NgÄ mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warm greetings to you all) Hari rÄ whakanui aroha (Happy Valentine's Day). Hope your significant other has looked after you extra well today! As you can see above, yesterday we officially opened our Bike Track and what an amazing resource we now have at our kura. We had many happy riders and I think some kids would have done at least a hundred laps of it already! Huge thanks again goes to our PTA for making this happen, all of you for contributing to this through their fundraisers, Tyler (Milaās Dad) for volunteering his ādiggingā time/resources...
Category: News
End of Term 1 Week 2 PÄnui
TÄnÄ koutou katoa, Getting in to you all a whole lot earlier than I would normally with Waitangi Day ÄpÅpÅ (tomorrow) and our Staff Only Day on Friday. I donāt think Iāve ever written a pÄnui during term time on a Wednesday before! Well the team from C&H Concreting certainly donāt muck around as you can see above considerable progress on our Bike Track since last week when they started. Heath and his team have put in the mahi (work) to get this ready for our kids despite the extra hot days weāve had this week. Huge thanks to them, as well as Tony from...
End of Term 1 Week 1 PÄnui
Kia ora e te whÄnau, Nau mai hoki mai ki a koutou (Welcome back everyone) We had our usual mihi whakatau to embrace our new whÄnau yesterday. As always, it was nice to set the tone for the year with this and ālive and breatheā our uara (values) of whanaungatanga (relationships) and manaakitanga (kindness) in doing this important ceremony in Te Ao MÄori (The MÄori World). As I mentioned last week, our teachers engaged in some professional learning at the start of the week around Te Tiriti o Waitangi and a goal we came away with was to continue to ālevel upā...
End of Term 4 PÄnui
Ka nui te mihi mahana kia koutou, (Very warm greetings to you all) This will be my final pÄnui for the year as Iām getting in a day early ahead of our last day tomorrow as it will be āall go!ā Tomorrow marks the end of my third year being your tumuaki (principal) here at Turitea and everyday I still wake up excited to come to work. They say āIf you love what you do, youāll never work a day in your lifeā and that is the feeling currently. Our kura has a beautiful vibe with so many wonderful children...
End of Term 4 Week 8 PÄnui
Kia ora e te whÄnau, This week I have had the huge, but enjoyable job of reading every child in the schoolās End of Year reports. I love the insight into what they have been working on in class and how they are tracking towards achieving their academic goals. Plus reading their student voice made me LOL a few times - certainly one of my favourite parts! Iām real proud of our amazing teaching team, with the time and effort they put into writing these and it also shows me how well they know your tamariki. We aim to have...
End of Term 4 Week 7 PÄnui
NgÄ mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warmest wishes to you all) Getting this out to you nice and early today because I was supposed to be out at our Cluster Ki o Rahi event, so I had already written the pÄnui, but unfortunately it has been cancelled due to this weather. Youād think being nearly in December would mean the weather might play ball for you, alas not todayā¦ And just like that, we only have 10 school days remaining in the year. I feel like we had just started Term 4 and somehow next week it is December! On...
End of Term 4 Week 6 PÄnui
TÄnÄ koutou katoa, (Hello everyone) Iāve really appreciated the kind words youāve sent in regarding having a voice on placement of your children for next year through the survey that closed on Wednesday morning. It isnāt an easy job with a lot of variables considered in completing this. The infamous quote of āYou can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you canāt please all of the people all of the timeā is ringing true currently. As we work to finalise these lists, I will remind...
End of Term 4 Week 5 PÄnui
Kia ora e te whÄnau, Apologies for the alarm on Wednesday when you came to pick up your tamariki and there were two fire engines taking up all the parks! We had a fault in our newly-installed manual call point in TÄne Mahuta. Our kids did exactly what they needed to do when the siren sounded and evacuated promptly, which shows our systems work. It created some cool writing opportunities in our classroom too, an unintended bonus. As you can see below, I have had kids from all across the school come and share with me the amazing learning they...
End of Term 4 Week 4 PÄnui
NgÄ mihi mahana ki a koutou (Warm greeting to you all) Huge thank you if you came along to our annual Lamb, Calf and Pet Day last Friday. This is one event that helps us retain our ārural schoolā status. Also a great showcase of some of our students' commitment outside of school to our uara (value) of kaitiakitanga by looking after their animals. Pictured below are some of my favourite photos from the day. Our winners were celebrated this afternoon and best of luck to those competing in the Oroua Boys & Girls Championship Day with them tomorrow in...
End of Term 4 Week 3 PÄnui
Kia ora e te whÄnau (Hello everyone) I hope you all had a great long weekend and thanks for your tautoko (support) around our Teacher Only Day on Tuesday as we know this can inconvenience you. Any time our staff get together to engage in professional discourse, there is plenty of rigour around the decisions we make, conversations we have and future planning we do. The day highlighted for me how amazing our staff are and how they are embracing our ārapidly-rolled-outā new curriculum to improve outcomes for Äkonga (learners) in 2025 and beyond. A dream team for sure! This week, our...