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PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
John Goulstone
Kia ora koutou
The year 6 leavers dinner was held on Wednesday night here at school. It is one of the highlights of the year for me as I listen to the children’s speeches and reminisce about their time at Palmerston Primary. Thank you to everyone who helped out and made it a special night for our tamariki. They were and are a great group of students and it will be interesting to see where they get to in the years ahead. It is also a reminder that the school year is almost done. The end of the school year always brings a lot of extra paperwork for teachers as well as getting the classes ready for their carpets to be cleaned. We try to keep the routines going for as long as possible for the children so they don’t get into the festive mood too early although Christmas crafts creep into the programme, especially in the last week. Hopefully the weather will play ball for our final assembly and picnic on Thursday 15 December. The long range forecast is for a 30% chance of rain however that is still too far out to be accurate. We will have the picnic and assembly on the grassed area outside the Activity Centre if fine or under the canopy if a bit iffy. A hand to stack the seating up at the pool at the end of the night would be much appreciated. We will start the picnic at 5pm with the assembly starting around 5:45pm with proceedings wrapping up by 7pm at the latest.
On Monday the children will visit their new class for 2023. For some children it will be the same classroom with a different mix of students. In a five classroom school there are limited options for how we mix the children up and generally there will be two year groups in each class. The cross school mix is Room 1 NE/Year 1; Room 2 year 1 and 2; Room 3 year 2 and 3; Room 4 year 4 and 5; Room 6 year 5 and 6. The classroom teachers will stay the same except for Room 3 where Eliza Collings and Kirstin Engelbrecht will share the classroom - Eliza will be Monday, Tuesday and half Wednesday and Kirstin half Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
We have a good group of people interested in the swimming lessons the week before school starts so this is definitely going ahead. Donna Brook will be in contact with you in the new year with more details.
A number of students bike or scooter to school. Children’s road sense can be problematic at times. It is important that if they are biking then they stay to the left on the road and are prepared to stop at give way signs. If scootering on the road then the same rules apply. It is especially important when coming down Stromness Street to have the ability to stop at the give way sign. I have asked the School Community Police Officer to run a cycle safety session early next year to raise awareness about using the road safely. I will also investigate whether the Stromness Street give way sign would be better as a stop sign to reinforce the need for bikers and scooters to stop before proceeding across.
Please check the lost property and encourage your child to bring their clothes home leading up to the end of next week, especially wet togs and towels! Also please check for school library books or readers that are lying around home and send them to school so we can do a stocktake ahead of 2023.
The consultation question below is live on our website. Please take a moment to respond. It is under the tab ‘other’. The responses will feed into our year end review as well as let us see how useful this tool is as a way to seek feedback.
What have you been seeing and hearing from your child(ren) about what they've been learning this year in the concept based curriculum?
Hei kona mai I roto I nga mihi, Goodbye for now and thanks
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