Pāpāmoa Primary

Kia ora whānau,

Welcome back to Term 4! What a beautiful start to the term we've had weather-wise.

A special welcome to all of our new families who have joined the school this term. We had 12 New Entrant students start on day one, along with a number of other students across the school, including international families from Korea and the United States. A very special welcome to you all.

Last week was an outstanding start to our Year 5-6 camps, with the entire Motiti team travelling up to Ngamuwahine Lodge in the Kaimais for two 3-day camps. From high ropes and the zipline, to laser tag and probably the best waterslide in the Bay, the kids and parents had an amazing time. The beautiful week of weather certainly helped! This week, we have Te Manawanui up on camp from today through until Friday to enjoy the same experience.

I would like to say a special thanks to the parents who have given their time to support the kids on camp. Without parent support, camps like these would not be possible. Likewise, a massive thanks to our teaching team for the time and energy they put into setting up these camps.

It is great to see our athletics season kicking off with our Year 3-4 athletes today. On Friday, we have both the Karewa and Matakana athletics happening. It is so nice to see so many parents coming in to support the kids in these events.

The week after next, our school will be visited by the Education Review Office (ERO). ERO is the New Zealand government's external evaluation and education review agency. ERO reviewers evaluate schools and then publish reports so families and communities know how well local education providers are performing. We look forward to sharing with ERO about our school and then sharing those outcomes with you as families.

Thank you to all of you who have connected to Hero, our new student management system. The best way to stay connected with things at school—and to avoid clutter in your inbox—is to download the Hero app, which can be found on both the Google Play and Apple App stores. On the app, you will get all communication like this newsletter and anything that is specific to your child/ren. On the app, you can also submit your child's absences from school. The more people we have connected to the app, the better!

Later this week, we will start our Scholastic Book Fair in the school hall. If you are able to put some time aside to visit the fair, that would be awesome. Any purchases support the school in getting additional books for our library. To coincide with the book fair, we have our annual Book Character Dress-Up Day on Thursday next week, so please mark this in your calendar.

Lastly, for your diary: Please mark in the calendar that Friday, November 20th, is a Teacher Only Day. This has been in our calendar since the beginning of the year and is one of the MOE-approved school days this year. The school will be closed for instruction on this day.

Ngā mihi,

Matt Simeon

Principal