Tēnā koutou e te Avonhead whānau

We hope you all enjoyed the long weekend as we head into the last few weeks of the 2024 school year. A big thank you to everyone for making alternative arrangements to have your children at home for our Ministry Teacher Only Day last Thursday. We were lucky enough to have Dr Audrey Tan work with us. The day was extremely beneficial in upskilling staff on the delivery of Maths and for us to look further at the revised Maths Curriculum.

Over the last couple of months we have been working on our staffing and teams for 2025. To read more about our how Avonhead is shaping up, please click on this link to our Staffing 2025 article. Class placements for next year have almost been completed and your child's teacher and room number will be shared near the end of the term.

Even though it has been a shorter fortnight with Show Weekend last week, we have had an action packed few days. Congratulations to all of the students who took part in the Summer Tournament last Monday. We had tamariki playing golf, tennis, cricket and futsal as well as students taking part in orienteering and rogaining (which is a form of orienteering). Team 5/6 enjoyed venturing to Ferrymead last week and have also had Food for Thought visiting their classrooms over the last 5 days. Team 1 were very excited and loved having a visit from our local firefighters and a fire truck. There was even some excitement as the fire truck had to zip away to a real callout.

On Monday, we had a large number of students take part in the North West Zone Athletics at Ngā Puna Wai. Even though it was a little cold and windy, that did not stop our tamariki from giving their all. Well done to everyone who took part and a special congratulations to the 21 students who have qualified for the Canterbury Athletics next week.

On Wednesday, we had 26 students graduate from Children's University at the Town Hall. These tamariki have been completing tasks and projects all year to accumulate hours to enable them to graduate. This is the second year that Avonhead has been a part of this programme. A huge thank you to Hayley de Beus for all of her time assisting with coordinating this wonderful opportunity for our students.

Today, our Year 1 - 3 tamariki took part in their athletic sports event. It was such a joy to see them running, jumping and throwing with enthusiasm. Thank you to all the parents who came along to support their children. A special thanks must go to our senior students who were very helpful at managing the groups and the events.

Today, we also had our non-uniform day in support of the SPCA. It was great to have students dressing up and bringing in food to donate. The SPCA will be very appreciative for the donations before Christmas.

All the best to our two Theatresports Teams who are taking part in the Court Theatre's Junior Theatresports competition at Rangi Ruru on Saturday. Thank you to Jay Grubb for her work in preparing our Avonhead teams. Best wishes to our Kapa Haka group who will be performing at Tūhono in the Town Hall on Sunday. They have been working tirelessly since the start of the year to prepare for this event. We know you will all represent Avonhead School with mana and we are proud of everyone. Thank you to Matua Steve Reid, Vicki Lewis, Pete Hay and Danielle Lane for their hard work behind the scenes.

Over the next few weeks we have a large number of events taking place. Please make sure you check the school calendar and make a note of any upcoming activities that may involve your children. Next week we have class trips to Willowbank, Canterbury Athletics, Avonhead Ako, our final Musical Soiree, the Team 4 Market Day, a senior Disco and the first of our End-of-Year Assemblies just to name a few.

The school pool is almost ready to open for the summer season. We do apologise for the delay, but it is exciting to have the upgrades completed to improve the longevity, access to and tidiness of our pool. For further information on buying key-cards and other important swimming pool dates, please read our Swimming Pool article.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Ngā mihi nui,

Micah Hocquard

Principal

"Piki ngātahi te tihi - Growing Excellence Together"