Tumuaki/Principal News

The last two weeks have been hectic and they don’t really slow down for the rest of the year. I hope everyone was able to enjoy some whānau time over Show Weekend and after talking with some of the community that attended the show it sounded like many of you did. 

The Kahukura Celebration was an amazing event. To have the 7 schools within our community perform to over 1000 people was amazing made all the more special being held at our kura. Our tamariki just shined on stage and did us all proud. I would like to thank Matua Glen and the rest of the team for making this event such a success.  

On Thursday last week, we had our “Our Journey Through Time Performance” as part of our Creative in School programmes. It was 16 weeks in the making and seeing it all come together for the performances was breathtaking. Our playground came alive with native birds, Māori, Colonial settlers and the student's vision for the future. Thank you to everyone who came along to watch and a special thank you to Matua Matt and the team here for all their efforts. 

Yesterday we celebrated our Māori and Pasifika students' successes. This was a beautiful community event and to have Siva, Sasa and Kapahaka perform made it all the more special. Congratulations to everyone who received awards and thank you to everyone who came along to celebrate with us. 

Today is the start of the Year 4 camp and Puna Paranui is getting ready for the camp to Waipara next week. All of the students are excited about the programmes that have been planned and it is a fantastic opportunity for them to learn a wide range of skills including self management and taking on new challenges. Thank you to everyone who has helped with these and I look forward to sharing more about both camps in the next newsletter.

In the last newsletter I shared with you our teaching team for 2023 and with the make up of the teams and the numbers of tamariki in each group we have looked at which space they will be working in. With this in mind we have made some changes to our current set up. Puna Paranui (Yr5-6) will be working in Toetoe and Raupō and Puna Hao (Yr0-2) will work in Ti Kōuka and Te Pahuri. We are currently working on classes and will let you know who your child(ren)s class teacher will be soon. 

I am a little sad to share with you today that Whaea Ellie has resigned from her position at Te Ara Koropiko. She has been with us for 4 years and during her time I know that the tamariki have enjoyed working with her. I wish her all the best for the future. 

During Creatives in School, our Tī Kōuka class were Kea’s in the school wide performance. We had such an amazing time learning about the different moments in time, forming movements as different characters and collaborating with others in drama. Our students were birds of the forest, Māori navigators on a waka and then villagers doing their daily work. We supported the different teams in other areas too.
We are also learning all about ourselves through Navigating the Journey, . We have just learnt the different medical names for the female and male reproductive systems. This has been very informative and includes lots of giggles and red faces. This information is so important when understanding ourselves. Have you started to introduce the different vocab to your child?

I have taken over the leaders column this week to tell you about the fantastic leaders day we had on Monday. It was run by myself and Whaea Charlotte with all of the Year 5 children. We had a day full of challenges to push the children to see who showed leadership with their peers. We started the day by breaking down what leadership was, where they have seen great leadership, leaders they respect and what kind of leadership they respond to. We then had a competition where each group was given newspaper and tape and they had to create the tallest tower that stood for at least 20 seconds. Toa, Diamond, Māia and Rain won this challenge by a landslide - the girls worked together, showed clear communication and distributed the jobs evenly. We then had a hula hoop challenge of boys vs girls. After a slow start from the boys they changed their tactics, communicated with one another, changed to a positive mindset and encouraged one another which led to them taking out the win! After morning tea the children got into groups and they performed a play. This showed us who was able to communicate clearly in front of an audience. Whaea Charlotte and I were super impressed by the way the groups organised themselves and used props to help set the scene. To finish off the day we had some relay challenges that involved water. The children had to work together with the equipment provided to figure out how they could move the most amount of water from one bucket to another. 

This was a brilliant day full of laughter and fun and it gave Whaea Charlotte and I a chance to spot potential leaders for next year. Through discussion with both senior leadership and the senior teaching team we have come to a decision for our Year 6 2023 leaders and these will be announced at the final assembly. 

Whaea Libby 

Cyber Safety

We have addressed online safety in each newsletter lately because we are worried about the risk to our children. We are trying to organize some parent education sessions and develop more robust systems for our children. You will have seen the South Canterbury school making headlines because of bullying, and parents feeling that it has not been addressed satisfactorily. It may very well have been, but the damage goes deep. Our children are so vulnerable to being bullied, and online platforms have opened up a vast hole into which many of our children are plunging. The damage is often long lasting. Social media platforms are dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. Children are supposed to be 13 before they can access anything on social media. Please help us to protect our tamariki.

Our children have ready access to pornography and young children are becoming addicted to it. This is a reality in our kura. This completely distorts their views of relationships and they are being set up for failure, offending and isolation. We must work together to protect our children. 

Do you:

• Check the search history 

• Talk to your children about healthy attitudes towards sexuality and good friendships

• Limit their online time and what apps you allow them access to

• Remove all devices from their bedrooms

At school, we have strong filtering systems and there are things you can do at home with this as well. Family Zone is a system that gives you options to filter content and receive alerts if adult material has been accessed. Please follow this link https://www.familyzone.com/anz/families if you would like more information. 

We are here to help and not to judge. Our children need us if they are to grow up as good citizens and make positive contributions to their communities. We can do this. 

If you have any questions or would like to talk about this please get in touch with me at ryan.pearce@westspreydon.school.nz

Ngā mihi

Ryan Pearce