Tēnā koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te kura o Amesbury mo te rua mano rua tekau mā rima. A very warm greeting to you all. Welcome to Amesbury School for 2025. If you are new to Amesbury School, we look forward to welcoming you to the school community, and if you are returning, we look forward to hearing about your holiday break and reconnecting with you all.

Our team have been hard at work preparing for the new school year and we are all excited about the learning opportunities for the term.

Whānau Groups

We have two hubs - Koru (Year 0-3) and Pōhutukawa (Year 4-6). Koru Hub has eight whānau groups and Pōhutukawa Hub has six whānau groups.

The role of your child’s whānau teacher is to act as a learning advocate for your child at school. They are your first port of call if you have any questions, comments or concerns about school or your child. The whānau teacher is not your child’s overall ‘class teacher’, most students will work with multiple teachers throughout the year, but the whānau teacher will have particular oversight of your child.

Our teams for Term 1 2024 are:

Koru Hub new entrant group (Māwhero): Angela Herman-Childs and Wee Ai Teh.

Koru Hub main group: Amaria Picard (team leader), Hannah Sadler (team leader support), Aleesha Majaw Monisse, Lily Patrick-Duncan, Sophia Hughes, Kate Dammer and Lauren Brown.

Pōhutukawa Year 4, 5 and 6 whānau groups: Rupert Webb (team leader), Gar Kee Wu, Brydon Gillam, Charlotte Montu, Rachel Hosnell, and Sarah King and Amelia Prendeville have a shared whānau. Sarah will work Mon, Tues, Wed, Amelia - Thurs and Fri.

Emma Murdoch is on maternity leave for the beginning of 2025.

Release teachers: Katherine Simco, Charlene Laing, Bina Chauhan, and Amelia Prendeville.

Learning support team : Sara Saunders (Māwhero)Navy Ny and Gerri Ng (Koru) and Nic Love (Pōhutukawa) are our teacher aides who support students with their learning.

English Language Learner support teacher (working in both hubs): Kirat Singh

Senior Leadership Team : Urs Cunningham - Principal and Jenny King Associate Principal (SENCO).

This year we will once again be hosting a Mandarin Language Assistant. We will update you when we have confirmed details about our MLA for the year.

Connection Hui

The hui are running throughout the day on Monday 27th Jan, the day before school starts. Read this article to find out more about the hui. Please remember to book a hui with your child's whānau teacher for this year, not for last year - the whānau groupings can be found here. The connection hui is a good chance to meet and connect with your child's teacher, and to share important information about your child for the year ahead.

First Day of School
School begins for the term on Tuesday 28 January at 9:00am. Please read and follow the information below to ensure your child has a great start to their first day of school in 2025.

Koru:

Our Hub will be open from 8.30am and kaiako will be here to welcome all ākonga for their first day.

Ākonga from Wee Ai and Angela’s whānau will be based in Māwhero (pink carpet) and can enter by the large sliding doors next to the library. Ākonga will need to take their shoes off before coming into the space. Kaiako (teachers) will then be available to show your child where to put their bag and how to sign in.

We ask that ākonga from Hannah, Lily, Aleesha, Kate, Sophia & Lauren’s whānau take their shoes off before coming into the learning space, signing in before finding their bag space. There will be activities set up for students to engage with throughout the morning.

At the end of the day, students in Wee Ai and Angela’s whānau can be picked up from Māwhero by parents, guardians or older siblings. The rest of Koru Hub will continue to be picked up outside on the basketball court or at the drop off zone as usual. If your child is being picked up by someone at the drop off zone, please let them know, so they know to head to the drop off area.

Pōhutukawa:

Our hub is open from 8.30am and kaiako will be here to welcome all ākonga for their first day. We ask that ākonga enter in through the door closest to their whānau space (we will show them where to go if they don’t know). Ākonga do need to take their shoes off and neatly put them outside their whānau space on the shoe rack before they enter the hub. School bags will need to be placed in their whānau area also.

Every morning ākonga will need to sign themselves in on the TV screen that will be set up for them to do so. We will have a ‘What’s On?’ projected on a big screen telling ākonga what to expect throughout the day as well as any other notices they may need to know. At the end of the day, ākonga are released at 2:55pm from the hub.

*Please note that it is a sunhat term. Students are required to wear a named Amesbury School sunhat when outside during Terms 1 and 4 - this includes during all breaks and while outside during school time. Sunhats are $15.00 and can be purchased via Kindo/the online school shop. Orders can't always be processed and issued overnight or the same day so best to order in advance so there is time to collect and clearly label before they are needed. Children without sun hats will need to stay in the designated shaded areas during break times.

*We ask all students to take their shoes off before heading inside - there are shoe racks outside each hub to put shoes on.

*Hubs are open for students from 8:30am onwards. We ask that students do not arrive at school prior to 8:30am, as they are not supervised by teachers at this time. Kelly Club operates a care programme before school for students who need to be at school before 8:30am. Please see the Kelly Club information page on our website for more details. We encourage all students to be at school by 8:45am as this allows children time to settle in, put their bags away, read the timetable for the day and then say ‘hello’ to friends and teachers before the bell goes.

Communications

We use LINC-ED Hero for all our communication, learning and administration. Here is a link to show the steps for setting up a new Hero parent account. Hero will be regularly updated with information about school admin, events and general educational information, along with information about events in our local community. This link here has information for tips and tricks that can be useful for using Hero. Any notices that can be public will also be published on our school website.

Each hub has a hub website which has access to the hub timetable overview, with links to planning. This can be accessed by anyone. No personal student information or names will be included in this planning. Any documents or planning including specific names are kept as private documents and cannot be accessed by anyone except Amesbury staff. Here is the link to our learning sites. The article here also explains how to find these from the school website.

Module 1 Learning

This year we have three Inquiry learning modules with a Social Sciences curriculum focus. Our first Learning Celebration is on Friday 21 February - 4-5.30pm. It is a Community Gathering as this links wonderfully to the key understandings of our first module, that we strengthen relationships by meeting and connecting together. Save the date and we will provide more details later on.

Module 1: Our Journey Our Place

Key Understandings

1. Understand Amesbury's journey and collective history.

2. I live in Aotearoa, and I can talk about how I got here.

3. We strengthen relationships by meeting and connecting together.

Module 2: Living in the Pacific

Module 3: Living Together

Sharing and celebrating learning

As we go through each term, kaiako (teachers) will upload learning posts to students’ Hero profile. These will be examples or explanations of learning that your child has done. You will receive a notification through your Hero account when a post is uploaded. If you have any difficulty setting up or accessing your Hero account, please contact your child’s whānau teacher.

Each fortnight both hubs will meet together on Friday to share and celebrate different things we have noticed happening. Our share and celebrate times will be informal and a great way to share a wide range of fabulous things happening across the school. The final share and celebrate event each term will also include our termly Amesbury Awesomeness award from the hubs.

Our Term 1 Community Social Gathering will happen on Friday, 21 February 4:00 – 5:30pm. Come along with your whānau and hang out at school on the main school field. Connect with other families, socialise, join in with some games - cricket, basketball, chess.

School will provide pizza and a sausage sizzle (free of charge). Families can also bring their own snacks if you would like to. More information about this will be sent out closer to the time.

Term 1 Health Module

We are currently working on a Health planning update. This is well underway, however, the two year overview is not quite complete. Health for the first few weeks of term 1 is incorporated into our Inquiry Learning module. We will be talking about social skills and being part of a group and a community, and the social connections that we make through being a part of these groups.

When complete the Health Plan will be shared with you in a separate communication from Urs.

* Please note: We will not start teaching Health from the 2025 plan until you have received this information and the details of what we will be teaching. You will have the opportunity to talk with your child’s whānau teacher or to let us know if you do not want your child to learn this Health topic at school at this time.

Sports in Term 1

All students will complete PE sessions on a weekly basis, along with daily fitness / movement. In addition to this, in term 1 we have:

Kiwi Hoops instructors working alongside our years 3-6 hub teachers to deliver a module of six basketball sessions. Students will learn fundamental movement and ball skills. In years 1-2, tamariki will learn basic movement, throwing and catching skills in their teacher led PE sessions.
Northern Zone sports events for years 4 to 6 include cricket, football and ki-o-rahi.
School teams across all years will play touch rugby games after school this term.

Mihi Whakatau

Our Term 1 mihi whakatau to welcome new students will be held on Friday 31st January. Parents and whānau are welcome to attend. This will begin at 2.15pm in the hall.

Reporting to parents

This year our reporting structure will look a little different.

Term 1: Week 1 Monday 27 January - Connection Hui - (information above)
Term 2: Week 9 Written report for each child will be available on their Hero learning profile
Term 3: Week 6 Wed 20th and Thurs 21st August Student conferences - parents and whānau have a 20 minute in-person conference with their child’s whānau teacher.
Ongoing throughout the year: As we go through each term, kaiako (teachers) and older students will upload learning posts to student Hero profiles. These will be examples or explanations of learning that your child has done. As students achieve learning goals and progress in their learning, their goals will be updated as achieved, and new goals will be set. There will be a statement in each key learning area (reading, writing maths) that states where your child is currently working. At any time you can go on to their learning profile (the page with the large green dials) and see your child’s current learning levels and goals. This document gives you more detail about how to access information on your child’s learning profile.

Stationery

Your child will be issued with everything they need for the year, including books, pencils and felts/colouring pencils. There will be a cost of $45 for the year for this. This cost is charged to school accounts at the start of the year.

If students have their own personal stationery that they would also like to use, they are very welcome to bring it in and keep it in their tote tray or bag. All students in Years 5-6 will be issued with a Chromebook and all Years 3-4 will have access to their Chromebook when necessary at school. Younger students will have access to a range of devices.

Clothing and lost property

Named items will be handed directly back to your child. There will be a small lost property box in the main school office for any unnamed items, but no items with clear names in them will be held here.

In order for all items to be returned to their owners quickly and easily, please ensure that all uniform items are very clearly named with your child’s name before the first day of school. Please be aware that children will often be the people reading the names on clothing, so ensuring that names on all items are clear and easy to read is important. Thanks for your help with this. We recommend purchasing fabric label pens, name stamps or iron-on name tags to make ownership of items very clear. We have teamed up with Precious Labels who offer a small commission to school for every order placed (orders should be placed through Kindo).

Toys/Belongings at school

We do not generally recommend that students bring beloved items or toys to school. However, we also recognise that there can be good reasons for some students to bring personal items to school. If your child chooses to bring a toy or another item of interest to school, it will need to be put away in their bag during learning time and we cannot take responsibility for lost, traded or broken toys/items.

Absences

Schools are legally required to account for the safe whereabouts of each child every day, so notification to the school office should be before 9am if students will be more than 15 minutes late or not be attending school.

Please provide a reason for a late arrival/absence as schools are required to record this information. Absence notifications can be made by:

Absence notification through the Hero app (preferred way - most efficient)
Email –office@amesbury.school.nz
Telephone – 04 477 3423
Text – 021 86 55 28

If your child arrives at school any time from 9:00am, they must sign in at the office, not in the class/hub.

All absences are to be advised to the office, with extended leave requests of more than a week copied to the Principal.

Some Important Term 1 Dates

As always, our school events are all added to our school calendar as soon as we become aware of them. Please follow this link to our school calendar, housed on our school website. Some events may be added to our calendar as we go through the term, so please keep an eye on the weeks coming up on the calendar. Here are the main school events to date:

Thursday 6 February - Waitangi Day - School Closed

Tuesday 11 February - 5-6pm Year 6 Parent Focus Meeting

Friday 21 February - 4-5.30pm Community Gathering

Thursday 27 February - 5-6pm Year 1 Parent Focus Meeting

Thursday 20 March - 5-6pm Year 5 Parent Focus Meeting

Friday 28 March - Koru and Pōhutukawa discos

Friday 11 April - Last day of Term 1

Enjoy the last few days of the school break and we look forward to seeing you all next week.

Warm regards,

The Amesbury Team