Whatawhata School News

Kia ora e hoa

Welcome back to term four. There are exciting plans and learning programmes in our teams for the coming term and I'm looking forward to seeing this learning first hand. You will receive a newsletter from your child's class to tell you all about these. 

For the first four weeks our 12 Waikato Uni students are teaching groups and the whole class in all our classes. This means even more learning and activities for your children. We really appreciate all their hard work and efforts and are loving seeing them grow in their skills and confidence. 

I met with the Ministry of Education and our architects to try and push forward as soon as possible on our property projects. First will be the major upgrades of both Te Kaakano and Te Kaho and we are already at the final design stage on these so hope they will be able to start early in 2020. Coming later (though we really hope asap!) will be our four new classrooms. 

This week we welcomed Leo, Billie, Jack, Will, Isla, Nixon, Bertie and Lachlan into Te Kaakano and Koby into Te Raakau. Great to have you here as part of the Whatawhata community and the school kids!

Aroha nui, Matt Stockton

Just one more sleep until Ag Day!! You have all received the last information about it earlier this week. We always look forward to this special day!

If your child has an animal they should arrive at school at 9.30am, meeting on the field for lambs and goats and in Te Mahuri for chickens.

If your child does not have an animal they will start at 8.30am as normal. They will need to bring flowers and decorative items for their flower and rock activities. 

The Whaanau PTA have offered to organise food on the day for both Ag Day entrants and all other children. If you can help them with this please email them pta@whatawhata.school.nz 

We have welcomed Arihia Waikari to Whatawhata School for term four. She will be joining Te Kaakano to support our youngest children just starting their school journeys. Here's a little intro from her:

Ko Arihia Waikari ahau. I am very excited to join the Whatawhata whaanau. I live with my partner Kenny, our one year old son Rocky and our dog Rita. We love going to the beach and going for drives. I look forward to meeting you all. 

Today we said our farewells to Chris Mahon who finishes today to have her baby. We wish her the very best and can't wait to hear the news!

Next Friday we are holding our mihi whakatau to welcome all our children, whaanau and staff to the Whatawhata family who have joined us over the last two terms. 

We really hope everyone can come along at 1.30pm to be officially welcomed by us all. We will have a short, informal get together afterwards in Te Raakau. If you have younger children and other family members we’d love for them to come along too.

I am very happy to see the work being done to our? crossing, footpaths, and parking.  I think we will all be really pleased at the fixes to the potholes, reducing all the mud.  And this work will continue on to enable us to move the ? buses down further allowing spaces for more parking ? and an official 'drop off' zone.  From a H&S perspective, this makes me really pleased to see us making this a safer space for our Kura. Can I please remind you all to drive slowly and carefully around school. Once everything is complete we'll issue our updated parking and crossing rules. 

Remember with it now being term 4, we require our kids to be wearing Hats outside at playtimes and for any outdoor activities. We are not quite there with the weather yet ? but it is something to start reminding our kids and Whaanau about. ?

Its National Shake Out day today. All our classes took part today, learning to Drop, Cover, Hold. They did a great job in knowing what to do in keeping themselves safe

Christine Foster

We are excited to let you know that the link to purchase school photos will be sent out via email this week! Please keep an eye out for an email coming from “Photopilot” where you will see your child’s individual portrait, any sibling photo’s & the class photo.

We have also included Kapa Haka photos this year which is great. Remember a large portion of all sales goes to supporting our school and this year we are fundraising for our mini library and outdoor activities. Thanks for your support!

Staff have been employed for our new expanded after school care. Two venues are now up and running (Te Mahuri and Te Raakau). All we are waiting for is the official go-ahead from the Ministry of Social Development and we can expand after school care to cater for more children.

As soon as we have the green light we will contact everyone on the waiting list. If you are wanting to enrol your child into after school care please email Warren warrenw@whatawhata.school.nz 

The Board of Trustees has approved a teacher only day for Tuesday 29th October 2019. This is the day after Labour Day. 

Staff will be using the day to start to redevelop our school curriculum to ensure it is relevant for our our vision and guiding principles, that is supports the latest thinking about effective teaching and learning, that all our current staff have an input and that we are consistent in our approaches and expectations. The last time we did this was 5 years ago so it is well overdue. 

This day is part of the recent agreement between the teachers union and the government. This means this day will not need to be made up.

Thanks in advance for your support.

Just letting you know that your statements will be sent out via email tomorrow. Sorry they're a bit late due to school holidays. They included any trips for this term where we already know the cost. 

Unless it is school holidays statements are sent out by 10th of each month so if you don't receive one please email office@whatawhata.school.nz

For the last few years the school has been running a cohort entry process for our new 5 year olds starting school. Cohort entry is when new entrants start school in groups through the year rather than on their fifth birthday.

This has proved really successful at school for both children and for teachers and almost all parents have supported it, so we want to formalise this with the Ministry of Education as the process for all children first starting school from 2020. This means children starting school for the first time will only be able to start on the eight predefined dates through the year (start and mid of each term) after their fifth birthday, though parents can choose which of these. 

We want to hear from anyone potentially affected, including parents and local early learning providers. If you have anything you want to share or have questions in regards to this please email Matt before 31st October. If you want to find our more see this Ministry webpage. 

I thank the Whaanau PTA team for their amazing work in washing, sorting and informing families about lost property. This has been on display for the last week. There is an awful lot that still remains. 

To manage this moving forward we will set up some clothes bins by Te Pihinga sorted by size and any lost property will go in there. Twice a term we will empty those bins, reuniting named items and recycling unnamed items. 

If you know your child has lost something get them to check regularly.