Dear Families,

Welcome to our final newsletter of Term 1. With Holy Week next week, leading up to the celebration of Easter, we anticipate supporting our students to understand the solemnity of the week as a lead-in to Good Friday where we remember Jesus’ death and on Sunday, his resurrection.

In the News From the Director of Religious Studies section of our newsletter you will find details about the celebration of Holy Week and Easter as a parish. On Thursday of next week, Holy Thursday, we will have our Passion Play Liturgy before we close for Good Friday and our Term 1/2 break. Although parents are able to come into school at pick up and drop off times, remaining outdoors, we will not be able to accommodate parents at our Holy Thursday Passion Play liturgy as we are still in the Red Light Covid setting.

Changes to RED Covid Alert Settings

It has been wonderful over the last couple of days to see families entering the school for pick up and drop off once again. The lifting of the outdoor restrictions has helped school feel another step closer to what we would consider ‘normal’ operations. It is great to see children playing before school and reconnecting with friends from across the school now that they are able to play where they choose at break times. In saying all of this, we are still at RED which means we are maintaining mask wearing, ventilation, good hand hygiene practices, and sticking to our class groups indoors while refraining from gathering in large numbers indoors.

Student/Parent/Teacher Goal Setting Conferences

Thank you to all families who took the time to zoom with their class teachers to discuss academic goals for their children last week. The zoom sessions where parents didn’t have to leave work to attend enabled parents who would normally not be able to attend due to work commitments to join these discussions too. Our teachers greatly appreciate the opportunity to connect with families around learning goals as when home and school work together the impact on outcomes for our learners is strengthened.

Year 3 and 4 Team Trips to the Old School Site and Howick Historical Village

Over the course of the last two weeks our year 3 and 4 team have extended their understanding of what life was like for our forebears by visiting our old school site in Granger Road and the Howick Historical Village. See later in our newsletter for more details and images related to the trips. In developing an understanding of what life was like for the early settlers to Howick and the Mercy and Mission Sisters when running the school in years gone by our learners have come to value our forebears contribution as taonga.

Sacrament of Reconciliation

Congratulations to our students who are receiving their First Reconciliation this evening at our Parish Church. I am sure you will join me in praying that the Lord’s loving arms be wrapped around them as they make this important Sacrament of Initiation in their Catholic faith journey. Congratulations to Isaiah Arthur, Addison Ashby, Isabel Back, Charlie Bongiovanni, Isabella Cullen, Kaitlyn Clifford, Harper Rose Je Jonge, Kaisyn Dang, Villiami Ellwood, Clevon Fernando, Dominic Gedge, Lucian Gonzales, Xavier Grant, Zac Grant, Ethan Ho, Sloan Hudson, Emily Hunter, Jack Hunter, Adele Jablonski, Yuna Jiminez Kim, Austin Jiang, Gianna Prasad Khan, Minjae Kim, Eva Kelly, Bryn Laird, Rix Li, Mason Locke, Nathan Lo, Levi Lubich, Theresa Mathew, Leah McCormick, Thomas McLaughlin, Leo Oh, Jackson Parker, Cavan Reilly, Maddy Rogers, Steve Rui, Marcus Sirilan, Maia Smith, Samantha Sundram and Ethan Vorster.

2022 Strategic Planning Review and Reshape

At the beginning of this year, as part of our Staff Only Days before school began, as a staff we began the review and plan forward process related to our three year strategic direction. Next Tuesday your Board will engage in a similar process of review and plan forward. The next step beyond this is to engage our wider school community in the review and reshape process. Many families who were part of our community in 2019 will recall the ‘Community Dreaming Day’ we held where we engaged in a similar process of review and planning forward. From the 2019 process we reshaped our school vision, developed our Learner and Graduate Profile, developed and shared our ‘I Can’ bubble sheets to support families to understand expectations at each curriculum level in Reading, Writing and Maths as well as shaped the direction of our reporting systems to parents. We are planning for another ‘Community Dreaming Day’ this year once Covid restrictions will allow. We will aim to host this on a Saturday afternoon where children can come along for games and food on the field, and parents will engage in review and forward planning as well as having the opportunity to hear about initiatives such as Structured Literacy which is currently being introduced as a cutting edge approach to the teaching of English in primary schools. We will share the date this will occur once we reach a Covid Traffic Light level that will be safe for such a face to face community engagement to happen.

Wishing you all a happy and safe Holy Week next week, a wonderful Easter and school holidays. We look forward to reconnecting in Term 2 which begins on Monday 2nd May.

Be safe and God bless.

Ngā mihi nui and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

On Tuesday, the student council and the liturgy team joined twelve other schools online, to work with the Caritas Team. They spent time unpacking the work of Caritas and the principles of Social Justice. It was an invigorating session for our students who came away buzzing. We will follow this up with Caritas Challenge activities during the course of the year.  They were all astounded by the facts that were shared. 

80 million people globally are forced out of their homes each year

250 million people globally miss out on schooling each year

700 million people live on less than $1.90 per day each year.

There was much discussion about what $1.90 could buy. A real eye opener for these students.  This also hit home the importance of our school ‘We Can Bring a Can’ Lenten challenge. We have managed to feed close to 100 families so far with one week still to go. Our parish Saint Vincent de Paul group are overwhelmed by the generosity shown. 

With Easter approaching us quickly, it is time to stop and think about our relationship with God. Alpha is a sort of back-to-basics course in the Christian faith for Catholics and non Catholics alike. The programme provides an opportunity to think and reflect on some of the fundamental truths of the Gospel. Things like —

• who is Jesus, really?
• why did he die?
• how do I pray?
• how can I be filled with the Spirit?

Our parish offers the programme in English, Mandarin and Korean languages.  More information is available through the parish website 

Holy Week begins this week with Palm Sunday, where we remember Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Palms will be blessed at the Masses this weekend. Each of us is encouraged to take one of them home and place them behind a family cross. This is a Catholic tradition. Please take home palms for family and friends who are unable to attend Mass this weekend due to isolation or ill health. 

With the change in Red Level restrictions, the parish Stations of the Cross walk through Howick is able to go ahead. We meet outside the church at 9am and walk together as a parish community, praying and meditating on the Stations. Your children have been doing this with their class this Lent. It will be wonderful to see them joining in or leading a station. You are all welcome to attend as there are no restrictions on outdoor gatherings. 

Next Saturday, at the Easter Vigil, the mass will begin in darkness reminding us of Christ’s death and the darkness of the tomb. We enter the church with only the light of the Easter Candle to lead the way. Jesus tells us, ‘I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’ The entrance of the Easter candle into the church is a powerful reminder of this. The light of this one candle is then shared with all present and very soon the darkness of the church is overcome. The church is filled with light, light that is strong in faith and hope.  Catherine McAuley’s reminds us ‘to be a shining lamp, giving light to all around’ and share this light of faith and hope with all those we meet. 

Below is the timetable for our parish celebrations. Everyone is welcome to attend and we look forward to celebrating with you as one big parish family.

Holy Week Timetable 2022:

Holy Thursday – Mass of the Lord’s Supper            7:00 pm

Good Friday – Stations of the Cross Walk through Howick 9:00 am

                     –  Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion 3:00 pm

Holy Saturday – Easter Saturday Vigil 7:30 pm

Easter Sunday – Mass 8:00 am & 9:30am

Ko te aroha o te Atua kua whiwhi whanau a tatou Katoa 

The tender mercy of God has given us one another

Prayer Intention :      E te Ariki, we pray for all those who are being received into the Church this Easter season.

Detta Fairweather
Deputy Principal / Director of Religious Studies

At the end of term one, the Middle team went to the Howick Historical Village. We went to learn about what life was like for the Fencibles in the 1850s. We went there because the Howick Historical Village is a taonga to New Zealand’s past.

In the morning we boarded the bus to visit the old “Our Lady Star of the Sea” school in Granger Road. We felt very excited to be there and we wondered about how it would look before when there were classrooms and an orphanage. We also wondered what it would be like to be a student there.

Then we got back on the bus and drove to the Howick Historical Village. When we arrived, our groups went to different activities. We saw how people then would have communicated, we went to school in the olden days and we explored the McLaughlin house and learnt how the Fencibles lived.

We were then able to explore the rest of the village in our groups with the parent helpers. We noticed how different it was to how it is now. We wondered about how hard it was for the Fencibles. At the end of our trip we had learnt so much.

We are very thankful for all our parent helpers who volunteered to come to make this possible.

PARK AND WALK TO SCHOOL

We all know that finding a park around our school gates can be a difficult exercise and sometimes quite dangerous.

Therefore, starting on day 1 of Term 2 we are prompting students to be involved in a Travelwise Park and Walk initiative.

We are hoping this will help reduce congestion around our school gates.

We are asking parents to consider dropping their students off on either side of Oakridge way on Orangewood Drive and encouraging their children to walk into school. 

The school patrol will be in operation so students will be able to cross the road safely thanks to our traffic team.

Any student who does this will be given a walking ticket which can be ‘clicked’ each time they walk, by one of our student leaders, as they enter the school grounds. When a student walks into school 25 times they will be rewarded with a prize. 

The walk into school is only short and very safe

Please consider using the Park and Walk option to help grow student independence

and reduce congestion around our school gates.

Over the last few weeks children have enjoyed entering our competition to design a bookmark based on the theme ‘Exploring books – our special taonga.’ We have enjoyed looking at all the entries, some of which can be seen in this photo. We are so thrilled that local artist Joel Nicholls will be judging the winning entries. Winners will be announced next week.

Have You Seen This Weed?

After the huge success of the moth plant competition last year, we are once again on the hunt for this pesky plant.  It has been wonderful to have members of our school community already identifying and removing this weed after learning about the damage it can do to our native plants.  If you see this weed please safely remove it (gloves are advised) and bring the pods to school in a plastic bag.   If you notice a large crop in a public space and you are unable to remove it, please email Miss Marten ([email protected]) and the environmental team will try to clear it.   

Nespresso Pods 

Already this year we have rescued thousands of coffee pods from the landfill.  Thank you for your support of this initiative.  The Nespresso recycling box is outside the office at the front gate.   

Recycling/Rubbish at School

Just a reminder that all rubbish from lunch boxes needs to go home and be recycled.   It is wonderful that school lunch orders are back at Our Lady Star of the Sea.  All packing from the lunch orders also needs to go home.  The sushi boxes can be recycled by separating the plastic from the paper box.  If you give them both a quick rinse the box can go in your recycling bin and the plastic can be recycled with your soft plastics.  Countdown Highland park has a soft plastics recycling drop off box.   Thanks for your support to keep our school rubbish free.

Please note : TEACHER ONLY DAYS

Friday 25 February 2022

Tuesday 7 June 2022

One further Teacher Only Day to be confirmed by the BOT

SACRED HEART COLLEGE Applications for Year 7 and Year 9 for 2023 are now open

A Sacred Heart education provides a foundation of faith and aspiration to succeed at the highest level in personal and professional life. Places are available in Years 7 and 9 in 2023, with Boarding available from Year 9. Applications are prioritised in accordance with our Enrolment Scheme. Scholarships are available. Applications for close Wednesday 13 April 2022. Apply online here.
Visit www.sacredheart.school.nz for more information.