Te Aroha Primary School
Term 2 Week 5 2022
PRINCIPAL / TUMUAKI MESSAGE
Tālofa lava,
Greetings everyone and welcome to Week 5, it certainly feels like winter has finally arrived. It was a pretty chilly weekend and the week ahead looks a bit wet and wintery too.
This week is Samonan language week. A week when we get to spotlight the Samoan language and all things Samoan. Fun fact, did you know that Samoa and New Zealand signed a treaty of Friendship back in 1962. The treaty pledged that relations between the two countries would be governed by a spirit of close friendship, and that both governments would work together to promote the welfare of the people of Samoa…pretty awesome. Friendship treaties date back to 1740 and are used as a symbol of peace and unity around the world.
On that note, it was wonderful to have a visit from Cam - the Principal of Goldfields base school in Paeroa. Cam and his team do a wonderful job and we are very fortunate to be able to support that mahi with a satellite class here at TAPS. Goldfields holds a special place in my heart as it is the school my own sister, Naomi, attended for her primary schooling.
We are halfway through our building upgrade in Waihou block. Much of the heavy and noisy work is over, now the magic happens as the internal walls, doors, windows and fittings are completed. There is also going to be some work done on the eastside of the library and computer suite. Old cladding will be removed and new weatherboards put up in their place.
I continue to love my time here at Te Aroha Primary and am enjoying spending time with the children at break times, learning their names and finding out about them both in school and also their wider passions outside of school. We are certainly privileged to have your wonderful tamariki here with us each day.
Have an awesome week everyone,
Tōfā soifua,
Justin Bertrand
KEY TERM DATES
TERM ONE DATES 2022
- 17/3/2022 St Patrick's Day - Dress Up Day (Green, Green, Green!)
- 13/4/2022 Wednesday 3pm - Students last day for Term 1.
- 14/4/2022 Thursday - Teacher Only Day (TOD)
- 15/4/2022 Good Friday / Easter Break / School Holidays start
TERM TWO DATES 2022
- 2/5/2022 First day of Term 2 / Our new principal, Mr Justin Bertrand, starts with us.
- New Zealand Sign Language Week 2022 – Monday 9 to Sunday 15 May
- 20/5/2022 Pink Shirt Day – NZ Wide Anti-Bullying Campaign - Friday 20 May
- Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa - Samoa Language Week 29 May - 4 June 2022
- 6/6/2022 Queen’s Birthday – Monday 6 June
- Ready, Set, Go! – Wednesday 8 June, Wednesday 22 June, Wednesday 6 July
- 24/6/2022 Matariki Public Holiday – Friday 24 June
- 8/7/2022 Last day of Term 2 – Friday 8 July
Other term dates to be advised.
SPORTS NEWS - Mrs Paul
Netball:
Please remember to let your coach know if you are sick and unable to play on a Saturday. Don’t presume anyone knows you are away and unable to be there. Coaches have team plans and they need time to adjust these.
Rippa:
Notices will be coming home later this week. As soon as we have a draw we will know when we need to be there. Thanks to Lesa Martin, Amy Paetai, Megan Diprose and Cam Melrose who will be looking after our teams.
EXTRA NEWS and STUDENT VIEWS
Senior School Reporters
Bringing extra news to our newsletter this week are our reporters - Elisabella, Perryn, Morgan, Nicole and Jahnaia.
Welcome Miss Zoe Webb
Last week, we welcomed Miss Webb to our Te Aroha Primary School Whānau. Miss Webb is teaching in Room 2. She has taught in a number of schools, including, Baverstock Oaks School In Auckland as well as relieving at Stanley Ave. She loves how the students and teachers have been so friendly and have welcomed her with open arms. Room 2 has responded wonderfully to their new teacher and they work really well together.
Welcome Miss Webb!
Pink Shirt Day - Update
On the 20th of May, 2022, our school celebrated Pink Shirt Day. We raised $202 that we have donated to the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.
Pink Shirt Day is about working together to stop bullying by celebrating diversity and promoting kindness and inclusiveness. It’s about creating a community where all people feel safe, valued and respected.
Kōrero Mai, Kōrero Atu, Mauri Tū, Mauri Ora – Speak Up, Stand Together, Stop Bullying!
Room 3 Relocation
Year 7/8 Technology at Te Aroha College
We started our new Tech Rotations last week. Please make sure your child has shoes that cover their feet (NO SLIDES PLEASE) and long hair needs to be tied up. Roll call for the bus at 8.30am outside Rm 10. If your child is running late and misses the bus, please take them straight to the College.
Students 12+ years are to wear a mask on the bus as per Orange setting.
CLASSROOM ROUND UPS
WAIHOU / HUB 1 / JUNIOR BLOCK / YEAR 1-2
Room 1 - Mrs Johnson
Wow Week 5 already! A big welcome to Charlie who joined Room 1 today.
Literacy - Our letterland work is m,d,o,g and we will look at words that rhyme with dog. The tricky part that we are working on is blending sounds together and then saying the word. e.g saying dddd - oooo - gggg and then blending together = dog. We are practising the same concept when we write words in our stories. Older students are now focussing on having more than one sentence in their story.
Maths - Our whole class learning is about counting in 10’s. Counting large groups of objects has been a particular interest driven by the students over the past few weeks, so now as a class we are learning to put the objects into groups of ten so we can use our counting in tens to quickly solve how many objects there are all together. I will share a few Youtube clips on Seesaw if children would like to practise this at home.
This week is Samoan Language week so we will introduce this to the children as well. We are learning to count to 10. We will post this on Seesaw when we are experts.
REMINDERS
Please remember your drink bottle, homework books and book bags everyday.
It is very helpful to have a change of clothes in school bags just in case they are needed.
If your child has had to borrow spare clothes from our supply at school, can they please be returned as soon as possible, as we no longer have any spare clothes left to use for the junior children. Thank you.
Room 2 – Miss Webb
Week 5 is here and we are now halfway through the term! Last week I enjoyed getting to know all of the children in Room 2! The change in teacher hasn’t bothered them at all and we had a great week together. I’m looking forward to this week.
For writing this week we will be learning how to write and structure a letter. We will be reading ‘Dragon Post’ and writing letters to characters in the story.
For maths we will focus on subtraction and understanding the way subtraction problems are written. We will be using the story ‘Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons’ to help us understand this and engage us in our maths.
Please remember your drink bottle, homework books and book bags everyday.
Please do not hesitate to contact me via Seesaw or email zwebb@tearohaprimary.school.nz
Room 3 – Miss Swan
Kia ora koutou
Wow! - we are officially halfway through the term! Week 5 will see Room 3 still learning from our awesome school library while the Waihou Hub renovations continue.
- Reading: There has been slight changes in our reading groups this week and reading books coming home may reflect this.
- Writing: We are unpacking how to sequence recount writing. We start the week off with a science experiment to write about!
- Maths: We are focusing before and after numbers from 0-100 and will continue to sort out our counting collections as we practice counting in groups of 10. Counting collections has been a huge hit with Room 3 tamariki recently.
Reminders for the week:
Please return your Poem book
Please remember your drink bottle, homework books and book bags everyday
Our days are getting colder - school jerseys and warm socks are needed!
Please don’t hesitate to contact me via Seesaw or email mswan@tearohaprimary.school.nz
Have an amazing week whānau 😊
GOLDFIELDS / SATELLITE UNIT / JUNIOR BLOCK
Room 4 - Mrs Suzette Willis, Mrs Donna Taylor-Erutoe and Team
Enjoy the week Whānau!
TIKAPA MOANA / HUB 2 / MIDDLE BLOCK / YEAR 3-5
Room 5 - Miss Entwisle
Week 5 is here! We welcome Miss Boyd in on Tuesday and Wednesday due to class assessments taking place this week.
- Reading: We are enjoying finding out about the adventures of Cuthbert and Fatima in our new class novel Gruesome Twosome by Keith Brumpton. We have had fun acting out certain scenes and have been able to use musical instruments linked to the text to help develop our understanding of the events that are happening.
- Writing: We are as quick as a flash when it comes to thinking up similes to include in our description writing.
- Mathematics: We are becoming more familiar with place value and are learning to talk about the values of digits in numbers.
- Health and Physical Education: We are working on building up our stamina and endurance in preparation for next term's Cross Country.
Reminders / Online Learning - Homework
Our Spelling words and weekly poem and other home learning based tasks are available on Seesaw. This work is optional.
Students have free access to learning sites such as: Prodigy, Sumdog, Sunshine Classics and Epic!
Access codes for Mathletics were sent home last week.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact Miss Entwisle via the school office: 078848803; email: mentwisle@tearohaprimary.school.nz or through the Seesaw message function. 😊
Room 6 – Mrs Bankier
This week Mrs Bartram will be teaching on Wednesday as I will be testing students. Testing will be completed over the next 2 weeks for Reading, Writing and Maths so it is important that your child is at school as regularly as possible. I have been really impressed with the progress Room 6 have been making with their basic facts.
- Reading: This week we will be continuing to work on our comprehension skills of text, looking at answering multiple choice questions and completing cloze activities.We are also enjoying listening to our class chapter book ‘The Twits’ by Roahl Dahl.
- Writing: We are beginning to write narratives, thinking about what we have learnt in writing Character Descriptions and moving these skills into creating our own narratives which we will later turn into a book.
- Maths: We have started our journey to learn to solve multiplication facts and problems. We are understanding what a multiplication equation is and drawing arrays to show each equation.
- Homework: Due to very few children completing their homework in their books I am going to run our home learning on Seesaw each week.
- Topic- NZ History: Last week we made our own Waka to travel across the Pacific on. This week we will be learning about some of the European explorers.
Room 7 – Mrs Paul
The next 2 weeks are Testing Weeks - how on earth has that come around so quickly?! I will be testing Maths and Reading over this time so please ensure children are at school (unless they are sick that is!)
We were pleased to start Bible in Schools last Friday. We have an awesome Bible in Schools man, however some children were a little rude. Please chat to your child and if they can’t be accepting, polite and courteous then maybe they would be better at home until 9.30am.
- In Reading we are finishing off our work on NZ Musicians and we are learning lots. We are hoping to present some at Assembly this week.
- In Spelling this week we are learning that y and ey can make the long e sound- a few weeks ago we learnt that it makes the long i sound! Our English language can be a tricky thing! Last week we mastered many hard words with the open and closed syllables.
- In Writing we will be trying to write collaborative pieces this week. Some people have fantastic imaginations! The more you read the better you write…proven to be be true!!
TE MOANANUI-A-KIWA / HUB 3 / SENIOR BLOCK / YEAR 6-8
Room 8 – Mrs McKenzie
Kia ora and Talofa lava. This week we have another exciting week planned.
- It is Samoa language week, which means we will spend some time learning simple language, song and dance. We also say goodbye to NZ music month with a lesson on making/creating our own music. Keep an eye out on Seesaw for this!
- Our Topic Inquiry strengthens this week as we move from our local history, and explore further into the Pacific, including the voyages to New Zealand made by different people. This is continuously integrated throughout our reading and writing. It is an extremely important and interesting curriculum area to learn about and I do hope your children are discussing their new knowledge with you. It is part of our heritage and culture in NZ and makes us who we are.
- In Maths last week we started to explore division strategies. This week, we will build upon this and continue to look at division through subtraction first, then simplifying through quicker strategies. Multiplication knowledge is super helpful and students should be practising this daily at home. I have shared with them many helpful websites and they can be practising with you.
- STEM or STEAM challenges (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths) are loved by Room 8, students will have their biggest challenge yet on Thursday, I cannot wait to see the outcome!
- Mana Potential is a program run by RTLB to build upon students' resilience, self regulation and relationships. Mrs O’Connor is in again this week to guide Room 8 into managing and self regulating themselves. Students were encouraged last week to talk through with you, and the tools they find helpful.
We also welcome back mātua Barker on Wednesday, Mrs Ginever will return week 6.
Have a great week everyone. Always remember, I love to hear from you via email or Seesaw. cmckenzie@tearohaprimary.school.nz
Room 9 – Whaea Armstrong and Mrs Gamble
Talofa! Welcome to week five!
This week we are excited to celebrate Samoan Language week where we will look into not only the language, but the culture as well via a learning taskboard. Remember to keep an eye out on Seesaw where we update you on things we have been learning about each week.
Maths - this is our final week of looking at multiplication strategies. We will focus carefully on solving multi digit multiplication problems using a standard algorithm, along with multiplying simple decimals.
Reading - In connection with our topic around NZ Histories, this week we will be focusing on the school journal ‘Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa - NZ Wars’. We will be using a variety of reading comprehension strategies to develop our understanding of the three main NZ wars - The northern war, the Taranaki war and the Waikato war.
Writing - to follow on from our learning about Māori Pā sites last week. This week we will be writing an explanation piece around what a Pā site is and the different types of Pā from around NZ.
Topic - After learning all about Pā sites last week, this week we put our knowledge to the test by constructing Pā sites of our own. Check out the photos below of us planning and designing our pā from last week.
Have a great week everyone! Kia Tu, Kia Toa, Kia Mau - Accept the challenge!
If you have any questions send us a message on Seesaw or email
aarmstrong@tearohaprimary.school.nz and lgmable@tearohaprimary.school.nz
Room 10 – Mrs B
Talofa lava - this week we celebrate Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa - Samoa Language Week (Samoan is the third most spoken language in New Zealand.) We will look into aspects of simple language and culture so be sure to look out for our posts on Seesaw. On Thursday, we are also very excited to welcome the Media Team from PowerCo, who will be visiting our class after their generous donation of laptops to see how we use these with our learning. We have so much to show them after our incredible work last week designing pā using a number of different online platforms. I was very impressed and inspired by this work - amazing what students achieved! Well done Rm 10.
- Music - we complete our Music Month learning this week. This has been a fabulous way to learn more about the artists and hits that have shaped New Zealand music. You might like to ask your child which song they have enjoyed the most - the answer may surprise you!
- Integrated Learning - Inquiry “What happened here?” - we use our pā designs this week, taking the best features into a collaborative project where students will make a pā tūwatawata out of playdoh and crafting other features such as pātaka, whare, pekerangi and rua out of other resources. This will be really cool when completed and a great lead into our learning about the New Zealand Land Wars using the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum. We will also be developing an explanation about pā tūwatawata in our writing.
- Maths - we will be looking into developing our knowledge of efficient division strategies (some of our students still need to to have an instant recall of their times tables!!!)
- Team Sport - we start a new rotation of sports this Friday.
*We welcome Mrs Gamble to Rm 10 on Friday.
Looking forward to an awesome week.
Arohanui - Mrs B dp@tearohaprimary.school.nz
LUNCHES IN SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
WINTER UNIFORM EXPECTATIONS
TE AROHA PRIMARY SCHOOL UNIFORM POLICY
Children at Te Aroha Primary School are required to wear the appropriate school uniform to school each day. Summer uniform is worn in terms one and four and winter uniform is worn in terms two and three.
Our winter uniform consists of:
School Beanie (optional)
Green polo shirt with school logo
Green polar fleece top with school logo
School navy blue shorts
School navy blue skorts
School navy blue track bottom
Sensible shoes - we recommend sneakers, jandals or sandals or slip on shoes. Ug boots or high heeled boots are not sensible shoes for children to wear to school.
Optional winter uniform items:
Tights – black, dark green or navy blue. *UPDATED* Footless tights/leggings are now permitted, but need to be full length and plain navy (no patterns or branding).
Navy blue or dark green skivvies may be worn under the polo shirt. (No other coloured skivvies are permitted).
Additional uniform notes:
• Children are required to wear shorts/skorts underneath their track bottom at all times. This is so that when class physical activity is done children don’t over heat in a track bottom in summer or in winter end up with a wet and muddy track bottoms.
• We want our students to be neat and tidy and a good example of what our school stands for when they are at school and out in the community.
PTA NEWS
PTA AGM
We Need You!
Reduced to single figures, this body of parents is vital to the school in many ways. They effectively help the school’s efforts in providing the best for your child - computers, play equipment, subsidised trips and much, much more.
- Kate on 0211877459
- PTA email taps.pta@gmail.com
SPONSORS
We need these firms to keep our school cashflow and community relations going strong. They are generous to us which enables us to benefit your children so I would ask you look at the team of sponsors and where possible, use them as we all gain.
School Policies and Procedures
School Policies and Procedures
SchoolDocs is the tool we use for our school policies. These are kept updated with the SchoolDocs team ensuring legal and compliance matters are always up-to-date.
To access SchoolDocs simply :
1. Go to schooldocs.co.nz
2. Click Search for your school.
3. Start typing the school’s name and select it from the dropdown list.
4. Enter the community username tearohaprimary and password school
From there it is simply a matter of navigating to areas you wish to look at - enjoy the read.
School App, Facebook, Seesaw and our School Website
Please use these tools we provide - we use them to alert, inform and effectively communicate with parents.
Check it out - there is plenty for you to find out.
If in doubt please ask your child’s teacher as we will be using these platforms on a regular basis to keep our parent community informed and up to date.
Contact Us
Email: admin@tearohaprimary.school.nz
Website: https://tearohaprimary.school.nz/
Location: Jubilee Avenue, Te Aroha, New Zealand
Phone: 07-884 8803
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Te-Aroha-Primary-School-193399510687026/