Pōhutukawa Update, Term 4, Week 6

 Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

We hope you all enjoyed the long weekend, and with Show Day now behind us it means we are well past the halfway mark of the term, and find ourselves with less than 4 school weeks left in the year! You will have received your tamariki's end-of-year school report, and we hope you have had the opportunity to sit down and read through this together with them. As you will know, the General Comment from their homegroup teacher is written directly to your child and is a summation of the highlights and the successes of their year with us. It's also a wonderful opportunity to read and reflect on 2024 as well as look ahead to next year, be they staying in Pōhutukawa or moving on, and start to think about and discuss together some goals and aspirations they may have for 2025.

With all of that being said, it's very important to note that we are not yet at the end of the year and our message to the students continues to be that we have a lot of fantastic things to look forward to yet! You can read about them below, as well as some other important information. Thank you for your continued support, and good luck to all of our athletes competing at the Canterbury Athletics on Wednesday. Nau mai te wero, bring on the challenge!

Transition Visits

As busy as it is at the end of the year, we are also preparing our students for next year with 'Transition Visits'. Next week we will be giving the 2025 Year 6's a chance to be with our incoming 2025 Year 5's as a cohort and have a Learning Through Play session together. As well as this, our outgoing Year 6's will be spending 2 mornings in the Kauri team to learn about their programme and will spend a morning with next year's Year 8 students. These visits are a valuable chance for the tamariki to reconnect with some of their friends, and ask some questions they may have about 2025. We encourage you to talk with your tamariki about these visits and start the conversations about 2025 if you feel they're ready. Any momentum we can build now to set everyone up for a successful start to next year is gold. Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoe, we are all rowing the waka together.

Navigating the Journey

Our Navigating the Journey programme continues to roll along, we are into Growing and Changing - Te tipu me te huri o te tangata now, and our key concepts are again attached. Thanks as always for your continued support in continuing the discussions we have at school at home, too.

Cycle Safe Programme (Year 6 only)
During weeks 8 and 9 (December 2 - 10) our Year 6 students will be involved in the Cycle Safe Programme provided by the Christchurch City Council. Cycle Safe is a cycle skills education programme for schools. Students learn the benefits of cycling and how to ride with confidence and be road-wise. All Year 6 students will participate in this course and the instructors cater to all cycling abilities. Your child should have brought home a permission slip for you to sign and return to school.

Next week we will be sending some more information home about which days your child will be participating.

You can find out more information about the programme here https://ccc.govt.nz/transport/getting-around/getting-to-school/resources-for-schools/cyclesafe/ If you have any questions about the programme, please get in touch with your homegroup teacher.

Pioneer Basketball Opportunities

Pioneer Basketball have 2 Upcoming 3x3 Tournaments and a Girls Overnight Program.

 

Pacers 3x3 Girls Year 5-8 Tournament

- 6th December 4pm - 6:30pm

- Individual entries

- @ Pioneer Stadium

 

Pacers 3x3 Boys Year 5/6 Tournament

- 13th December 4pm - 8pm

- Individual entries

- @ Hillmorton High (New Gym)

 

TCP Girls Sleepover (WEBSITE LINK)

- 21st-22nd January 12pm-12pm

- Individual entries

- @ Cracroft Girl Guide Center

 

Any questions or for further information please email Ollie Wilkinson at ollie@pioneer.nz.basketball

 

Ngā mihi o ngā rā whakatā, enjoy your weekend everyone,

 

The Pōhutukawa team

Pōhutukawa Update, Term 4, Week 4

 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

Another whirlwind couple of weeks has flown by, with lots of things happening in the team to keep everyone busy! A hearty congratulations to all of the 41 students who competed at the Zone Athletics on Monday. It was a fantastic day out, and there were some terrific results! Keep an eye on the newsletter next week for the rundown. Tau ke, awesome work! Back at kura, we have a large focus this term on the Health area of the New Zealand Curriculum, which started this week with a visit from Helly and the famous giraffe Harold. Please read on for a summary of what the tamariki learned about in these lessons, a couple of other highlights of the past two weeks, and a look ahead to what else is to come as we head into the second half of Term 4.

Life Education

You have probably noticed the Life Education trailer parked in the car park over the past couple of weeks.  Life Education Trust is a charity that educates and empowers children to make healthy choices so they can live full and healthy lives. 

The tamariki enjoyed 2 sessions with Helly and Harold and focused on 2 key concepts relevant to their age and stage. The first lesson’s key question was:  How do we know how others are feeling? The key concepts discussed were: 

- Conflict Resolution- Friendships- Decision Making- Emotional Safety- Peer Pressure- Peer Pressure- Feelings and Emotions- Emotional Changes and Grow

Our second lesson focused on the key question: What is peer pressure and how can we deal with it?  Peer pressure has both physical and emotional effects. Students explored what those are, related them to different real-life situations, and formulated strategies to deal with them.

The lessons provided valuable learning about these topics for the tamariki. Thank you for continuing these discussions at home, too.

Navigating the Journey

Continuing with our focus on health and wellbeing this term, we will be participating in the Navigating the Journey programme over the next 3 weeks. The Navigating the journey Te takahi i te ara resources use the metaphor of navigation to describe a person’s lifetime journey of  physical, social, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of hauora (wellbeing). 

Navigating the Journey is a comprehensive age-appropriate programme about relationships and sexuality developed by Family planning for delivery in primary and secondary schools. This programme is aligned with the Ministry of Education’s guidelines for relationship education and sexuality education. This programme is also aligned with the health and physical education learning area of The New Zealand Curriculum. 

The key concepts that will be covered for 2024 can be found on Hero. If you wish to find out more detail about any specific lessons please get in touch with your home group teacher.

William Stedman

We had the honour of hosting NZ Paralympic Athlete #208 William Stedman at kura today. William joined us to speak with the tamariki about his experiences at the recent Paris Olympics and about what it took to get there. The students were captivated by William's journey as a para-athlete. We got to hold his medal (surprisingly heavy!) and he then joined us for a game of Crossover. An awesome visit.

William has Cerebral Palsy, and  was the youngest member of the Para athletics team to compete at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games at only 16 years of age. He has always loved sport and clearly remembers watching the London 2012 Paralympics. This is where his dream started. William was so inspired by watching the Paralympics he decided he was going to become a Para athlete.

William is the embodiment of our kete value 'We Love Challenge'. It was exciting and  inspiring for the tamariki to get to meet a real-life Olympian.

String Ensemble

Yesterday we were treated to some fantastic music from the string ensemble as they performed for us at school. It was heartwarming to see the pride that the tamariki showed in performing for their peers and for us all to have a chance to hear the fruits of their labour from the past year of music lessons. Also amazing to see so many whānau there supporting, and also taking part as learners themselves. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning. Ka rawe, awesome job!

Pōhutukawa Update, Term 4, Week 8

 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

As this is the last team newsletter of the year, we'd like to take the opportunity to say a big thank you, nga mihi nui, for your tautoko, support throughout 2024. Mā tātou kātoa te waka e hoe, we all row the waka together. We've all really enjoyed the year, and as always it's such a pleasure seeing our students develop self-awareness as learners, and grow in confidence, independence and maturity. We wish our Year 6 students all the best as they head into their intermediate years, and we are looking forward to seeing our Year 5 cohort flourishing in their role as tuakana in Pōhutukawa next year. Although we're not quite there yet, we wish you all a wonderful summer break. The final school newsletter for the year will be sent out next week with information regarding the final few days of school. Please do read on for some updates from the team, and information about an upcoming celebration next Friday here at kura for the Pōhutukawa students.

Navigating the Journey

This week we concluded our Navigating the Journey lessons. We concluded with our last theme of Staying Safe. Students learned about and discussed factors that influence personal safety online, and we identified together skills to ensure safe online use and strategies, and how to respond positively to challenging situations. The Navigating the journey Te takahi i te ara resources use the metaphor of navigation to describe a person’s lifetime journey of  physical, social, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of hauora (wellbeing). Thank you for your support with this by discussing this with your tamariki at home.

Cycle Safe

It has been great to have such miharo, awesome weather over the past week for our Year 6 tamariki to get out there on their bikes and embrace the challenge with the Cycle Safe team from the CCC. It's always such a beneficial programme for our Year 6's to do to learn the benefits of cycling and how to ride with confidence and be road-wise. the programme will continue next week and conclude on Tuesday.

End-of-Year Celebration Picnic

The students have been planning in groups of 2, 3 or 4 what they would like to bring to our picnic next Friday. We have asked them to ensure the people in their group agree on what to bring, and thank you for double-checking at home, too. Even though there have been ambitious plans of fruit platters, and cheeseboards, simple is best, so thanks for your support in ensuring that students bring something small to share with their "picnic group", or enjoy themselves.

It is a normal school day, and we have our Final Celebration Assembly in the morning, so please ensure that your child is wearing their school uniform as normal. Thank you checking that tamariki are not bringing lollies, chocolates, or any drinks except water. We will be supplying them with an ice-block as a thirst quencher.

Finally, our picnic time will be from 10:50 am until 12:40 pm, and we will have a normal lunchtime break in the afternoon. If you think your child will need some extra food, please send them with a lunchbox as normal.

Library Books and Sports Uniforms

As we head towards the end of the year on December 17th, it's a good time to remind your tamariki to return any library books they still have issued, or sports uniforms that are sitting at home and need to be returned. The Lost Property on the library deck is where unnamed property ends up, and this is also a place to check as it will be taken to ther Salvation Army at the end of the year