He mihi mahana kia koutou katoa - Warm greetings to all.

Another reminder that tomorrow, Friday 4 December is our Teachers Only Day and school will be CLOSED

It has come to my attention that some of you are not getting emails sent from school. All our email and APP communication comes through our student management system - etap.We have contacted etap about this SPAM issue and they have informed us that it is an email issue. You need to change the settings on your email to ensure etap messages do not go into SPAM. As this is our main form of communication it is important that you do this.

On Wednesday we were entertained by the New Entrant/Year 1 buskers and I can reassure you whanau that we have a lot of talent!! I'm looking forward to 2021 when we have added a dance and drama teacher to our staff to see what our tamariki come up with next!!

Next week's newsletter will contain the list of teaching staff and the spaces they are teaching in during 2021.

Reports are coming out on Friday of next week after the Service Assembly. Most of you will get these on your APP unless you filled in our survey earlier this year. Everyone will get an envelope with End of Year Information, including your child's class placement. It will also include Beginning of the Year Information, including on how to book for your Getting Connected Meeting on either 3 or 4 February 2021.

On these two days there are NO classes but teachers meet with groups of whanau and their children throughout the day. We would like everyone to get to these meetings to help set your child's SMART goals and have a chat with the teacher, connecting and getting to know them or updating them if your child has the same teacher.

Each session starts with a class meeting with the parent, teachers and tamariki who are booked into that session before going to the space to meet with the class teachers. Booking information is in the envelope and expect to be here for the whole session.

Classes start on Friday 5 February.

Our Year 6's had a wonderful camp over at Living Springs. The first day there was some rain but being flexible and having great facilities means the programme was able to be reorganised. Our tamariki have had great experiences and as so often happens were commended on their behaviour. They were a credit to their families and the school is how it was described! We are very proud of them. Thank you once again to staff and parents for this great camp. Kellie Englefield, Sanchia Paterson, Daniel Caigou, Jane Brittenden, Simone Squires Brown, Maxwell Panckhurst, Simon Laurie, Vaughan Hider, Bridget Macfarlane, Rebecca Buchan and Anna Matthews.  Please see photos attached.

One of our school strategic areas is equity, we measure what we do against this area. We also like to look beyond the school and see how we can help others and our leaders take a role in this. This year we have donated to Kidscan and the Lions and every year we send Christmas presents donated by Whanau to the City Mission. It is good to be grateful for what we have and support others. Our tree will be up on Monday in the office if you wish to donate a present. Please put a note on it, the gender and age that it is suitable for.

We have had some feedback in the past and recently about class Secret Santas that some classes have had. This puts pressure on some members of our whanau and our teachers will be looking at other, small ways to celebrate Christmas with their classes as opposed to buying gifts.

Congratulations to Penny Martin who has been appointed to our Sports Administrators role. Penny brings a wealth of sports administration and organisation skills to this role and we are excited to have her as part of our Somerfield Te Kura Wairepo staff whanau.

As it is nearly the end of the year it is a great time to have a hunt around for school property and return to us. This includes sports uniforms, kapahaka uniforms, library books - these are $20+ for a book, readers- these are approximately $10 each!! It would be great to get these back before 17 December.

Thank you to those who left gifts and messages for Tanya Barnes. I will be delivering the basket in the weekend. Thank you for respecting her privacy.