Newsletter - WE 25.02.2022

Tena Koutou Katoa

I realise we have sent a fair bit of communication home this week so I will endeavour to keep this short.

You will have seen the shift to Alert Level 3 yesterday and the changes this makes to our contact tracing. From now on you only have to isolate if you are positive or are a household contact of a positive case. This means from a school perspective, there should be less disruption and less students at home isolating while being healthy. The same rule as ever applies, if your child is sick, keep them home!

We were pretty proud to see two of our students, Stephanie Robinson Gutierrez and Sarah Forbes, selected from some stiff competition to be Women in Sport Ambassadors with a role to promote sport within the community. They both have some great ideas on how to take this further and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Thanks for all your patience whilst we checked out the pool and we were pretty happy to get a clear result back. The tummy bug that is circulating around seems to be abating a little and we are seeing less students going home due to this.

Have wonderful weekend.

Nga mihi nui

James GriggsPrincipal

>>>>

Dates for Your diary

March
2nd Year 1-6 Swimming Sports
4th Year 12/13 Bio Field Trip to Orana Park
9th-11th Year 7 Camp - Hanmer Springs
14th-16th Year 9 Camp - Day trips
16th Board of Trustees Meeting @ 6:00pm
23rd Hurunui Duathlon - Hanmer Springs
25th Hurunui Duathlon Postponement
28th-1st Year 11-13 Narrative Arts Camp
31st CPS Swimming at Selwyn Aquatic Centre
April
3rd-7th Year 12 OE Marlborough Sounds Expedition
4th Crash Bash with HDC
11th HPSSA Softball at Amuri Area School HPSSA Teeball at Scargill
13th HPSSA Softball at AAS Postponement HPSSA Teeball at Scargill Postponement
14th End of Term 1

May
2nd Start of Term 2 

>>>>
Senior School News

Swim sports

A beautiful summer day, the perfect temperature for a quick dip, saw many of our young swimmers take to the water to compete.
It was impressive to see the turnout of both serious athletes and those wanting to be part of and join in with the school spirit. Many of our students swam back-to-back races and gave 100%. It was really something special to watch the younger students lined up at the fence watching the senior school students striving and achieving. Great role modelling to our future senior students, who will now be inspired to do the same.

Distance Learning courses in Year 11 to 13 are well underway and it is great to see achievement of our students in a national setting against a wider group of their peers. A big congratulations to Hananiah Samera who is our first student at Amuri to gain an Excellence Standard (Level 1 Music) for an online course in 2022.

Absences from learning have been proven to have a detrimental impact on student achievement, however are unavoidable in the middle of the pandemic. We encourage students to engage with the individual education plans that are being sent out to those at home isolating, stay up to date with your learning, complete your tasks and seek regular contact and feedback from your teachers. As a school, we are prepared and ready to support students with learning programmes delivered online.

Managing and supporting mental health and Anxiety in our children is an increasing worry for parents and Whanau in our community. Fear of the unknown is building heightened anxiety in our young people, information on what it is and how we can support our tamariki is available to help inform us.

What is anxiety:

• Most pre-teens and teenagers feel anxious sometimes.

• Anxiety is a natural reaction to the challenges of adolescence.

• Anxiety is the worry that something bad is going to happen or that you can’t cope with a situation.

• You can help pre-teens and teenagers manage anxiety by talking, spending time together, and encouraging healthy choices.

• If teenagers need extra support, a GP, psychologist or school counsellor can help.

Link to further information on adolescent anxiety.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and want to talk about your worries, Youthline offer a free anonymous service to teenagers.

Free call 0800 376 633 Free text 234

Mrs Peterson
Deputy Principal - Secondary

>>>>

Primary School News

Kia ora Parents and Whanau

We continue to experience unusual circumstances at school and I am so proud of the way our tamariki are responding to the challenges that they are experiencing. We want to thank our parents and whanau for supporting your children and also supporting the staff here as we continue to navigate the challenges of the times. As a school, we are doing our best to make learning continue as normal as possible for our learners and your support is very much appreciated.

Please make sure your Seesaw login is working and that you are able to contact your child’s teacher. We need to be prepared if your child needs to move to online learning when isolating. While we have the time, we want to be as prepared as we can. If you’re having difficulty, please contact your child’s class teacher here at school.

A parent survey was sent out this week for each of the students in Year 1-8. It would have arrived in your email inbox yesterday. If you didn’t receive a link, please contact me at school on 315 8233. As a staff, we decided to address our parent community through a survey to find out more about your children, seeing as we’re not able to meet in large groups for a parent meeting. There will be a separate survey for each student in Year 1-8 so please look out for multiple links if you have more than one student here. Responses will close on Monday at noon and these will be passed onto your child’s class teacher. Thank you to those of you who have already responded!

Year 1-6 enjoyed a visit from Harold in the last two weeks. The Life Education trailer was here for three days offering two lessons to our Year 1-6 students. The Year 6 students celebrated their last visit to the trailer by getting to peek inside Harold’s bedroom in the trailer, a real highlight! The lessons this year were all focused on being accepting of being different, having different likes and dislikes and different opinions. Harold will return again next year.

We are a Sunsmart school and therefore it is compulsory for all our students in Year 1-6 to be wearing a broad brimmed sunhat when they are outdoors. This is part of our Sunsmart policy which requires all students and staff to be wearing a hat outside in Term 1 and 4. Please make sure your children have a sunhat each day and that it is named! Most students leave these at school in their cubbyhole during the week so they have one every day. Caps are not acceptable, the hats need to be either bucket style or broad brimmed. Thank you for making sure our students are safe in the sun at school.

Nga mihi nui
Kylee Habgood 
Deputy Principal - Primary