Pānui (News)

Kia ora e te whānau, 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 Tāne 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...

Ngā 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 ‘rural school’ 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...

Kia ora e te whānau (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 ‘rapidly-rolled-out’ new curriculum to improve outcomes for ākonga (learners) in 2025 and beyond. A dream team for sure! This week, our...

Kia ora e te whānau (Hello everyone) Yesterday I had another one of those ‘Proud Tumuaki Moments’ as we had the entire team of nearly 40 staff members from Porritt School in Napier come to see how we do at Turitea School. Our whole school gave them a beautiful welcome with a Mihi Whakatau, in which we really ‘raised the bar’ on how we did this. Our tamariki were loud, proud and passionate - it was really noticeable! Our Year 6’s then took each of the manuhiri (visitors) around and showed off our kura. I received beautiful feedback about what...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone) Nau mai hoki mai ki te wāhanga tuawhā (Welcome back to Term 4) The term opened with our usual Mihi Whakatau to welcome our new tamariki who have recently joined us. Mihi atu (thanks) to John (Archie’s Dad) who did an amazing job of being our whaikorero (speaker) for this occasion. Monday was the first day for two new students; Sophie moved to us from Milson School to join Karen and the crew in Kahikatea and Billy (Esmay’s little brother) has started with us in Rimu with Meagan and Hannah. Nau mai, Haere mai (Welcome)...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone) Didn’t Anna do a great job of writing the pānui while I was away in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) last week? I had the most amazing time at my tumuaki conference there, it really filled my bucket! As I’ve mentioned previously, communicating to you all every Friday is one of the best parts of my job. I’ve heard of some principals who outsource their newsletter to save time, but I just couldn’t do that. I hope you can hear my personal voice when you read this and get a strong sense of our school vibe and feel....

Mihi atu ki a koutou, (Greetings to you all) This week the pānui comes to you from Anna in Troy’s absence. He’s in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) for Tau Mai, Tau Tahi! (The Trans-Tasman Principals' Conference). I’m sure he will come back with many exciting ideas and stories to enrich our tamariki at Turitea.  Spring Fling The Spring Fling was unbelievable. That was my first experience of it and it far exceeded my expectations. Our amazing tuakana from Totara and Kahikatea let their creativity fly with their creations and in my opinion should be running their own stalls at many markets around...

The last two days have probably been the most satisfying and rewarding in all my time here at Turitea School. And from the kōrero (conversations) that we had at our Staff Hui last night, it seemed I wasn’t alone in thinking this way. Our kaiako shared their whakaaro (thoughts) about their experience at Te Rangimārie Marae and I just had to share some of these with you:

Perhaps we need a dress up day every Friday? Our kids love it and it is really ‘bucket filling’ seeing them arrive at school looking so bright, happy and pumped as you can see above! The perfect way to come to kura if you ask me... Today’s theme around spring colours was to keep building the hype for our Spring Fling which is on next weekend. Our Facebook event tells us we could expect upwards of 500 people coming along, which would be absolutely amazing! Hope this date is locked in your calendar and you’ve told your friends, colleagues and neighbours all...

There was a sea of kōwhai (yellow) at our morning hui today as many of our tamariki showed their support for the Cancer Society through Te Rā Daffodil (Daffodil Day). Ngā mihi nui (Big thanks) for donating to our school page that we set up here or to those who brought in coins this morning. Our cumulative count has it at just over $700 that our community has raised - Kei reira koutou! (Awesome everyone) The yellow certainly brightened up everyone's day today.