Nau mai Haere mai, Papanui Primary whānau

Kia ora everybody

We have had a fantastic first week back at school this week! I have really enjoyed getting to meet so many of you and have it confirmed to me what I already knew, that Papanui Primary is such a wonderful place to be! 

I have spent a lot of my time this week hanging out in classrooms, chatting with the teachers and kids, watching all of the great teaching and learning that has been taking place. I have been really impressed with the engagement and focus from the kids and especially their ability to work together on their learning tasks. I saw in action our kids demonstrating our school values of showing kindness -atawhai, doing their personal best - eke panuku, showing resilience - aumangea and being engaged in their learning -ākonga. Ka mau te wehi (Awesome)!

It is going to be a great term ahead and already this week we have had Mark from Dance Curriculum teaching dance, Matua Norm and Tamāhine Bonnie teaching Kapa Haka, as well as a visit from Kathryn from Clever Little Bees where the year 5&6 kids got to learn so much about the importance of these amazing insects.

Today we had a special welcome for our new learners and whānau and I felt extremely honoured to be  acknowledged as the new Principal during our Mihi Whakatau. We then paid tribute the mighty Anzacs by giving a minutes silence and listening to the Last Post.

Next week I am looking forward to spending time in each class reading a story to the kids, so make sure you ask your tamariki about that.

Finally many of you may have noticed a few posts on Facebook this week. My aim with the page is to share and show off to our community some of the fantastic things that go on during the day from my perspective so that you might be able to have some cool conversations with your kids after school. We all know that feeling when we ask our kids what did they get up to today and they say "oh nothing much"! So it will be a celebration of some of the great things we are doing and I hope to post a couple of times a week. We will still be communicating important information through our school newsletter and School Apps.

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week.

Mr Galletly