Tēnā koutou e te Avonhead whānau

Earlier this week, you will have seen that the Government announced the removal of the mandatory COVID isolation rule, which took effect on 15 August 2023. This means that the compulsory 7-day isolation period has ended, although the Government is still highly recommending that if people test positive for COVID that they stay home for 5 days. As with any other illness, it is recommended that students and staff stay at home if they are feeling unwell. Please remember to contact the office and inform us if your child will be absent so we can code this accordingly. 

It has been a busy fortnight since our last newsletter. Many of you will have seen the Life Education portable classroom onsite. Our Year 1 Team have enjoyed having Ange and Harold the Giraffe at Avonhead delivering lessons as part of their inquiry topic looking at "Healthy Me". Utilising the expertise of outside agencies, such as Life Education, helps to support and add to our curriculum programmes across the school.

On Monday, Team 4 started their swimming lessons at Canterbury Swim School for the next two weeks. The swimming skills taught during these lessons are important and help to develop not only swimming technique but water confidence as well. On Wednesday last week, our Year 5 and 6 basketball team took part in the Canterbury Basketball tournament. The team enjoyed the day, as well as the level of sportsmanship and competition. We had a mixture of wins and losses, just missing out on the quarter finals. We finished the tournament in the top 10 for Canterbury, which is a great achievement. On Tuesday we hosted the Chess Power tournament once again. There was a large turnout with over 115 students from across Christchurch taking part. Congratulations to a number of our teams. We had some great results with Avonhead taking out first place in the Intermediate and Junior divisions.

At the end of every year, a number of the senior students are chosen for our school Honours Awards. There are four areas in which Year 7 and 8 students must excel to achieve an Honours. These areas are Sporting, Services and Duties, Cultural and Arts, and Academic. It takes a lot of commitment and energy to make the Honours Board. We recently had these updated and the latest names added. These are now placed in the school hall. Well done to our 2021 and 2022 Honours students. We look forward to seeing who makes list in 2023.

To ensure our community is kept up-to-date, we would like to inform whānau about two Teacher Only Days (TOD) in Term 4. Avonhead already had a scheduled TOD on Thursday 16 November to align with the Canterbury Show weekend. This day is for us to finalise assessment data and plan ahead for 2024. As part of the curriculum refresh roll out, the Ministry of Education has also asked schools to have another TOD to allow staff to upskill in the new curriculum. We understand having two TOD's can be disruptive for whānau, however, we have added the second TOD to Monday 20 November. This means that school will be closed for instruction on Thursday 16, Friday 17 and Monday 20 November making for a slightly longer Canterbury Show weekend.

This week at Assembly, I shared a message from renowned author and speaker, Simon Sinek, about high performing teams to reinforce our messages this term around being a part of the Avonhead team and getting support from our bench. We talked about what makes a high performing team achieve success. Teams that do well have a common trait and that trait was simple. They are there for each other. Successful teams don't try and go it alone, they focus on giving to other members of their team, supporting them to achieve and the final result is success.

Ngā mihi nui,

Micah Hocquard

Principal

"Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" - My strength is not that of an individual, but that of many.