Pānui (News)

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warm greetings to you all) A special ‘Selamat Datang, which means welcome in Malay’ to Daniel, who started with us in Rimu with Anna on Monday. We know you will love being part of the Turitea whānau and you have already settled into our kura so well already. Today is Hannah’s last day with us as she takes a much needed break before giving birth to her third child next month. We know we will see her again soon with her son Wyatt starting with us in July and hopefully she brings out her...

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warm greetings to you all) Hari rā 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 (Mila’s Dad) for volunteering his ‘digging’ time/resources...

Tēnā koutou katoa, Getting in to you all a whole lot earlier than I would normally with Waitangi Day āpōpō (tomorrow) and our Staff Only Day on Friday. I don’t think I’ve ever written a pānui during term time on a Wednesday before! Well the team from C&H Concreting certainly don’t 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 we’ve had this week. Huge thanks to them, as well as Tony from...

Kia ora e te whānau, Nau mai hoki mai ki a koutou (Welcome back everyone) We had our usual mihi whakatau to embrace our new whānau yesterday. As always, it was nice to set the tone for the year with this and ‘live and breathe’ our uara (values) of whanaungatanga (relationships) and manaakitanga (kindness) in doing this important ceremony in Te Ao Māori (The Māori 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 ‘level up’...

Ka nui te mihi mahana kia koutou, (Very warm greetings to you all) This will be my final pānui for the year as I’m getting in a day early ahead of our last day tomorrow as it will be ‘all go!’ 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 “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” and that is the feeling currently. Our kura has a beautiful vibe with so many wonderful children...

Kia ora e te whānau, This week I have had the huge, but enjoyable job of reading every child in the school’s 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! I’m 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...

Ngā 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 pānui, but unfortunately it has been cancelled due to this weather. You’d think being nearly in December would mean the weather might play ball for you, alas not today… 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...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone)  I’ve really appreciated the kind words you’ve sent in regarding having a voice on placement of your children for next year through the survey that closed on Wednesday morning. It isn’t an easy job with a lot of variables considered in completing this. The infamous quote of ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ is ringing true currently. As we work to finalise these lists, I will remind...

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...