Kia Ora Koutou Katoa, Talofa Lava, Malo e Lelei, Ni Hao, Anyoung Haseyo, Konichi Wa, Gruetzi, Guten Tag, Bonjour, Ola, Hello.

Our newsletter this week celebrates the success of our inaugural full school Athletics Day held at the Tauranga Domain. This was a wonderful event and I'd like to thank Natalie van Dijk for her leadership and organisation with this and the many staff and parents who helped to make this such a successful first event. 

As is always the case with any school event we review how things went and staff, the Domain staff and feedback from parents will be used to support the event to just get better and better as the years go on.  It was wonderful to see students from the Wee Sprouts - Tall Poppies involved in so many well organised athletics activities and running down the sprint track in front of a cheering grandstand. A big thank you to the PTA who provided the buses to take the children to the event from money raised by our community. Thanks also must go to the PTA for running the food tent for the day.

Creative Community Curriculum

This Friday also sees our students take part in another session of CCC. This is such a popular annual event in our school which sees our students learn a variety of new things from both staff and parents who share their talents.  Opportunities such as journalling, puppet making, scrap booking,  superfoods, playing board games, coding, sewing, a variety of art activities, DIY and gardening to name just a few. As I walk around the school the students are so enjoying these sessions - a real celebration of a community all involved in supporting our students to have rich, varied learning experiences. Read the article on this and enjoy the photos!

Art Exhibition

This weeks newsletter has information about our Art Exhibition to be held later this term. The Arts are a real strength of our school and events such as these enable our students to showcase their talents and our community to come into the school to gain a deeper understanding of the wonderful learning our students do - in this case in the visual arts. A big thank you to Lisa Rose for her planning and organisation of this event. Thank you also to all the teachers for the learning opportunities they are providing for students in this area of the curriculum.

NZEI Strike Action

Next week on Tuesday 13 November Tauriko School will be closed due to strike action. Over the last few weeks this date has been in Sunday emails out to families, a notice went home this week (check your child's bag if you haven't seen this!) and this was on facebook. 

As a school we are aware that striking is an inconvenience to families and we thank you for your understanding as we strive to resolve issues around workload, recruiting new staff to the profession and retaining experienced staff through better pay and conditions of work, and endeavouring to get better support for students who experience considerable challenge in their learning. We hope for a positive outcome in our negotiations with the Ministry of Education in the near future.

The end of the school year is fast approaching and there will be many events that celebrate student learning, farewelling staff and students who are leaving and that welcome in the Christmas season. I know that there is often a lot of information being shared by the school. I encourage you to take the time to read these and update family calendars to be fully informed. The newsletter and notices area of our website is always a good port of call if you need to remind yourself of details and our weekly Sunday emails to families provide much detail about the week ahead and upcoming events.

Suzanne