Brass Band.



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Register now for a class after school! Or inquire about our Muritai French lunch time class. LCF Clubs Fun Languages is offering primary children in Eastbourne the opportunity to learn French and German and Italian starting 2012. Free demonstration lesson available. Heaps of fun while learning with lots of different activities. Older Beginners class available for ages 10 to 12. To register your interest please contact: email: stefi@lcfclubs.co.nz, phone 562 8211 or visit the website www.lcfclubs.co.nz



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