Newsletter Week 3, Term 1

Tahuna School

School Newsletter

Learning for Life.

Newsletter Week 3, Term 1

Principal Message
My thoughts go out to those in our community who have been affected by cyclone Gabrielle. On Wednesday it was terrific to see our children, staff and parents back at school and keeping safe. My thoughts are with the families and friends who have lost someone, and the many thousands of people who are doing it tough in our dearly loved country of Aotearoa New Zealand. As the full scale of distruction is not fully known yet and potentially more lives are going to be lost we will continue to be thinking about those who will be impacted.

NZEI Union Meetings
Tahuna teachers will be attending NZEI off-site union meetings on Wednesday 1st March from 1.30pm. At these nation-wide meetings, teachers will discuss and vote on the following:

Increasing classroom release time.
More professional learning and development.
Increasing support for children with higher needs.
Reducing the teacher-student ratio in our classes.

It is important for the Government to address the issues around class sizes and learning support that we urgently need. As teachers we want the best for every student under our care and to do that we need more funding and resources.

Tahuna School will remain open and your child will be supervised. If you would like to pick your child up at lunchtime you’re most welcome to do so.

Class Awards
Congratulations to our award recipients as at assembly. You all have made a wonderful start to 2023.

Endeavour: Elijah and Eli
Endurance: Jurous and Paige
Maungaturoto: Sonika and Sophie
Adventure: Londyn and Jethro
Discovery: Tia and Decovan

Our new ICARE Pathway (Localised Curriculum)
We would like to reiterate our ICARE Pathway where the aim is to support implementing consistent school-wide processes that support students to be aware of their achievement & learning. Our priorities for our learners are relationships, learning and culture and in conjunction with our ICARES values of Integrity, Challenge, Ambition, Respect and Encourage. The pathway tracks progress that each learner is making and can then be monitored and learning practices modified appropriately. In this way, further progress is ensured and sustained so that learners are able to take responsibility for their own learning; the foundations for further and ongoing learning ‘Learners for Life’

Meet the Teacher Evening (Working together – Tahuna mahi tahi)
We have postponed the Meet the Teacher evening to Monday the 20th February. This will be a fantastic opportunity to meet your child’s teacher and hear about their exciting learning programmes/expectations for this year. It will be an opportunity to ask questions. We look forward to seeing you there. The junior classes start at 5pm – Endeavour, Endurance and Maungaturoto (middle) Maungaturoto, Adventure and Discovery at 5.30pm. These will be for 30 minutes.

My Home Reading Journals (Working together – Tahuna mahi tahi)
To support our children with regular reading at home we have purchased special reading journals for each child. This is a new and exciting initiative for our children to get excited and motivated to read.

The Kluwell My Home Reading journals assist in developing clear milestones and expectations for students and families and help teachers to track the progress of individual students.

The reading journals encourage positive reading attitudes, parental involvement and enhance communication between the home and school.

New Resources
We have purchased two new bag trolleys. One for Maungaturoto and the other one for Endurance. Now our children don’t need to have their bags and belongings placed on the deck or concrete outside their classroom.

We are excited to announce we have bought 10 new chromebooks for our senior rooms. This adds to the 10 new chromebooks we bought last year and it’s great to increase the accessibility for our senior children to have access to the digital learning curriculum.

Swimming
Tahuna Swimming Sports day will be held on Friday 24th February at the school pool. The junior and senior swimming events will be held separately, starting with the juniors (Year 1,2) at 11am and the seniors (Year 3-6) at 1pm. A more detailed program will be available later next week. Families are more than welcome to attend to support their children.

Netball
Netball season is not far away and preparations are in full swing to make it yet another successful year. In order for this to happen we need the support of parents. Tahuna is well-known for their involvement and support of netball. We are looking to put forward a few parents to get involved this year, especially within the junior ranks. If you are interested to hear more about how you can get involved, please contact Mr K (Eric) to attend the meeting below. I know that we have a wonderful community of supportive parents.

JUNIOR MEETING: 6.30pm Wednesday 22 February at the MPC Pavilion.
Vacant roles to be filled (new people will be well supported):
– Junior Convenor (Committee)
– Junior Coaching Convenor (Committee)
– PDP Development Convenor (Committee)
– Yr 1&2 Co-ordinator (Wednesday afternoons only)
– Yr 3&4 Co-ordinator (Wednesday afternoons only)

Wheels Wednesdays
Wheels Wednesday is always a great opportunity for our children and it’s fantastic to see so many children bringing wheels to have fun on. Just a quick reminder on Wheels Wednesday the children who want to use a scooter, skateboard, ripstick or drift trike must bring shoes and a helmet as these need to be worn.

Thank you!
On behalf of Tahuna School, we would like to Thank Judy Jonhston for kindly donating two beautiful books for our tamariki. We really appreciate your support and we look forward to adding these new additions to our school library.

Sponsor our school
We have been very fortunate to have many of our existing sponsors continuing to show great support this year. If you want to advertise please let the office know, spaces a very limited.

Lost Property
The lost property has been put out on the concrete outside Endeavour room. Please come in and have a look to see if it belongs to your child.