Talofa

The end of Term 2 - how quickly the time flies and we hope you all have a wonderful restful term break. Thanks to the many whānau who joined us for our Matariki evening - it was really a lovely occasion. My thanks to the staff and board who worked to organise this night. Of course, our thanks to our tamariki who loved sharing their learning and their waiata with you all. 

With targeted teaching, our writing success has gradually increased over the past few years and as a result, a good portion of our senior class is moving into Level 5 (Year 9 & 10 of the curriculum). With this success throughout the school, our challenge was to develop a way of sharing the many amazing pieces of writing that our students create and so we have created the St Anthony’s Author’s website to provide an authentic audience for our tamariki. Please take the time to read those that have been uploaded so far from each class and do feel free to flick me an email of any that really impresses you as I will happily make a R.E.A.L post for that child. Of course for your own children, you can post it straight on for them using the R.E.A.L button feature. 

The holidays are a great time to check the uniform and ensure that your child has what they need for the next term. A friendly reminder in particular that if you are opting for a sneaker then it is a totally black version as per our uniform guidelines. I ask that you all support this. 

Please read carefully below the work of our Student Council who are loving their leadership role. Their first two events are leading the:-

• Book Character Parade - Thursday morning August 5th
• School Disco

Week 2, along with the Book Character day we will have the Book Fair Week - as usual, we will have a large selection of books for whānau and tamariki to look at in the library. We would love some help with this (2:30 - 3:15 each afternoon) so if you are happy to help please email Kirsten in the office, letting us know the days you are available.  

Please mark in your diaries now our Grandparents Day which is Wednesday, August 25th. We look forward to having a great morning with the grandparents. 

We love seeing all the sporting achievements of our tamariki - clearly, the Physical Education focus around large ball skills has been paying off for the competitions. 

Our Year 3 & 4 Mini ball team came third in their competition while our Year 5 & 6 team played a great final game-winning 25-8. They’ve shown huge improvement this term, and although they came 5th overall, they actually tied a game with the team that eventually won the division, so they can be proud of their standard of competitiveness. A great team on and off the court.

Our netball team has likewise gone from strength to strength, as they develop as a team, improving their skills each week. Malo lava to you all.

• Today - End of Term 2 for our tamariki
• Week 2 Book Fair Week with everyone in Book character costumes on Thursday, August 5
• August 4, 5:30- 6:30 - Showcasing our Intermediate Years
• August 11 - Pōwhiri and Mass to welcome our new whānau and tamariki

For Mufti Mania in 2021 we are supporting a school in West Papua called Kristus Raja School. The students at this small school have felt the impact of the pandemic and been in lockdown since March 2020! The majority of students come from poorer families and have found remote learning a real challenge. The school was built back in 1970 and the buildings are wearing out. As is tradition, we ended this term with an optional non-uniform day for the cost of a gold coin. Funds raised this year will help repair toilets and bathrooms and provide new desks, chairs and resources for students for when they come back to school.

We'd like to thank everyone who turned out for the Matariki celebrations last week. We had over 100 people there. It’s wonderful to have this time of renewal and to celebrate new beginnings. It was also an excellent opportunity to come together and welcome our new families into our school community. Thank you to the teachers for all their hard work and the Whānau group for the ideas for the evening. Special thanks to George for cooking all the sausages and the Te Maunga students and Mrs J for making the soup.

Over this past term, the Student Council has been gathering information about what students enjoy at St Anthony’s and their ideas for what else we could be doing. As a council, we collated these ideas and then presented them in syndicate meetings. 

We were concerned about how children would respond if the teachers weren’t present but everyone was really good. It seemed like the students felt really comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions. We had a great time exploring the suggestions and then deciding on what next. 

Our first two events are Book Character Week and School Disco. The Student Council will be leading these two events so please take note of the information below.

Book Character Day Is Coming Up!

It will be on August 5th, Tuesday, Term 3, Week 2 so please use the holidays to organise your costumes.

The judges will be the Student Council. (Petra Bouras, Billy Proudfoot, Chloe Blades, Marimatina Peni, James Pink, Mia Adams, and Sophia Meech.)

We will be judging the costumes on… 

Junior Winner, 

Senior Winner, 

Most Creative, 

Most Original, 

Best Group. 

We will also be doing a parade, treasure hunt, and a Kahoot to end the day!

So start planning your Character Costume!

St Anthony’s School Disco!!!

Come And Join Us At Our School Disco! 

Get ready to start groovin’ because St Anthony’s school disco is coming up! On Friday the 13th August, at 5 pm we hit the dance floor and we keep the music going until 7 pm! Come and keep the beat with us. 

We’ll be selling sausages and lollies for you to enjoy, so the parents don’t need to stress about tackling dinner! You can listen to your favourite songs, and boogie with your friends! 

Just head on down to Te Aroha block, and have a great time with your schoolmates! We hope to see you there and have a great time. 

Come show us your amazing moves, and have a blast at our School Disco! We hope to see you there! 

In Te Maunga we have undertaken a Photojournalism course. It is a 6-week course to help you take better photos that tell interesting stories. For those of you who are wondering what photojournalism is then here is an explanation… it is when you take a photo with a deeper meaning. 

In week 1 - they introduced the course. 

Week 2 - was explaining what photojournalism is. 

In week 3 - it was telling a story.

In week 4 we learned the 4 types of photography. 

Week 5 was the technicalities of photography.

And in the last week, week 6 we looked at some of the winning photos from 2019 in the Young Reporters for the Environment. 

We, Year 7 & 8s are taking part in an international competition. Our focus is on minimising plastic and after we have researched and explored solutions, we have a choice of presenting it as a photo or a written piece. So we have done this course and from this experience, I learned how to take better photos.

Shaun Pink 

Year 7

Over the past few weeks, the children have been busy learning about Matariki and preparing to celebrate the Maori New Year. They created Matariki inspired artworks to help decorate our celebration space and practised songs and dance for their performance. Their hard work helped to create a lovely atmosphere when we gathered to celebrate with whanau. Te Maunga even made hearty vegetable soups for the occasion which went down a treat! It was a wonderful celebration. In Te Moana Weta we researched the stars and legends, wrote Matariki poems and studied the symmetry of stars in Maths!

“Last Thursday the school came together for Matariki. There was a Kapa Haka performance. The songs that we sang were Utina and the Haka, Tutira mai nga iwi,  E Te Ariki and the Matariki macarena. The performance was really fun to do!” Abby

“I really liked doing the Matariki cultural celebration because we could make stars with our family and I loved eating the sausages.” Rueben

“For Matariki Te Moana made artwork with all of us reaching for the Matariki stars. We all chose a scenery and painted it with watercolours. Then we added some shapes on top of the paint. I most enjoyed adding the stars.”      Jacob

“At the Matariki celebration in our school we used many different decorations to light up the scene. One decoration were the traditional kites in the corner that the juniors made. Another was the artwork at the back that the seniors made. Another decoration were the kites/stars that I made and two others helped me a bit (Thomas and Niki). I used wool and pohutukawa sticks. They are above the kitchen.”  William

Did you know that there is lots of writing in our school? Te Moana Wēta have been busy composing a variety of poems recently and working on descriptive writing. We have challenged ourselves to use devices such as metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia and personification. We are even building up our very own poetry anthology!

“In term 2 we have been looking at descriptive writing in poems and paragraphs. First we did villian writing, each of us chose different villains, from movies or created one ourselves. Then we looked at onomatopoeia, we chose topics like the Jungle, city and noise and some people said they hate noise! This was very fun and I think we all really enjoyed it!” Issy

“A few weeks ago we had to write about villains. I chose Venom because I’m a huge fan. We had to include similes and metaphors to make our story more interesting.” Tommy

“I’m really proud of my poem because my rhyming words rhyme nicely and my topic worked out great. It was fun to write and plan, and the pop art afterwards was also really fun. I liked adding onomatopoeia as well!”    Alina

We are looking forward to seeing what you are going to write next!

Year 9 Enrolments at St Patrick's College in 2022

St Patrick’s College is now accepting enrolments for 2022 and the forms can either be downloaded from the College website – www.stpats.school.nz under Enrolments or you can request a Prospectus from the College office.  Please note that enrolments close off on Friday 30 July 2021.  

Year 9 Enrolments at St Mary's College, 2022

In the Wings Drama classes: Got a budding performer or a child who needs a boost in confidence? Check out our Drama classes for term 3, starting 4th August in Hataitai.  Trial classes available. www.inthewings.co.nz or katie@inthewings.co.nz  

Harbour City Gymnastics