Tēnā koutou e te whānau

We have had a fantastic start to the term with lots of exciting activities happening in the last couple of weeks. It has been great to see all of the science taking place around the Learning Centres (see photo above). Our main focus has been on 'investigating' which helps the children make sense of the world around them. 

Despite the very cold wind, we had a successful Years 5-8 Athletics Day at Ngā Puna Wai last Friday. I was impressed with the resilience many of our students demonstrated in rather trying conditions. We also had some fantastic individual efforts throughout the day. Thank you to Tash Fraser and the staff for their organisation and to the many parents who helped out with running various events on the day. 

The Leadership Team is currently in the process of finalising the school organisation for next year. This involves interviewing teachers for vacant positions and putting together the final team structure. The full school structure and staff list will be shared with you in the coming weeks but in the meantime, I'm pleased to inform you that we will be retaining our current overall team structure as follows:

• Ahuriri Years 0&1
• Huritini Years 1&2
• Ōrongomai Years 3&4
• Ōtāwhito Years 5&6
• Ōtūmatua Years 7&8

Part of our planning for next year also involves putting together T group lists. This is no small undertaking especially when you consider that our starting roll is likely to be in excess of 630 students. As part of this process, we invite parents to write in with any exceptional circumstances you would like us to consider when finalising the T group lists. If you would like to take up this opportunity, please refer to the T group placement article in this newsletter. 

I would like to finish this week's article by acknowledging all of the hard work our wonderful librarian Zac McCallum has put into Book Week. This has been a fun way of focusing the whole school in on literacy and the love of reading. I am particularly looking forward to seeing the fabulous array of book character costumes at Friday morning's assembly!

Please come along and join us for this special event. 

Ngā mihi nui

Stuart Cameron

Principal