Kia ora, talofa lava, greetings.

 I hope you have been keeping warm and dry with Winter now upon us.  Although the days are getting shorter and colder, we are not letting it stop us from being active across our school.  There has been so much going on recently, with visitors from Otago University's Outreach Programme, various sporting events, spelling bees, technology challenges and much more.  

Congratulations to all of our students who competed in last week's Zone Cross Country at Halswell Quarry.  We had 32 students entered from Clearview and 14 students have now qualified for the Canterbury Schools Cross-Country race on 21 June.  They did so well and represented our school with determination and pride.   We are waiting on official results so will publish these and some photos in our next newsletter.

We also had three teams of  Year 5/6 and three teams of Year 7/8 students at the Canterbury Spelling Bee Competition held here at Clearview Primary on Wednesday this week.  We had some terrific results from our Clearview teams which was fantastic.

Also on Wednesday and today, we had some Clearview students enter a new event called 'The ePro8 Challenge' which tested the children's collaborative problem solving, engineering and science skills in a fun way while using some unique equipment especially designed for the event. 

We have some articles in this newsletter with more information, photos and results from these various events, so please do take a look to learn more.

Next week we are are joining our friends and neighbouring schools from the Rolleston Cluster for a week with a focus on 'wellbeing'.  There is a total of 11 learning centres in our Rolleston Cluster : Clearview Primary, West Melton School, Rolleston School, Lemonwood Grove School, Weedons School, Burnham School, Waitaha Learning Centre, Kingslea School, West Rolleston School, Rolleston Christian School and Rolleston College.  It is always a pleasure to team up with our local colleagues for a common purpose, in this case the purpose of looking after our own and others' wellbeing.

We will be holding a range of optional workshops each day for staff across our cluster of schools.   This is not just limited to teachers, it also includes our support staff too and I know the week will be an enjoyable and beneficial one.

We also have a couple of opportunities to involve our parents too.  On Wednesday 15th June, we are hosting an "Understanding Anxiety in Children" workshop  here at Clearview starting at 6pm. Then on Friday night at Rolleston College's Theatre (7pm), we have Alison Mooney - a highly entertaining and delightfully funny speaker who has offered to speak to the parents from across our whole cluster about understanding and appreciating our differences in personality.  

Alison's message of appreciating our diverse personalities will no doubt appeal to anyone who wants to learn a little bit more about themselves or those we live and/or work with.  Both of these sessions are free and well worth attending.  Tickets for the Alison Mooney night are available from the school office.

In light of this week of 'wellbeing', it could be a great time to make contact with your child's teacher or a staff member here at school to acknowledge them and say thank you.  All too often, it's easy to criticise someone or complain about something, but our staff need positives too - especially given the amount of dedication and energy they put into their role here.  When was the last time you thanked a member of our team for the fantastic work they do?  I encourage you to take a moment or two to get in contact with your child's teacher to say hi.  Trust me, they would really appreciate it!

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Naku iti nei, na

Rob Rush

Principal/Tumuaki