| | | | | | IMPORTANT DATES Term 3
Week 7
Thursday 31st August - Day 4 EOTC / Snow Sports Programme
Friday 1st September - Fathers Day Breakfast
Friday 1st September - Pod 8 Assembly - 2.15pm - Hall
Week 8
Monday 4th September - Board of Trustees Meeting - 5pm - Staffroom
Tuesday 5th September - UC Cross Country
Wednesday 6th September - Bob Bickerton Musical Performance
Thursday 7th September - Day 5 EOTC / Snow Sports Programme
Friday 8th September - Save our 'Mohua' Dress Up Day
Week 9
Pod 6 Swimming Week
Year 6 Camp Week
Thursday 14th September - COPSSA Cross Country
Thursday 14th September - EOTC / Snow Sports Programme Weather Day
Week 10
Pod 1 Swimming Week
Wednesday 20th September - Creatives Project Exhibition - 1.30-3.00pm
Friday 22nd September - Last Day of Term
Term 4
Week 1
Monday 9th October - First day of Term 4
Week 3
Monday 23rd October - Labour Day - School Closed
Year 4 Camp - Bannockburn
Tuesday 24th October - School Photos
IMPORTANT NOTICES Garden to Table Please look out for our fresh produce tomorrow located outside reception, lots of fresh, yummy vegetables for sale. All proceeds to go to the Garden to Table programme. Scholastic Loop The latest Scholastic NZ Brochure is available from classrooms. If you wish to place an order, please follow the instructions on the inside back cover using Option 1 – Credit Card / LOOP. No cash / orders are accepted at school. If your order is a gift, please tick the ‘GIFT’ option, otherwise all orders are handed out to the children. Orders will close at 3pm on Monday 4th September at 9.00am. |
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Fathers Day Breakfast
A big thank you to our sponsors New World Three Parks and Mitre 10.
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Spring Seed Fundraiser
Link for Orders |
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Kings Seeds Fundraiser for Garden to Table Kings Seeds are giving Wānaka Primary School the opportunity to fundraise through the sale of seeds - flowers, organics, seeds for sprouting, herbs and vegetables. The order form is attached (it is quite substantial - a hard copy was sent home with students yesterday). Your completed orders need to be returned to the School Office by Friday 1st September. Thanks for supporting this Garden to Table fundraiser.
Please click here for a copy of the order form |
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Cross Country What a beautiful day we had for the cross country races today - matched by the smiles of happiness and relief as children crossed the finish line. Congratulations to all who participated and gave it their best, and a big thank you to parents who came along to support and cheer on every student.
Placings are posted here and are on our school website. Certificates for our top three placegetters in each year level will be presented at Pod 8's assembly this Friday.
Parents of year five and six students who have qualified for the Upper Clutha event next week will be contacted by email. Students will also be informed at school.
Let's hope the gorgeous weather continues for out 4th Snow/Schoolbased day on Thursday.
Please Slow Down A reminder to parents to SLOW DOWN in all of our car parks and Pick up/Drop off areas and to put cellphones away. We are seeing a bit of slackness around some of our safety rules in these areas so please drive responsibly and keep our kids safe.
Also as we were having our weekly 'Tuesday chats' staff info sharing in the staffroom we noticed cars started rolling in to drop children off at 8.10am. Please note that we do not expect children here at school that early and aim more for an 8.30am drop off please. This morning there would not have been staff in pods to supervise.
Dental Care The mobile dental unit is about to be parked up down at the dental clinic to provide more support for our dental therapist to catch up on children who are booked in for care and checks. Hopefully this will mean more children getting access at a faster pace. When you are taking your child down to the dental clinic, please come in to the office first and sign your children out and then back in again.
If you need to contact the Dental Therapist please ring 443 -7185 directly.
Fathers Day Breakie If you haven't got your ticket for our annual Fathers Day Breakie get in quick as the PTA need to make sure they order in enough bacon and bread etc to cater for the numbers. The kids and dads always enjoy this event so see you between 8am and 8.30am for breakfast on Friday.
Pod 8 Assembly It's the Pod 8 assembly this week and the certificates from the Cross Country event today will also be given out at this time.
Murray Gadd - Writing Professional Development Facilitator Extraordinaire Murray is in school next week working with teachers and small groups of children. He will deliver a 'Gifted Writers' workshop to staff on Tuesday and present to the Board on Monday night. He is with us Monday to Wednesday. This is his last time working with us in school as part of this writing PLD contract, which was for 2023 only, as our final meeting will be via Zoom.
Bob Bickerton - Musician Bob Bickerton is a musician of many talents - he plays the guitar and many other more 'unusual instruments'; and also sings. He is performing on Wednesday 6th September all day working with 2 pods at a time.
Incredible Years Teacher Programme Five of our teachers, from middle and senior school have been working on this training programme this year. Most of our junior teachers (and some who have now moved to other areas of the school) have taken part in this training over the last few years. You may be interested in what this programme is all about. 'The Incredible Years Teacher (IYT) programme provides teachers with approaches to help create a more positive learning environment for their students. It is based on strengthening teacher classroom management strategies, promoting children’s pro social behaviour and school engagement. IYT is delivered by a Resource Teacher Learning and Behaviour (RTLB).' The programme covers: Building positive relationships with students proactively preventing behaviour problems using attention, encouragement and praise to turn behaviour around motivating students by giving them incentives helping students learn social skills, empathy, and problem-solving using appropriate consequences for undesirable behaviour. This programme fits in perfectly within our Positive Behaviour for Learning Framework (PB4L) so it has been great to be able to offer this Ministry Funded programme to our teachers in the middle and senior school. They will of course use this learning to share with their pod and to embed new practices to support children's learning and behaviour.
There is also an Incredible Years programme for parents which focuses on positive parenting skills. We usually advertise this, when it is available, in our newsletter so please watch out for it. The programme is packed with practical, easy to use tools for working with your children, especially if you are going through a rough patch with them as all of us parents do at times.
Strategic Direction Survey Today's responses to our survey which parents completed earlier this term are included below, two of these are around the health curriculum. This is only the start of our health curriculum review which had been planned for pre-Covid but put on hold. Please note at this stage staff are looking at the latest Ministry updates, and with the Board and in consultation with the community, we will be refreshing our local health education plan. The flyers that have been distributed by Family First have absolutely nothing to do with our review. The staff and Board will be looking at these updates to ensure we are familiar with the Ministry requirements and the NZ Education Act changes in 2020. Here is a link to the Ministry's Health Curriculum documents. The primary curriculum levels are 1 and 2, these relate to year 0 to 6.
The responses below are unedited so parents can see the range of responses. Sometimes schools are accused of 'doctoring' or only including positive responses; this is our way of being fully transparent so you can see what 20% (our response rate) of our community is thinking. Some of these responses are at either end of the spectrum. As always in considering these and future consultation around the health curriculum updates we will not be doing anything radical.
At this stage we are focusing on updating our full teaching staff on any new information the Ministry is providing around goals and expectations of schools. We will also start sending this information out to parents about these updates in chunks over the next term and into 2024 in our newsletters, emails, meetings etc.
Just remember we will always be guided by what is best for our kids and common sense. We have a strong family ethic at WPS and we cater for any diversity or sensitive issues on an individual basis with parents, families and teachers, not as a classroom lesson or school wide plan. We individualise kids' learning and they live the learning at school, where we strive to ensure all kids feel secure and confident about who they are.
Question 7 - What resources and opportunities for learning in our local community would you like us to utilise better?
Question 8 - What themes, topics, big ideas or contexts of learning do you think are important to cover?
Question 9 - The Ministry of Education requires all schools to consult with their community on the school's delivery of the Health Curriculum. Over the next two terms, we are reviewing the contexts, format and delivery of our Health programmes. What do you think are the most important health issues facing children?
Question 10 - Please tell us of any topics, issues or suggestions you have to improve the Health programme at our school.
Question 11 - Any other comments?
Have a great week and enjoy that sunshine.
Photos from EOTC/Snow Sports Day 3 at Treble Cone.
Photos from EOTC/Snow Sports Day 3 - Enviro Group |
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Creatives in Schools Senior students have enjoyed working with artist Chrissy Wickes to plan and create designs for their collaborative art works.
Pod 8 students have painted individual leaves that will be placed on a large plywood tree to be installed behind our garage on the field. Thank you to Pod 8 parents who prepared these for the students.
We were very lucky to have 2 very long and large power poles donated by Aurora Energy. Teachers, Dave and Jason, bought out their favourite power tools and have cut and sanded these ready for them to be installed and painted by Pod 7 students. So now, we need your support please :-)
We have a number of jobs that need to be done to see these artworks finished and installed.
Working Bee If you can join Kath on either SUNDAY 3rd September or SATURDAY 8th September, anytime between 10am-4pm, please email kathn@wanaka.school.nz
Tasks include: sanding, painting, digging, jigsaw cutting, foundation placing, etc. |
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Save our Mohua Day - Friday 8th September On Friday 8th September we would like you to wear something yellow. Bring a gold coin to help Forest and Bird try to save the endangered mohua from predators.
Enviroleaders will be bringing a colouring in competition round to classrooms, this week. Drop your finished pictures to Reception by the morning of Wednesday 6th so that our visitors from Forest and Bird can judge them. We will be having a special assembly with them later in the day. |
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Garden to Table Thanks to Dean Milllar from Level Construction for donating the materials to make an archway in our garden area. Thanks also to Ben and Tim for erecting it, labour kindly donated by Level Construction. |
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School Camps 2023 Confirmed Costs for Year 5 & 6 Camps
Payment details:
Online to Wānaka Primary School Account No: 02-0673-0023784-001 OR Eftpos / cash at the office If there are challenges that would make payment for camps difficult, please come in and see, ring or email Wendy (wendyb@wanaka.school.nz) or Lucy (office@wanaka.school.nz) as soon as possible. Payment can be made in instalments. More information will follow about each individual camp.
Please regularly check your emails. |
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Positive Behaviour For Learning - PB4L PB4L School-Wide looks at behaviour and learning from a whole-of-school as well as an individual child perspective. The framework is based on international evidence and is helping New Zealand schools build a culture where positive behaviour and learning is a way of life. Each fortnight we focus on a school wide goal to encourage positive behaviours. The current goal is: 'Older students help and are role models to younger students'. |
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Library News
Click the image below to view our wonderful Library Webapp.
Feel free to email Melissa at any time if you have any questions.
Digital and Audio Resources Borrow box is an amazing resource which you can have free access to for digital reading and audio resources for your children. Click on the image below to look at the amazing range. You need a QLDC library membership (which is free) to borrow.
Quote of the Week
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Contact for our local Public Health Nurse Pip McLean is our local Public Health Nurse - should you wish to get in contact with Pip her contact details are: 03 440 4309 or 0272 839 395 or email Pip.McLean@southerndhb.govt.nz |
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Kahu Youth Trust Fundraising for Inclusivity Programmes
The Kahu Youth Trust are running a home baking stall as a fundraising venture for inclusivity programmes within our community.
Donations can be dropped to the Stonewood Homes Show Home at 14 Campbell Road, Alpine Estate between 12.00 - 3.00pm on Saturday 9th September or directly to the stall (just inside the Ardmore Street road entrance to the left side of the Lake Wanaka Centre) from 2.00 - 3.30pm on Saturday 9th September.
Please contact Hayley for more information: 027 383 3024. |
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Mindful Parenting Course Please click here to book or scan the QR code on the poster. |
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Gifted Awareness Information Evening Wednesday 30th August
Click here for a 'What is Gifted?' brochure |
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Wanaka Swim Club Have-A-Go Event |
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2023 Upper Clutha Schools – Ski & Snowboard Race Tuesday 19th SEPTEMBER (postponement day Wednesday 20th)
Registrations for this event are open NOW! Close STRICTLY THURSDAY 14th Sep - 4pm
(NO late registrations can be accepted)
IMPORTANT INFO – PLEASE READ Open to all Year 3 to Year 8 students of intermediate skiing/boarding ability, no racing
experience required. Come and have FUN racing down a Giant Slalom course. Get a team of
3 or 4 together from your school. PRIMARY OR INTERMEDIATE - they will have to race in the
category according to the corresponding school year of the eldest team member. Teams are
either - all boys, all girls or mixed where the best 3 combined times count towards placings. NO MIXED DISCIPLINES – EITHER SKI OR SNOWBOARD TEAMS ONLY
Please click here for detailed information and how to register CLICK HERE TO ENTER AT SNOW SPORTS NZ
Any queries please contact the Race Coordinator: Robyn Millar ucssevent@gmail.com or 0275 766 966
This event is brought to you by Wanaka Snowsports Club & Cardrona Alpine Resort & Mike Greer Homes |
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Wānaka Kids Club - Spring Holiday Programme |
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Kahu Youth Spring Holiday Programme
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| Delicious, nutritious and popular with kids, Subway delivers school lunches every Friday. Order online at subwayexpress.co.nz by 9am. |
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