Kia Ora, Talofa Lava, Greetings, Malo e Lelei, Kia Orana
A very warm welcome to Olive Sellars, Sofia McDonald, William Hammond and Kira Wester and their families as they join our school family.
FROM THE PRINCIPAL
It’s hard to believe that it is the fourth week of the term and that it is already November. The students have been very busy over the past two weeks especially undertaking a range of assessments. Teaching staff are currently analysing their progress and achievements and are writing reports ready to share this information with you later in the term.
Each week I have seen the students outside practising and learning new skills in athletics and the Years 3 to 8 students are especially enjoying their Athletics Day today. The Years 0 to 2 will have their Athletics Day later on in the term.
Our exciting Carnival is only four weeks away and plans for this great event are well underway so please put down your name to help out over that weekend and look out for all the notices coming your way.
Thank you to Suzanne Levy for her very informative talk about adding restrictions to devices and to the parents and caregivers who attended her session.
Thanks also to all the parents who are giving up their time to speak about their career pathways to our Year 7 and 8 students. One student, Daan, is thinking about joining the police and he interviewed Sergeant Bradley Allan to see what was involved. Daan especially enjoyed his ride in the police car.
Congratulations also goes to Phileas Keller, who was the New Zealand Mathlete of the day. He earned a total of 7,567 points on October 15th 2016 while he practised his Mathletics. Well done Phileas!
Congratulations to Joe Dickson as well and his Petone Football team who finished their season with impressive results at the McCartney Tournament held recently in Taupo which included a win by the 11th grade Settlers. This was the team’s third tournament success this season. Great work Joe!
Well done and congratulations to the Junior School! They held their ‘Jump Off’ at the culmination of their Jump Rope for Heart programme at the end of last term. Due to their sponsorship we were able to send $698.30 to the New Zealand Heart Foundation to go towards heart research.
On Friday November 4th at 2.30 p.m. there will be a farewell afternoon tea for Andrew Bird in the school library. You are warmly invited to attend so come along and share some memories that you have of his time here at Muritai.
As it is term 4, we have a ‘Sunsmart’ policy. All students need to wear a sunhat while they are outside during school hours. Please make sure that your child has a named hat at school every day to wear. Please apply sunscreen to your child before school if they are our younger students. Sunscreen (named) can be brought to school to reapply throughout the day. Students can wear sunglasses to protect their eyes as well.
A huge thanks goes to the Menzshed for building our Buddy bench. Seren, Jasmine and the Year 7 and 8 art ambassadors are busy sanding and preparing the seat ready for painting before it appears in our playground later this month.
Next Tuesday November 8th, all students will be involved in a programme called ‘Sustainable Coastlines.’ As part of this, they will attend a presentation in our library and follow this up with a clean up of our local beach area. If you are available to accompany the students to the beach for this could you please let your child’s teacher know by this Friday November 4th? Years 3 and 4 and Years 7 and 8 need adults from 9.45 to 10.30 a.m. Years 0, 1 and 2 need adults from 11 a.m. to 11.45 a.m. and Years 5 and 6 need adults from 1.30 to 2.15 p.m. We need to abide by the Health and Safety Act which means we must comply with ratios of 1 adult to every 6 students so if you are available to join us that would be very much appreciated.
We offer congratulations to our new Principal, Mrs Bec Power. There will be a powhiri to welcome her to Muritai School on Friday December 2nd. Further details will follow closer to the time.
Planning for 2017 is well underway. We are shortly beginning the very detailed process of collating the makeup of classes for next year. We don’t take requests for placements from parents but if you have some information you think we would find useful about your child you are welcome to provide us with this. Please phone the school office to make an appointment to discuss this with me. If your child or family is leaving at the end of this year and you have not emailed me can you please do so to let me know?
Next Tuesday morning, November 8th I am having another ‘coffee morning - meet and chat’ in the staffroom from 8.45 a.m. if you would like to join me.
If you thought that Year 7 and 8 were busy with loads of opportunities as mentioned in our previous newsletter then have a read at some of what is on offer in Years 5 and 6.
Alongside their dynamic, responsive and student centred curriculum there are plenty of other activities to be involved in.
Fostering leadership both in and around the school, students are able to be peer mediators, Kahikatea leaders, P.E. shed monitors or Junior School lunch monitors during lunchtimes, or keep our students safe on the road as road patrollers. They can take part in Schoolgen and Enviroschool teams along with being big buddies in buddy classes.
A range of extra learning opportunities is also available with students able to take part in attaining the different levels of the library awards, Maths masters, Otago Problem solving, ePro8 challenges as well as a range of competitions including ICAS, RSA Essay writing, Speech and Mathswell.
If the students want to get involved in the arts they are able to take part in our school production, the Art Splash Choir, Art Splash Dance and Kapahaka including performing at Polyfest. They have Performing Arts sessions with Ruth Hooke and also enjoy a SPARKS programme involving dance, drama, singing and Kapahaka.
There are also a wide variety of sports events offered. These include the whole school events of swimming, cross country and athletics. Students can also take part in Central Zone events in swimming, cross country, soccer, netball, hockey and athletics.
We have had students also competing at Inter zone in swimming, cross country and athletics and also in Regional events of cross country and athletics this year.
Rippa rugby, Rugby (tackle), soccer, cricket, tennis and triathlon are also played. The students also have some amazing Education Outside the Classroom experiences with a week allotted for this later this term. During Term 1 the students went on camp to Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre and throughout the year have taken part in enviro school activities like the World of Waste tour and the preservation of our local dunes to name a few. School is certainly a fun and busy place!
Arohanui
Maureen Buckley
Acting Principal
FROM THE SCHOOL
EPRO8 TEAMS
The EPro8 Challenge is a competition, an engineering and problem solving race. In 2016 over 4000 students from nearly 400 schools from throughout the North Island are taking part. Teams compete to
- Build large sized structures
- Solve practical problems
- Engineer using polleys, motors, gears, wheels and axles
- Invent machines that can complete simple tasks
- Undertake unusual and fun experiments
- Construct basic electronic circuits
- Solve interesting problems using practical maths
We had four teams this year year:
7/8 Delta: Tai Van der Bar, Fergus Hart, Shannyn Thompson and Lachlan McLachlan
7/8 Alpha: Dan Walker, Oscar Zuijderwijk, Luke Thompson and Ben Murphy
5/6 Team 2: George Walker, Artemisia Walcott, CJ Wray, Solomon Tito
5/6 Team 1: Myles Caughley, Toby Burton-Wood, Marcus Ruane, Fraser Neilson
The teams were organised and supported by Mr Woodhams and both had great success with Delta coming first and Alpha second place in their competition and Team 2 placing 2nd and Team 1 placing 3rd. Well done teams!
LOST PROPERTY
The school's lost property is kept under the stairs by Room 7. Most weeks the bins are overflowing. A couple of times each week, lost property monitors go through the clothes in the bins, checking for names and trying to reunite clothing with owners.
Last Wednesday, the students of Room 7 undertook a survey of lost property to see how much of the clothing was named. Of the 137 items currently 'lost' and sitting in the bins, only 21 items were named. That works out about only 1/7th of the lost clothes being named and standing a better than average chance of being re-united with owners.
If each item of clothing cost approximately $10.00 to replace, that would mean about $1370.00 worth of clothing is currently sitting in our lost property bins, unclaimed. At the end of the year after Christmas, all unclaimed lost property is donated to the Salvation Army.
If your child has recently lost an item of clothing, please drop by the lost property bins soon to have a look.
ONLY 3 1/2 WEEKS TO GO!!!!
Could you please find us on Facebook and like and share our page with all your friends. We currently have approximately 600 likes on Facebook and usually have 20,000 visitors—a long way to go yet!
We need from you:
- Lemons to be squeezed and lemons zested with juice and zest being frozen ready for our team to make lemonade for the Carnival.
- Clothes racks for our clothes stall. Please drop off at 126 Muritai Road. Make sure they are named in order for us to return them.
- Plastic bags for our stalls
- Ice cream containers - with lids if you have them.
DIARY DATES TERM 4 2016
15 Nov Juniors going to Government House
16 Nov Juniors going to Government House
22 Nov Y4-6 IZ Athletics
25 Nov Y8 Girls Gardasil Immunisation
27 Nov CARNIVAL DAY!
29 Nov Y4-8 Regional Athletics
1 Dec PP Date for Y4-8 Regional Athletics
5 Dec to
9 Dec Y3-4 EOTC Week; Y7 EOTC Week, Junior EOTC Week
5 Dec to
10 Dec Y8 Abel Tasman Camp
7/9 Dec Y5/6 EOTC Week
9 Dec Y3/4 Beach Day at Days Bay
12/13 Dec Y5/6 EOTC Week
16 Dec Leavers Assembly, Early Finish at 1pm as LAST DAY OF TERM
TERM DATES FOR 2017
Term 1 = Thursday 2 February - Thursday 13 April (Easter)
Term 2 = Monday 1 May - Friday 7 July
Term 3 = Monday 24 July - Friday 29 September
Term 4 = Monday 16 October - Tuesday 19 December
We have a teacher only day at Queen’s Birthday on Tuesday 6 June
COMMUNITY NOTICES
MURITAI TENNIS CLUB FAMILY DAY
Family fun day at muritai tennis club 30 October 9.30-12.00. Members free, non members $5 per family
Could the person who witnessed the silver Nissan Xtrail drive into the back of my Toyota just outside school on Muritai Road this morning at drop off and then drive away, please contact me on 562-8619 or 021 206 4741. I don’t quite understand what happened and was so upset that I forgot to ask for your name when you gave me the licence plate number. Because I don’t understand how it happened I can’t explain it to insurance so I’d really like to talk to you and have an independent witness if the other driver disputes my description of what happened. Thank you very much, Katherine Fahey.
Food for a Healthy Heart
Weds 30 Nov, 5.15-7.00pm, Johnsonville Community Centre
The Heart Foundation are running a friendly and informal FREE session to about nutrition and healthy food choices, for people living with heart disease and their whanau. To register call 04 472 2780 or cathl@heartfoundation.org.nz
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