Greetings Tauriko School Community. Welcome to Week 6 of Term 3.

And with a whizz and a roar the term is officially over halfway and Spring is just around the corner, bringing not just daffodils but copious amounts of rain! 
In the lead-up to our annual Ag Day, it is great to hear about the various goats, lambs and calves that are ‘in training’, even the chickens are getting a mention. 

Congratulations to Rooms 5 and 6 for taking out the overall prize for the PTA Mathathon. Both classes are looking forward to their trip to Flip Out in Week 8. Thanks again to Flip Out for sponsoring this great prize for the two classes. Other classes to be acknowledged with a special lunch provided by the PTA in Week 8 are Rooms 3, 10 and 13. We are so fortunate to have such an active, enthusiastic PTA!

This week we welcomed Constable Emma Buxton into the school. Constable Emma worked in each of the Year 5 -8 classes with a specific focus on Cyber Safety. Having worked in the school earlier in the year as part of the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme this was a perfect opportunity to revisit and highlight key ideas for students as part of staying safe on-line.
Following my discussion with Constable Emma, there are a few key messages for all parents that I would like to share:

· Be involved with your child on-line – know what they are doing, know about their social conversations. Are they appropriate? Are they kind?

· Actively and regularly check in when they are on-line.

· Ensure that the real age is entered into sites – on most sites there are restrictions to messages or language used based on the age entered.

· Consider screen time – is there a balance of on-line and off-line time?

· A great website to regularly visit is NetSafe https://www.netsafe.org.nz/advice/parenting/
This website is highly recommended and has excellent advice for parents.
These messages are timely reminders for us all as we work together to support our children to develop into digital citizens who actively model our school values of Respect, Integrity, Innovation and Excellence.

I had the pleasure of watching the 'Stand Up, Speak Out' Poetry and Speech Celebration for Years 1 - 4 students on Tuesday afternoon. What a wonderful achievement to be selected for this event, it was obvious that much preparation had gone into the learning and delivery of each poem and speech. It was also fantastic to see so many families there – proud as punch, as was I! Congratulations again to the students who shared their poem or speech.

This morning I was a very proud member of the audience as selected finalists from Years 5-8 presented their speeches. Thank you to Jill Taylor who judged the speeches with her usual dignity and wisdom.
Congratulations to all finalists for a stunning effort. All the very best to our winners - Lacey Graham (Year 5), Rylee van Dijk (Year 6), Matthew Couper (Year 7) and Ivy Anderson-Podmore (Year 8). These students now go on to represent Tauriko School at the Inter-School Speech Competitions.

Finally,  thank you to all the parents for their support and understanding regarding the black gates being locked each day between 8.45am and 2.15pm for health and safety reasons. For parents who do park in the drop-off bay during the day, a pathway has been cleared through the native garden alongside the fence so you can walk safely to the office without having to go on the road. This is a timely reminder that all parents and visitors to the school during the day are required to enter the school via the office.

From sports to speeches, Inquiry to Maths, Languages to the Arts, there are wonderful things happening across our school. Thumbs up to all our great learners!!

Lisa Rose
Acting Principal
To read our full newsletter please click here:  Newsletter No 9 

Greetings Tauriko School Community

An industrious fortnight has passed since the launch of our revamped newsletter. Thank you for the positive feedback about the new format, it’s mobile-friendly viewing is certainly a hit!

Congratulations to Mackenzie Coster, Jasmine de Buisson and Jorja Clark for being the first students to write articles for this newsletter, the three of you can be very proud of this achievement.

Learners across the school have been busy over the last few weeks, with all things mathematical being in the limelight in preparation for the Mathathon fundraiser, CCC pumping each Friday afternoon, Literacy learning in the form of Nursery Rhymes, procedural writing and novel studies, rigorous sports sessions as our Year 5 and 6 students get ready to compete in the West Cluster Winter Sports days, and boot camps and physical education skills for our Tall Poppies as they work towards Sports Camp in Week 10.

A special thanks to Nika Rikiriki for his support and expertise on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for all things sporty!

Teaching staff have been hard at work too. We now have our staff meetings in the refurbished library which has proved to be a very conducive environment for learning with the different furniture to suit individuals and the setting appealing to everyone. 

A key focus for staff this term is to review and redefine our Tauriko Inquiry journey. This week’s meeting evoked much hearty discussion as we began to unpack and discuss key principles and progressions around ‘learning to learn’, 21st Century skill sets and learning tools – all of which will in turn lead to consistency, shared understandings and quality embedded practice across the school. What an incredibly talented, passionate group of teachers, it is an absolute privilege working alongside them each day.

Valuable questions to ask your children regularly are our 4 key learning questions:

· What are you learning?

· Why do you think you are learning this?

· How will you know you have learnt it?

· What are your next steps for learning?

These 4 questions are consistent across our school as we model and encourage all students from Years 1-8 to articulate their learning.

Thanks to our incredible PTA for all their hard work and effort with our recent Mathathon. What an excellent outcome with a total of $8832.00 raised for our tailored outdoor Maths Zone.  A special thank you to Jolene and Leah for their extraordinary effort thus ensuring the Mathathon was a success.

Congratulations to all the students who worked so tirelessly to learn their Mathathon lists and collect sponsorship as part of the challenge,  and a huge thanks also to families and whanau for their support.

Lisa Rose

Acting Principal

To read our full newsletter please click here:  Newsletter No 8 

Welcome to Term 3

Greetings and a warm welcome to existing and new students for Term 3. I have been so impressed with the way our learners have started the term. We talk about our synapses firing in our brains to make new pathways and this is certainly happening as I walk in and around classes each day.

I am thrilled to welcome new staff members to our teaching team:

In the Wee Sprouts room we have Liz Kriel and Nicole Johnson. They are both super excited about welcoming our five-year old students to school and have great ideas for making transition to school and first steps for learning successful.

                Nicole                                                                                                Liz

                                                                              

In Room 8 we welcome Tim Stanley who is back home in NZ following a teaching stint in Africa. Students across the school are certainly excited to see Mr Stanley out in the playground at break times.

                                                                 

As you will have noticed the newsletter has been redeveloped, bringing to you school news in a mobile friendly format. We are hoping to minimise the number of paper copies being printed so if you are not already receiving the newsletter by email and would like to, then please email the school office with this request.

At the end of Term 2, there were a number of celebrations that as a learning community we were extremely proud of and certainly acknowledged that we are hugely competitive out in the wider field – you can read about these successes in the articles of this newsletter. Well done and thanks to the staff who have supported these opportunities to happen which in turn have enabled our students to create the many successes.

Success with a TECT application has resulted in the purchase of 84 ipads and storage / charging cupboards. Existing ipads have been updated and streamlined by ITed Services, our IT service providers so all classes have access to a number of devices. We are extremely grateful to TECT for their support as this has enabled us to have a healthy injection of new technology into our classes.

Thank you to all families who are using the drop-off area each morning and afternoon, your consideration for each other at these peak times is certainly appreciated. A reminder to all that vehicles must not be left unattended in the access lanes.

The chilly mornings have certainly kicked in recently with a couple of crisp frosts. Make sure those extra pieces of clothing are named so that as they are shed during the day they don’t end up in our lost property box!

All in all - an awesome start to Term 3! Thanks again to our amazing staff for all their hard work over the break in preparation for the term ahead.

Lisa Rose 

Acting Principal

To read our full newsletter please click here:  Newsletter No 7