A warm welcome to our new student Niamh Moore.

Kia ora koutou,

It’s been so nice to see a bit of sunshine this week after the stormy week the week before. Luckily the school grounds were not damaged during Cyclone Gabrielle, and we could remain open. As we have seen in the media, many parts of New Zealand have not been so lucky, with many displaced families who have lost all of their belongings. Our Roopuu Puaawai Year 7 and 8 students wanted to implement the 6 C of being a ‘Contributor’. With the help of their teachers, they organised a Clothes and Food collection. Thank you to all the families who supported this. The students were really pleased with what was donated. These items will now be put in a shipping container, transported by a Bulk Line truck and then sorted and distributed in the Hawkes Bay area. 

We have some exciting events coming up with Wheels Week starting on Monday, which leads to our Try Challenge on Thursday. Children are invited to bring their bikes or scooters to school on Monday, and these can stay at school over the week. The bikes and scooters will be stored in the learning environments overnight. Our Try-Challenge is a fun event where children will swim, bike or scooter and run through an obstacle course. 

This week, our Senior Leadership Team and the teaching staff have been working on our Charter, particularly our Annual Actions. Our Annual Actions are our school plan of action to help us meet our goals and continue to bring our vision alive. 

Some of our school goals that are reflected in our Charter are

• Ensure all students experience a personalised, future-focussed learning programme, putting children, their interests, aspirations and needs first. 
• To further develop practice that gradually moves the learner to be self-determining. 
• To further develop Assessment for Learning practices so all assessment is relevant, reliable and has the learner at the heart of it.
• To ensure children are experiencing a broad and rich learning programme that integrates all New Zealand Curriculum areas.
• To continue to strengthen our cultural competencies across the school.

In our most recent Professional Learning Session, the teaching team collaborated on what actions we will take as a school and what this looks like across the different learning environments. Our Charter will then be shared with the Board of Trustees and be available for whaanau on our website once it has all been finalised. 

On Tuesday evening, we had our first P.T.A meeting for the year. Our P.T.A is very motivated and has many fundraising events planned for the year. Families will be able to support these events by providing sponsorship, for example, events like the Colour Run and the Golf Day. The money raised by the P.T.A helps us provide an enriching learning programme and well-resourced learning environments.

We look forward to seeing many of you next week at our Try- Challenge and hope you enjoy the rest of your week,

Ngaa mihi nui,

Nyree Olliver

Welcome to the 2023 school year from the Puketaha PTA.  For newcomers who don’t know much about us we are a group of parents who gather twice a term (week 3 and week 7) to organize events and fundraisers which help with a social aspect of school life as well as enabling our school to be well resourced to fund extras that the ministry budget may not quite cover.  We realise so many parents cannot commit to making the meetings but are happy to help as and when required, we really appreciate your support whichever way you can provide it.

We are kicking off Term 1 with a food stall at the Try-Challenge next Thursday March 2^nd.  So as normal, we appreciate donations of baked goods that we can sell, these can be dropped off at the office on the morning of the event  and will require helpers to man the stall, cook the barbeque, sell the juicies etc.  

Later in March (30^th) we are going to be having our first Go Raise It Colour Run. We are a little bit excited about this as it is something new, and the kids/teachers will have a blast. The success of this event is dependent on the kids getting sponsors.  Having said that, no child will be excluded if they don’t, or are not in a position to get any.  We will be asking for corporate sponsors for each of the Colour Stations so keep this in mind if you have a business that has an association with a particular colour.  More details to come on this soon.  This event will be held in school time on a Thursday afternoon, and parents will be welcome to watch.

Kind regards,

Merynn Connors (Chairperson)

pta@puketaha.school.nz or 027 629682002.