Week 6, Term 2 Newsletter

Dyer Street School

School Newsletter

Newsletter Contents:

1. Message From the Principal

2. Link Up Committee (Fun and Fundraising group)

3. From the classrooms (Room 3 and 11 )

4. Hutt Fest

5. Important Dates and Reminders

6. Community Notices

Kia ora e te whānau,

The weeks seem to be flying by at the moment as we roll into winter. Luckily, the weather has been really good and most days our tamariki have been outside and enjoying the environment.

Over the last few weeks we have sought further guidance and feedback around our school values. Whaea Laiken from Naenae Primary has supported us in refining the values from a mana whenua perspective and our whānau hui last week also provided further voice. We are looking to change the school values to represent our vision and future focus for the school. We are proposing the following at this stage…

Manaakitanga- Respect

Ako – Learning

Ngakaunui- Kindness

Aumangea- Resilience

We are proposing The LEARN values will change to the MANA values.

Of course, these concepts are much richer than just one word to describe them. We will need to unpack them deeply at every level of school life. More importantly, they already align to the LEARN values that we currently have. The BOT, Mana whenua, tamariki, staff and whānau have all had input into this process so far. My goal is to get these locked in by the end of the term and then relaunch and unpack what each value means over the remainder of the year.

Our Huttfest roopu is sounding and looking amazing! I want to acknowledge the hard mahi the children are putting into this performance as well as the teaching team around them. For this group, they are giving up a lot of their own time to practice and refine their performance. A special mention must go to our youngest members in the roopu who doing an amazing job at learning the waiata and actions.

In Assembly today, I spoke to the tamariki about two things I would like them to focus on for the remainder of the term – being kind to one another, and looking after our environment. We have beautiful school grounds, especially the wide open green space of the field. I’m often seeing clothing left behind after break times and a growing amount of rubbish on the school grounds. As a teaching team, we will be working with the tamariki to keep expectations high around this kaupapa over the following weeks.

The outdoor spaces plan is starting to take shape, and with some further adjustments, we are hoping to see some movement and construction over the coming months. Our first focus is the sandpit area which will be located by the junior basketball hoop. Please see a reference of the plan so far. The idea is to create wheelchair access with a multipurpose deck area that can be used as a stage which then leads to the sandpit. The perimeter will be in rounds and at varying heights to create a “stepping stone” effect and then a slide will be placed by the relocated mound of dirt. We have sought further feedback from the tamariki and will have a finalised design soon. Ngā mihi to Emma McRae for supporting us with this project and Bronwyn Langley for leading the work on this.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend

Kia pai rā ngā whakatā,

Lee Ewington

Tumuaki

This week’s Principal’s Award Winners

The Link Up Committee (the friendly and relaxed parent-led fun and fundraising group) is next meeting on Monday 10th June at 7:30 p.m.

All supporters of Dyer Street School are most welcome. We meet in the school library.

To contact the committee or be added to the Facebook group please email linkupdyerstreet@gmail.com

Hutt Fest tickets are now on sale. Our Year 2 – 6 rōpu are performing in Show 4 on Tuesday 2nd of July, 6 – 8 p.m.

Buy tickets now at the link: https://myetickets.co.nz/tickets/393/details

Our Year 1 rōpu (with Dyer Street Kindergarten) will be performing at the ECE/New Entrants day show at 10:30 a.m. on Monday 1st of July. Tickets are not needed for this show. We will be sending out a notice asking for parent helpers for this shortly.

Our groups have been rehearsing hard and are very excited.

Spare clothes

Please make sure all children year 3 and below have a spare pair of long pants and underpants in their bag every day. We do not have spares in the office for accidents or falls into muddy puddles!

Upcoming Events

10th June – Link Up Committee Meeting 7:30 p.m.

13th June – Hearing and Vision testing

27th June – Matariki Breakfast

28th June – Matariki Public Holiday (no school)

1st – 5th July – Hutt Fest (our performance dates TBC)

Room 3

Room 11

It’s been a busy term in room 11! The ākonga are enjoying the creative process we are undertaking to design bottle rockets. They have learnt about forces and aerodynamics to design effective rockets. We will begin our test launches next week.

We also have a student teacher in our space. Whaea Louisa has been getting to know our class and the tamariki and has started taking lessons. The ākonga enjoyed her science experiment looking at forces. Recently Amaia’s mum visited to talk about the Maramataka (lunar calendar). We have been learning about this in class and it was so cool to hear how their whānau make it part of their daily lives. There were some very thoughtful questions from the students who showed they were listening carefully to the presentation.

Finally, I would like to say well done to our students who competed in cross country a few weeks ago. Hasan, Nasim, Jax, Sang and Samira gave it their all. Congratulations to Samira who has qualified for the next event coming up next week.