Newsletter 27 May 2024
From the Principal
A warm welcome to our new families. There is a lot happening around the school at present with the Senior School Sunshade underway and many organised lunchtime activities such as art club, culture club, music, lego, sports, dance and drama.
This week we celebrate Samoan Language Week and over the next few weeks we have the PTA Meeting tonight, inter school netball and soccer, middle school assembly and a long weekend celebrating the King's birthday.
Many schools are closing for one or two days over the next few weeks, for Teacher Only Days we are not closing so school will be open as usual.
Covid-19, Winter Flu and Measles
Winter illnesses are taking hold across the country, with ‘flu season’ arriving earlier than normal as well as an increase of Covid-19 reported cases.. New Zealand is also at a high risk of a measles outbreak with immunisation rates dropping off since COVID-19. Please follow Te Whatu Ora advice, particularly that the best protection against an outbreak of measles is the MMR vaccine.
Below is an extract from a RNZ article over the weekend. I am also aware of a central Auckland school that had 11 staff away last week due to Covid.
There were 6146 new cases of Covid reported in the past week - almost double the 3922 cases reported the week before.
It is bad timing as Aotearoa headed into flu season, with the wave likely to peak in June or July.
Please don't send your child to school with any Covid-19 symptoms.
Symptoms of COVID-19
- new or worsening cough.
- sneezing and runny nose.
- fever.
- temporary loss of smell or altered sense of taste.
- sore throat.
- shortness of breath.
- fatigue/feeling of tiredness.
The King’s Birthday - Public holiday - All Schools Closed
When - Monday June 3rd - next Monday
Attendance Matters
The Government is setting high expectations for student attendance so we are looking at creative and positive ways to improve attendance here at Pakuranga Heights. A day here and a day here off school really adds up.
In April 2024, the Government announced a regular attendance target of 80 percent of students to be present for more than 90% of the term by 2030
How many students regularly attended school in Term One?
68% Regular Attendance (missing 5 days days or less a term)
37% of students were late to class regularly
We need to do a lot better
Next Term Prize Draw
There will be 3 prize draws for students who are regularly attending 90% or more for the whole of Term 3. One junior school, one middle school and one senior school prize.
Three students will win $100 vouchers each for a shop of their choice eg: Warehouse, Rebel Sport etc.
Winter Hats - School Beanies
School beanies are available through the school office for $ 14.50
All beanies must be the school colour and not have any commercial logo advertising or branding.
Senior School Sun Shade
Great progress has been made and the frame goes up this week.
Calling All Builders in Our School Community!
Last year, we embarked on our schools garden restoration project with the incredible support of Bunnings. Now, we are ready to take the next big step: constructing an outdoor classroom that will serve as a dynamic learning environment for our students.
To complete this crucial phase, we are calling on our school community for assistance. We need a licensed building practitioner to donate a day of their time to help us build this outdoor classroom. This project is fully funded by Bunnings who have generously provided all the necessary materials and will have people on the ground to assist, but we require a certified professional to lead the building process.
By contributing your expertise, you will not only help create a unique educational space but also play a vital role in enriching our school community.
If you or someone you know has the qualifications and the time to help, please reach out to Jazmyn Garrrett-Dalton at jazmyng@pakurangaheights.
Linewize
In the last week we have deployed Linewize across all student gooogle accounts, note these accounts only become active once students are in Year 3. We are using Linewize for both filtering and monitoring of student accounts and it runs whenever students are logged in to their school google accounts no matter where they are logging on from.
The filtering aspect gives us greater control over what is blocked and what is allowed than the standard Ministry of Education filtering allows. For example, students will now find they are blocked from YouTube outside of school hours. This means teachers can still use YouTube as a teaching tool in the classroom but students cannot use school accounts for personal YouTube access. Student accounts are also blocked from accessing all social media and gaming sites outside of educational games.
The monitoring allows teachers to see at a glance what is happening on each students screen during the school day. We are also able to look into the history of any students internet access to see all sites visited and all searches made.
A reminder that our internet use agreements state that school google accounts are only to be used for school related tasks. If your child is using the internet at home for personal use you will need to create a personal account for this. We strongly recommend using some form of monitoring on any accounts you set up for children, Google Family Link is a good free option for google accounts. You can find more information at the link below.
Please feel free to contact Monique Browne at moniqueb@pakurangaheights.school.nz if you would like further information about Linewize.
Thank You
Thank you for all your support in making Pink Shirt Day and our food drive such a success. Together you donated 240kgs of much needed necessities to the Salvation Army. 4 house captains were able to visit the food bank with Mrs Browne to deliver the donations and saw their new system where families are able to shop the shelves and make decisions as to what food is most beneficial for their family.
Celebrating Excellence
Room 8 read the book One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab: A Counting by Feet Book and have been learning about different ways to make numbers using different sets of feet. For example: If there were ten feet on the beach, Room 8 knew that there could be one crab, but there could also be ten snails, or five people. We talked about how there could even be a dog, four snails and a person. We had so much fun figuring out lots of possibilities for different numbers.
We then used this as inspiration to create the below artwork.
ROOM 9
Last week, it was Road Safety Week. In Room 9, we learned how to cross the road safely with Mr Ward. We know that before we cross the road, we have to STOP, LOOK and LISTEN. We practiced crossing the road and remembering what to do. We also pretended to be the cars on the road. Thanks for teaching us Mr Ward!
