Dear Families,

Welcome to our penultimate newsletter of Term 3.
This week is Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori, Māori Language Week. This annual celebration of Te Ao Māori is special in 2022 as it marks 50 years since the Māori Language Petition, an event that led to the celebration of Māori Language week. The theme this year is Kia Kaha Te Reo Māori, Let the voice be strong. This theme is very much aligned with the celebration of all of our Pacific Language weeks, last week being Tongan Language week.
On Monday of this week Mrs Helen Burger led our school in a sharing assembly where classes shared their learning related to Te Ao Māori. Classes shared artwork, performed plays in Te Reo Māori, sung songs and played musical instruments, topped off by our fabulous Kapa Haka group performing. Mrs Burger led prayer and introduced items in Te Reo, fully immersing the school in the language. Thanks Mrs Burger for your passion for languages and for sharing this passion through our Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori assembly.

Parish | School Connect We welcome Fr Rodney Smythe to our Parish School community. Fr Rodney will be taking care of our pastoral needs alongside Fr Terry while Fr John is on sabbatical in Rome over the next three months. I know you will join me in making Fr Rodney feel welcome.
Click here for this Sunday’s readings.

Community Dreaming Day – Saturday 10th September

Your Board and staff hosted our community consultation day on Saturday. It was marvelous to see over 80 parents and around the same number of children gather for this important mahi. We unpacked our 4 strategic goals, sharing evidence of work undertaken in each strategic area of the past three years as well as sharing information about supporting our children’s wellbeing on-line. The voice we gathered at this meeting is currently being analysed and the synthesis of this will be presented to the community in summary form before the end of this term. Following this, there will be a period of additional consultation time, where families who were not able to make it on the day are welcome to contribute their thoughts and opinions. At the culmination of this, we will use the community voice, alongside our staff, board and student voice to adjust our strategic goals as necessary for the next three years of operation.

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to our Board and Staff who planned, prepared and delivered an informative day. To our PTA for putting on a delicious afternoon tea and pizza for the children. To the Year 12 volunteers from Sancta Maria College supported by my husband Paul Campbell and our son Oliver who provided games and entertainment for the children. All of these good hearted, community oriented, spirit filled people made the day exceptional. I also wish to extend my sincerest thanks to the families who took the time to come along, listen and share their thoughts and ideas. We are truly grateful.

Removal of National Covid Traffic Light System Following the removal of the Traffic Light System in New Zealand this week, nothing too much has changed here at school. We continue to be mindful of ventilation and hygene protocols and remind you that if your child is unwell, please keep them at home. If you still wish your child/ren to wear a mask, we respect this decision. If your child does contract COVID, I would still appreciate you emailing me at [email protected] to let me know while they isolate for the 7 day requirement. Thank you for your support.

Fathers Day Liturgy Last Monday we celebrated and offered prayers for our Fathers at our Fathers Day Liturgy. For those fathers in our community who couldn’t make it along, we sure hope you felt the love and prayers from afar!

HPPA Netball Competition Last Friday, our Netball teams represented us at the HPPA Netball Competition. As always, our children were stand-outs when it comes to fair play, encouragement, and being good sports – embodying our values beautifully. Congratulations to Team A who won their pool and to Team B who came third in their pool! See later in this newsletter for further details and photos.

Gala – let the fun begin! Cow Pat Raffle Tickets as part of our preparation for

our Gala, you child/ren has brought home a set of 4 raffle tickets to sell at $5 a ticket. This raffle will be drawn at our Gala with $1000 cash as the first prize and $100 cash for 2nd through to 5th place. Money and ticket stubs can be returned to the school office. Thank you in advance for supporting this Gala initiative.
Thank you, thank you, thank you once again!!  Our first Saturday Container Day was last weekend with families bringing gala items before attending our Community Dreaming Day. This weekend our containers are open on Sunday between 2pm and 3pm for any items you wish to bring in to contribute to the gala – your support is truly wonderful! Remember how helpful it is to bring items to the container in labeled bags or boxes so we can store them in an order that is easily unpacked and ready for the big day.
Classroom collections Please also see the list of items we are looking for the children to bring in weekly to add to our gala stalls. These items will be collected each Friday with points given to the class for items brought in. The winning class will get a pizza lunch at the end of this term. Adding one or two items to your weekly shop would really support our efforts to make this gala a great event for our school community. We very much appreciate your support.

Looking Ahead Next week our 22 qualifying Gymnasts will compete at the Auckland Champion of Champions Competition and we look forward to our combined Mercy Day Liturgy and House Assembly on Friday. The following week, our last week of the term, we are very much looking forward to the much anticipated Senior Production Birds of a Feather. 

Wishing you all a safe and happy fortnight ahead.

Be safe and God bless.

Ngā mihi nui and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

Tēnā koutou Whanau

The new board met in August for the first-time post elections to settle into the new routines, and how we will continue to best support the Schools Leadership Team in delivering the exceptional operational excellence (as they do). I was also elected back into the Chair role and am looking forward to being able to lead the Board as this new Board grows.

It was also a short gap between the new Board and the Community Dreaming Day held on the afternoon of the 10th of September. A huge thank you to the Families that attended lending a voice, as well as the Teachers (including Mr Campbell and the big kids who managed the smaller ones on the field) and the PTA who gave up a valued day off to facilitate the workshops (and feed us all). It is this commitment and voice that we will use to update the strategic plans & foci for the next 3 years.

Thanks again everyone and welcome to the new Board Members.

Vaughan FRASER
Board Chair

What an exciting week !!

No more traffic lights means we can get back to doing what we love !!

Discos, Sausage sizzles and all the other fun activities are back !!

Please look for the PTA newsletter coming home next week with all the latest updates.

PTA meeting  Monday 19th September
 
Staffroom
7.00 pm.
All Welcome…..

Nicole Kelly.
PTA Chairperson.

ICAS Results
Congratulations to the students who participated in the ICAS tests for Science and Spelling.
All the students who entered tried their best and we are proud of their efforts.

Tickets are now available from the school office, $10.00 per person.
Performances are on;
Wednesday 26th September at 6.30pm
Thursday 27th September at 1pm and 6.30pm

Road and Traffic Safety

How good is your knowledge of road and traffic safety? How good is your child’s knowledge?
Jump online and test yourself and your family members.

Child Safety Quiz for Parents

Together let’s make our roads safer so that no one loses a loved one..

Thanks for your help to keep our tamariki safe.
Your Traffic Team

HPPA Interschool Netball

Last Friday 16 girls represented our school in a netball competition held at Howick Pakuranga Netball Club. These girls have been playing netball all winter and have really honed their skills. Many have played together on a Saturday so knew each other well. Every girl represented our school with pride and showed our school values throughout the day. Our coaches on the day, Mrs Juliet Erihe and Mrs Natalie Smith, did an excellent job supporting the girls to be the best they could be.

We are very proud to announce that OLSOS A won all their pool games and came first in their pool and OLSOS B who only lost one pool game, came third in their pool.

Congratulations girls!

Congratulations to Rooms 22, 15 and 9 who are our star environmental warriors.  These classes are consistently helping our environment by reducing the amount of packaging in school lunch boxes.  Well done! Here is another video from our Enviro team with some simple ideas for reducing plastic waste.  Thanks for your support with this school wide challenge.

We love showcasing children’s work in the Information Centre.
Lately these displays have created lots of interest and conversation – eye catching artwork from Room 7 and 13, a rainforest habitat diorama by Jevon Mascarenhas Room 21 and Ari Sheck’s published book ‘Under the Sea.’