Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Greetings to you all.

A heartfelt welcome back to you all and I sincerely hope that you all managed to have some well-deserved rest and relaxation with whanau and friends.

As we continue to have sickness in the school as the winter chills take their toll, please continue to keep your child home if they are showing any signs of influenza, coughs or colds. Thanks to your diligence we are hoping that things will settle down quickly as we move through the term.

Week 1 has started with our community being welcomed into school to catch up with their child’s teacher through 1:1 parent/teacher interviews and discussing the progress that their children are making. Thank you to all of you who attended and we hope that you came away with a better understanding of your child's school journey.

At Witherlea School, we firmly believe that parental involvement is crucial to a child's educational journey. We greatly value your partnership and welcome your presence at school events, parent-teacher meetings, and other community gatherings. By working together, we can ensure that our students receive the support and guidance they need to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.

Coming up in week 2.

On Monday 24th July, your children will be coming home with Witherlea School’s annual fundraiser raffle tickets. For the second year in a row, we are extremely lucky to be able to offer Grocery Grab Raffle Prizes at New World (a huge thank you to Tineke and Greg at New World, as well as the Friends of Witherlea who have helped organise this). More details will follow in the coming weeks.

We look forward to the continuation of this amazing weather over the next few weeks as we look forward to spring heading our way!

Nga manaakitanga

We wish to welcome these new students and their families and whānau to our school and community;

Fynn K, Sonny M, Kahlia P, Robin P, Amelia B, Frankie R

Welcome to School Certificates are given out at our assembly on a Monday morning at 9am.

Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Fair Shoutouts

Congratulations to these students who have displayed one or all of our school behaviour expectations and are a model to others;

FERNS

Hunter M - always displaying the values of our school motto. You make good choices consistently and always with a smile on your face!

KAURI TEAM

Keili P - Being a kind, caring and fun loving member of Room 19. You make thoughtful contributions in class and show wonderful leadership as a member of the welcoming team Ka Pai!

The awards are for recognition in displaying and modelling our school motto and values; Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Fair.

On the first Saturday of the holidays, our Senior Witherlea Netball teams - Witherlea Ngahere and Witherlea Monarchs played each other as part of the Marlborough Netball Future Ferns Competition. It was a great game that showed our Witherlea School Motto with the players being kind, safe and fair to each other and the umpires, and a bit of competitive spirit!

We are very lucky to have parents giving up their time to coach these teams - Angela Stafford, Tania Keane and Kim Davies on a practice day and each Saturday, without this support we are unable to offer these opportunities for our students.

Once again this year the University of Canterbury is offering the Kiwi Spelling Bee competitions for Primary and Intermediate school students The competitions cover grammar, spelling and vocabulary. The online competitions will be run in Week 9 of Term 3. Parents/caregivers will be provided with an individual student report outlining student performance distributed by the school. All participating students will be awarded a certificate and prizes will be awarded to the overall top students in each year group. The cost for a student to participate is $9.90.