Newsletter - Week 7, Term 4

Greenmeadows School 29th November 2022

PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

Tēnā koutou kātoa,

The Tōtara students and their teachers had a week of very successful camps last week.

The Year 5 students went to Tutira for two separate two and a half day stints. This is the first time we have used the Guthrie-Smith Centre for a camp and it was a fantastic venue.

Seventy-six Year 6 students also spent the week in Wellington enjoying the same fun-filled time away that we have done for the past thirteen years. The parents who accompanied both camps made wonderful contributions and we appreciate them giving their time and energy. I also want to acknowledge the teachers who readily give up their time to plan and lead these camps away from their families as well. These weeks are exhausting for staff, but they so readily give up their time to create these opportunities for the children.

The children were great to take away and always received compliments for the way that they represented themselves and our school.

We also look forward to this coming weekend when a team of GMS students go to the national robotics competition in Auckland. This team of keen electronics experts will be accompanied by Mr Ball - who was one of the camp teachers last week. We send our best wishes to these students representing GMS at a national level for the first time.

Ka kite anō,

Mark Johnson

Principal

GREENMEADOWS SCHOOL PRIZE-GIVING AND BREAKUP - CHANGED TO WEDNESDAY 14TH DECEMBER

We have previously advised that our school breakup was going to be on 13th December. Unfortunately this put us in a situation where we were going to be at the same time as Taradale Intermediate's prize-giving. We want to avoid this if at all possible, so have made the decision to move the prize-giving to Wednesday 14 December.

Wednesday 14th December at 6.30pm under He Kapua.

All children are expected to attend and need to be in their full school uniform (hats not required). Children need to be lined up on the school field before 6.20pm in their class groups.

If you are a first time attendee, it is worth noting that parking can get difficult around the school with large numbers of vehicles arriving. So allow yourselves plenty of time to get settled.

If the weather doesn’t allow the prize giving to go ahead, we will communicate with whānau in the following ways:-

❖ via the GMS Facebook page

❖ send out an alert via the GMS App If the prize giving is postponed from WEDNESDAY, then it will be held on Thursday 15th December starting at 12.00pm.

Finally be aware that the school day will start later at 9.30am (and not 9.00am) on the day after the break up.

END OF YEAR REPORTS

End of year reports will be sent home on the afternoon of Tuesday 13th December. Our teachers have put an incredible amount of time and care into the preparation of these reports. We hope these will give you a clear summary of how each child has progressed over the 2022 year.

Also on Tuesday 13th December, the children will be given a stationery list for next year. Stationery packs are available at Hawkes Bay Office Products in Wakefield Street, Onekawa. If your child's stationery list gets mislaid or doesn't find its way home, there are copies of these on the school website www.gms.school.nz

PREPARING FOR 2023 - MEET THE NEW TEACHER

During the afternoon of Tuesday 13th December all the children will get the opportunity to meet their new teacher for the 2023 year and visit their new classroom. We do this to give them a chance to settle in and get used to who their teacher will be prior to the holidays.

The role of the parent is critical on this day, as well as leading up to this time. This is especially so if the classroom that the child ends up in, may not be the one they have imagined that they want. For some students it can be a stressful time at the thought of leaving one classroom or teacher.

2023 SCHOOL ORGANISATION

We are in the position to clarify organisation of the school for next year.

Firstly, we are going to be renaming the school classrooms - to something a little bit more logical and with a reduced confusing line up 'A's and 'B's around the place! We can also make more of a logical flow through the school as the numbers currently do not go in sequence.

The plan is:

Rooms '1a', '1b', '2a' and '2b' remaining as those numbers

While the temporary prefabs are here we will still call them '3a' and '3b'. They due to be taken away at the end of Term 2.

THEN the complicated bit:

Block I becomes '3', '4' and '5 (today are Rooms 5, 6 and 7 respectively)

Block D becomes '6' (currently Room 11), '7' (now Room 10), '8' (currently Room 9) and '9' (currently Room 8)

Block B becomes '10' (Room 15b now), '11' (now Room 15a), '12' (currently Room 14b) and '13' (currently Room 14a).

The new part of Block B:

* Room 14 (presently Jess Harvey)

* Room 15 (currently Chris Sullivan)

* Room 16 (where the temporary office currently is) and

* Room 17 (presently Marty Gibbs).

We will call the space where the library is at present Room 18 if and when it is required.

Confused???? Hopefully it will become clear with new signs in place in the new school year.

Staff allocations for 2023 (using the new numbering system):

Kōwhai Syndicate

Room 1a – Shari Mackay New Entrants

Room 1b – Anna Murphy New Entrants

Room 2a – Helen Harvey Year 2 students

Room 2b – Marcia Carpenter Year 2 students

Room 5 – Andy Mackay Year 2 students

Room 16 – Paula Kinsey Year 1 students

Room 18 – Ali de Lange and Nicole Johnson Year 1 students

Pohutukawa Syndicate

Room 6 – Monique Cowie Year 3 and 4 students

Room 7 – Jane McCosh Year 3 students

Room 8 – Shona Millner Year 3 students

Room 9 – Ceirwyn Ware Year 4 students

Room 11 – Mahia Isherwood Year 3 students

Room 12 – Toni Smith Year 4 students

Room 13 – Sarah Groenveld Year 4 students

Tōtara Syndicate

Room 3 – Cassie Vella Year 5 students

Room 10 – Dan Ball Year 6 students

Room 14 - Jane Carter Year 5 students

Room 15 – Amy Tonks Year 5 and 6 student

Room 17 – Marty Gibbs Year 6 students

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PTA CHRISTMAS RAFFLE

The GMS Kiwi Christmas Raffle is back! Last year, we raised over $10,000 for new playgrounds. Let's do it again! We have amazing donations coming in. If you have a donation for the raffle, please give to your child to take to their classroom or drop it into the school office. Once donations are all collected, photos will be taken of the prizes, put up on our GMS PTA Facebook page and in the school newsletter.

If you would prefer not to participate in this year's raffle, please send the sheets back to your child's teacher tomorrow as all sheets must be accounted for.

Please put your raffle ticket sheets and money in a named envelope and return to school no later than Friday 9th December.

Raffle will be drawn at school on Wednesday 14th December. Winners will be notified by phone.

Extra tickets available at school office.

All proceeds will go towards the new senior playground. If you have any questions please email pta@gms.school.nz

LAST DAY OF 2022 - Friday 16 December

The final day for school this year is Friday 16 December. School finishes at 12.00pm on this day.

TERM DATES 2023

Below are the term dates our school is going to be using next year. We have opted for a later start to the year, simply to allow as much of the construction work to be completed. The later start gives more chance to move into the (hopefully) finished off administration area at the front of the school.

Term Dates 2023

Term 1 7th February - 6th April

Term 2 24th April - 30th June

Term 3 17th July - 22nd September

Term 4 9th October - 20th December

As we are starting later, this means we will go later into December which will also be different to a number of other schools.

SCHOOL READING BOOKS AND JOURNALS

We are looking for any reading books that belong to the school - if you have any lying around home, please send them back to school so Mrs Cunningham can do her end of year stocktake.

SANITARIUM WEETBIX KIDS TRYATHLON

Entries are now open for the Sanitarium Weetbix Kids TRYathlon, which is to be held on Wednesday 15th February 2023 at the Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park, Hastings.

This popular event encourages kids of all sporting abilities aged between 6 and 15 to get out and give it a TRY!

Full information is now available on our school website, just follow the links under the Sports tab. All registrations are made online, go to https://tryathlon.co.nz and make sure you tick the box to join our GMS school group. We look forward to a huge event with lots of GMS children involved.

SCHOOL CANTEEN NEWS

The school canteen is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. All orders are to be done online through Kindo, click on the link below to create an account if you haven't already:-

https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/flow_join.shtml

Please encourage your children to speak up if there is anything wrong or missing from their lunch order. Its too hard for Mrs Batt to put this right a day later, it needs to be dealt with then and there.