An amazing leadership experience meeting Dan Carter & Ritchie McCaw

Our girls had an amazing time at the iSport Youth Leadership Day last week getting to meet and hear from some of the country's best athletes on how they could reach their own potential.

As the academic prefects of Te Kura O Rautawhiri 2021, we are offering a number of interactive activities to make learning even more enjoyable!

We have set up Homework Club every Monday and Wednesday to give the students a quiet place to study and give help if needed.

Every Friday lunchtime throughout Term 2, we have started up Trivia Time! In this time, girls are able to learn about a range of certain topics whilst engaging students across year levels and putting their knowledge to the test.

Furthermore, throughout the year we have decided to bring the core academic subjects to light through fun activities that align to a certain subject throughout the week (i.e Science week, Maths week so on and so forth).

To further help students, we encourage those who would like to have extra mentoring help and the willingness to learn, to talk to either of us about mentoring.

We are also in the works of creating a book club that has a more comfortable environment for students to either read books or to talk about a certain book.

Heriata Rukupo & Rosemary Barron - Academic Prefects

As the Kōhine Rautāwhiri prefect, my role in the school covers four areas which is Te Reo, Kapa Haka, Tangihanga and pōhiri.

I have set many goals to achieve this year being this role. So far I have been the number one representative and attend all the pohiri our school has hosted and all the tangihanga. As of right now I am currently busy with Raukura as we are on the road to the Secondary Regional Competition which is to be held on the 2nd of July. One of my major goals for this year was to hold a Haka & Waiata Competition for our girls, my reasonings for this was because no one knows that singing our school song and doing our school Haka has so much mana and wairua to it. It was a way for our girls to understand and appreciate the things our tūpuna did for us. It was also a way to celebrate the culture, with the many convincing and fighting my offer to do this kaupapa was approved and I’m glad to say Term 3 is going to be a good term. I have worked alongside our Marautanga Faculty to help me get to where I am so far this year but I’m willing to continue doing the best job I can do for the Kapa Haka side of things and for my role. Term 3 we also have TeWiki o TeReo Māori during that term I have planned māori acitivities alongside our other māori prefect to celebrate us as māori. My last big goal is to get a few other Kapa Haka Roopu to come in and do a Haka exchange with our TeAo Haka classes, this is a way of bonding and building whanaungatanga with other kura to be together as one and to also showcase the many talent between us all. 

“Okea ururoatia” - fight like the shark, be tenacious in your pursuit of your goals, never give up.

Together with our Kōhine Rautāwhiri prefect, we had planned to begin carrying out our rautaki reo strategy but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, we have yet to make a start. We are however in the process of planning a Matariki celebration to welcome the new year. As for our Kāhui Rangatahi, notices for meetings will be out in the school notices in the forthcoming weeks. 

Te Aowheoro Hohepa-Gardiner - Kohine Rautāwhiri Prefect & Raiha Mahaki - Kōhine Whakarae

So far the Arts Faculty have taken leadership for school events like setting up a Arts Board for the Year 9 Open Evening at the start of Term 1. Composing the chant and choreography and taking leadership over House Chants for Swimming Sports and Athletics Day. Running and organising the NZ Music Month of May performances in the PAC every Tuesday lunchtime where the Music department featured. 

We organised the Arts Thursday Lunchtime Inter House events that include Jump Jam and Just Dance for girls to participate in.

Tai-Mikaere Ututaonga-Tait & Khatana Pohoiwi - Arts Prefects

As a cohort, we have organised quite a few exciting things this year.

Louise the Hauora Prefect organised for our school to participate in Gumboot Friday, it was also made a mufti day! We organised the Gumboot Throwing competition that was held on the lunchtime of the Gumboot Friday, thank you so much to the girls who turned up and gave it a go! We have also formed an environmental group, which our environmental prefect Tiana, hopes to work with for a promotion coming up later this year. 

We have promoted the Ka Pai Kai bins to put their free lunch rubbish in. We gave girls prizes like drones, ear pods and canteen vouchers, for thanking the girls for respecting the environment. The amount of girls who participated in this promotion was amazing! We have also formed a student council this year, where we discussed future plans and fundraisers to make our school more enjoyable and comfortable for the students. 

We encourage students to have a voice so our student council leader, Mazvita has put student voice suggestion boxes around the school to hear everyone's ideas. We also have a few more exciting things planned for later on in the year so make sure you keep an eye out.

Louise Oliver, Tiana Nicholls & Mazvita Mapengo - Kahui Hauora Prefects

As the Sport Prefects we have both been really impressed with everyone who has got involved in any sporting activity or event this year, and want to congratulate you all on that! We would like to give a BIG thank you to Mrs Holt for organising everything and running our sports events. As a school, we have seen so much involvement during Athletics, Swimming Sports and now Cross Country as well. These were such great events to really dig deep and try your hardest. We really appreciate everyone for how well it went on all three of those days. We have also seen most and if not all of our sporting teams up and running. 

From both team and individual sports. This term we have been really excited to start up our inter house competition, and again we love to see everyone’s involvement and enthusiasm, as it makes our jobs easier and more joyful. Thank you all for making this such a fun and exciting year!

Haylee Jones & Jade Fairley - Sports Prefects

Talofa lava, bula vinaka, malo e lelei, kia orana and greeting to you all. If you don’t know who we are, we are Aponiva Fepuleai and Danisha Te Kaawa, two of three cultural leaders for 2021. In remembrance of our Pasifika Sister we would like to acknowledge our third cultural leader Kimalyn Smith-Filipo, who sadly left us to join the Lord towards the end of last year. We would like to thank Kimalyn’s family for their endless support and love for our Pacifica Group and acknowledge them also. Our Pacifica group contains students that are from the Islands of Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau, Fiji, Cook Islands, and many more. In term 1, we’ve been fortunate enough to perform at the Pacifica by Nature competition that was held in Hamilton. Our Pacifica group performed five different items which included Fiji, Tonga, Tokelau, Samoa, and Cook Island dances. In addition to the Pacifica group, we have also started up the C.A.T.C.H committee. C.A.T.C.H is an acronym which stands for Cultural Awareness To Create Harmony. So far, we are promoting this using posters and photos from previous years to help engage the school. Our next step is to focus on upcoming language weeks.

Vinaka vaka levu

Aponiva Fepuleai & Danisha Te Kaawa - Cultural Prefects