Pembroke School Newsletter

Kia ora koutou,

It's wonderful to be back for Term 4, with a busy and exciting term of learning and opportunities ahead. Starting off the term with a great over night camp with Kowhai Class at Eltham Presbyterian Camp. The students enjoyed exploring Lake Rotokare, where they learned about traditional uses of plants and the importance of protecting our endemic and native wildlife followed by a fun-filled afternoon at the Hawera Aquatic Centre, racing down the waterslide and relaxing in the pools. We ended the day with a campfire, toasting marshmellows and making s'mores.

Day two was spent at camp, where it was great to see the students embracing new experiences, whether discovering activities they love or challenging themselves with things outside their comfort zone. Canoeing emerged as a popular activity that many are keen to try again.

Attendance Reminder

A quick reminder about the importance of regular school attendance and arriving at school on time. Please ensure your child arrives at school by 8:50 a.m. to settle in and be ready to start the day. Being at school every day is crucial for their learning. Last term, we noticed some significant absenteeism.

It is important to understand the impact of absenteeism on your child's learning. They not only miss the day of learning they are away on, they also miss key information about the learning they are doing in class and this has a flow on effect on their learning. Supporting your child to attend school every day gives them the best chance to engage with their learning fully.

The government has clear expectations regarding school attendance, including what counts as justifiable and unjustifiable absences. This information is available in our school office.

Supporting Learning at Home

You play a vital role in your child's education. Helping your child complete their home learning allows them to practice, consolidate, and retain information in their long-term memory. This collaboration between home and school enhances your child's learning journey, ensuring they make the most of their educational experiences. Please don't under estimate the important role you play in helping your child to make the most of their learning and achieve to their highest potential. If you need support with this please see your child's teacher. They are happy to work with you.

School Uniform

By and large you are all doing a fantastic job of supporting your child/ren to wear their correct school uniform. Thank you. There's a bit of a trend for boys to wear long legged 'bike shorts/skins' under their school shorts. Just a reminder that if boys want to wear these they need to be black.

Term One and Four are sunsafe terms. All children are supplied with a blue sunhat, or can purchase a school sunhat from the office for $21.50. Rata Class have a black school sunhat on loan in the smaller size.

School Production

We are incredibly impressed by the enthusiasm and attitude of all our students towards the production. With this being our second large scale production they have hit the ground running and it is set to be an excellent show. A huge thank you to the Stratford District Council for their Creative's Grant that allows us to put on the show at the TET Theatre and ensure a quality performance.

Pembroke School Athletics Day

This coming Thursday we will be hosting our own Athletics Day, this is a new event on our school calendar. Those that place from our Year 5-8s will go on to represent the school at the Small and Rural Schools Athletic Championships in Inglewood on Nov 6th. You are welcome to come along and join us.

We look forward to a great term, as always, please come and see us if you have any questions or concerns. We are more than happy to meet with you.

Ngā mihi,

Wendy Single

PRESS HERE

Link to the Relationship and Sexuality Curriculum Information for Parents and Whanau

It is important that you know what is in the curriculum so that you are able to share what you want this to look like for your tamariki in relation to learning in our school context. Please take a look and come along to our hui so that you understand what we are currently doing at Pembroke School and also provide feedback about what you would like this to look like in the future.

Gala preperations are well underway. We are super appreciative of all the hard work that is going in behind the scenes and the support of whanau to ensure that this is an awesome day. If you have not managed to make it along to a Gala Meeting, please come along this coming Friday so that you are in the loop about how the day runs and how you can help out. This is for all parents, the more the merrier and we'd love you to come along.

There are two boxes in the front foyer for your grocery items and mystery bottles.

We are still seeking donations for the Spin the Wheel, this operates as a quick fire raffle. If you are able to donate, have a business or know someone who does and can ask them for a donation this would be greatly appreciated.

It is not too late for Silent Auction items also.

Please refer back to your Gala Notices about the other help needed such as baking, home made sweets and a cake for our infamous Cake Auction!

With bouncy castles, lots of games and activities, raffles and great food we are looking forward to a wonderful Pet's Day and Gala.

Many hands make light work and your help makes all the difference. Thank you!

We have been incredibly fortunate to receive some amazing funding recently for various projects to help set our tamariki up for success.

1. Junior Play Area off Rata Class

For some time we have been working on developing an outdoor Junior Play Area off the side of Rata Class. In 2023 we recieved funding from TET to turf this area and put in a sunshade. This year we have recieved funding from Sport NZ's Tu Manawa fund for outdoor play equipment for this area. We are waiting on confirmation from the ministry in regards to a fencing project so that we can commence setting this up.

This space will provide a rich play setting designed to spark imaginative and creative play, helping to support skills such as oral language, problem solving and the development of relationships. It will help bridge the transition between ECE and school and also provide a place for students who need time to desensitise and have space from the busyness of the classroom.

We have purchased lots of great outdoor equipment with the funding and area really looking forward to setting up this area.

2. Speech Language Support Funding

We have been fortunate to recieve some funding for a kaiawhina kaiako (teacher aide) to work with individuals and small groups to support them with speech language. Sadly accessing a speech language therapist in Taranaki is incredibly challenging and has been for some time. At the moment there is no Speech Language therapist available to schools in our area. Fortunately we have had a kaiawhina kaiako who has worked to develop skills in this area and we have secured some funding from the Toi Foundation's Programme Grant for them to bridge this gap in the interum.

3. Library Upgrade

As you will be aware we have been working hard to upgrade our library and make great books accessible to your tamariki. We strongly value having a great range of books available to encourage all our tamariki to be readers. We know that reading plays a crucial role in your child's success at school and we become good readers by reading and by being read to. One of my favourite quotes is 'Reading is the breathing in and writing is the breathing out'. In order for our tamariki to be good writers they need to be engaged in reading and hearing great writing from a variety of authors. One way you can support your child to enjoy success at school is to be a reading family. Making reading part of your nightly bedtime routine is one of the easiest ways to do this. We want to support you in being a reading family, so we have invested and will continue to invest in a great range of library books for your child to bring home and share with you. This year we have invested our Annual Toi Foundation Grant in purchasing more shelving and books for the library. Please make sure you help your child to look after these books and regularly return them to school so they can issue new ones. A big thank you to Ms Ashby, Sarah and Oliver who gave a day in the school holidays to help sort out old books and set up new ones.

4. New Sports Tops for All Tamariki

This has been a project that Mr Sharp and I have been working on for quite some time now since the introduction of our new school uniforms. We know that it has been less than ideal to be using school uniform tops on sports days and now we are very happy to be in a position to purchase new sports tops for our school thank to NZCT (New Zealand Charitable Trust). We will be purchasing a variety of sizes and these will be issued to students on sports days to wear. Not only will they be a more appropriate clothing option, I am sure we will all feel a greater sense of school pride in our new tops.

After all the hard work and anticipation it was finally the last week of Term Three and our senior class got to head off on camp. They travelled to Wellington and spent a week that was so jam packed full of different activities that there is no way I will capture it all here in a few paragraphs, but I'll do my best.

Day one was a big drive to Wellington with only a couple of short stops along the way. We made it to Porirua for a look around the Pataka art gallery and an art lesson. Then we headed just around the corner to the local pools for a swim, complete with waterslide and wave pool. After sharing our first dinner together we headed to Wellington Zoo where we got taken on a night tour of the zoo by two wonderful zoo keepers. Then it was time to settle in for the night. We were all up bright and early the next morning to pack our gear, eat some breakfast and be ready by 7.45am for a morning tour with the zoo keepers before the zoo opened to the public. There was lots of time for asking all the questions we had about the animals and having two experts on hand to answer them.

We left the zoo just before lunch and headed a park by the beach to refuel, have a stone skimming competition and play a little bit of cricket. Then it was on to a round of mini golf at Carlucci land, a very inventive mini putt course made using lots of old recycled metal objects. On our way to our next accomodations we had a slightly less welcome adventure when we had a bit of van trouble. The kids were troopers though and made it so much easier for the adults to problem solve what needed to happen to get them to Brookfield and eventually have a later than planned dinner and head to bed so we could be ready for the next day.

Day three was a day of adventure with us enjoying everything that Brookfield had to offer. Orienteering, kayaking, team building exercises, flying fox and obstacle course. But some of the biggest highlights came on the massive abseiling tower. Watching the children all give it a try and push themselves way past their comfort zones was such a cool moment for everyone involved. After they had all had a chance to tackle the abseiling it was off to do some ice skating. That evening was time for one of the activities the children had been the most excited about, spotlight and bonfire night. We had a great time around the campfire with some very enthusiastic singing, lots of laughter and of course some marshmallows to roast over the fire.

Day four saw us heading to Te Papa where the lovely Miro took us for a guided tour around the Gallipoli exhibit and we then broke up into our activity groups and explored the rest of Te Papa for a while. In the afternoon we went to the Weta workshop for a guided tour where we got to see and hold a bunch of different things that have been created by Weta to use in different movies. Then we sat down to do a sculpture workshop with the guidance of two Weta workshop employees. I know this was a huge highlight for a lot of our children.

Then it was Friday and time to pack up and leave Brookfield behind. We made our way in to the city one last time and visited Parliament where we had a guided tour and learnt lots about what happens at the Beehive. Then it was time to make the long drive back to Stratford and be reunited with our families. I know that there were lots of tired children arriving home and many of them will be enjoying the holidays and the time to put their feet up a little. I hope they have shared lots of their own little highlights with you and that they have a wonderful memory to keep forever of their Wellington camp.

On the last week of the term we had an Action Day, with our Year 7-8s away our Year 5 and 6s really stepped up and were great leaders. As always our tamariki were amazing, pitching in and getting some great actions achieved. We got stuck into the gardens with lots of weeding and moving of bark and they are looking great! We also planted out more plants and all worked together to tidy up the mindfulness garden as well as reimagine how this space will work as we have a real flow through of water in this area when it rains. We had a wonderful whanau donate not only donate some potting mix and seedlings, potting these out with the kids, they also built amazing shelving in the bottle house for growing the seedlings to be sold at the gala. Thank you to everyone that helped out and also to Mr Dent who has continued to dedicate his time to our school, helping to keep our school looking great!

Week 9 was Art Week at Pembroke School, this is a yearly event where we create all our art projects for the Pets Day art display. Each student has to complete four pieces of art and every year we have a different theme that the teachers set their projects around. This year our theme is Past, Present and Future and this theme led to some interesting art projects across the school. Art is an important part of our school curriculum and sometimes it doesn't get the full amount of attention we would like to give it when we are busy with our day to day learning. So much learning and creativity takes place during art week and the classes are a busy hive of industry, often with several projects on the go simultaneously. This week for our school is a chance to really dive deep into the arts and take part in a time honoured rural school tradition of creating art to be judged at pet day. I know I have memories of creating art at school for this purpose and there is a wonderful symmetry that my child will have similar memories once they are grown. We look forward to having all of the children's hard work and learning on display on the 1st of November.

Last week we had a focus on our value of Ambition, these are some students who have been particularly shining in that value.

Rata class - Ryan Chesswas: For showing Ambition in his learning by trying really hard with his writing and becoming so much more independent. Well done You Rock!

Tawa class - Tinayla Bound-Walsh: For showing Ambition by applying themselves and being thoughtful about how to take their learning to the next level.

Kōwhai class - Jahkoda Smith: For showing Ambition in his learning by applying himself and being thoughtful about how to take his learning to the next level.

Rimu class - Bryah Hancock-Bland: For showing Ambition in their learning by applying handwriting to her writing book and seeking clarification when needed.

Rimu class - Savannah Stone: For showing Ambition in their learning by asking for home learning each week and wanting to complete it.

Some dates to mark on your calendar for Term Four.

Please note we will be doing Star Student, End of Term Awards and House Champion Lunch in Week 1 next term due to Rimu being away at camp in Week 10.

Monday 14th October: First day of Term Four.

Thursday 17th October: Year 5-6 Overnight Camp

Monday 21st October: Swim Safe Sessions at school.

Wednesday 23rd October: Relationship and Sexuality Education Hui, 5.30pm in Totara

Thursday 24th October: Pembroke School Athletics Day

Friday 25th October: School Photos

Monday 28th October: Labour Day - No School

Friday 1st November: Pet Day for Domestic Pets

Saturday 2nd November: Agricultural Pet Day and Pembroke Gala Day

Wednesday 6th November: Athletics Championships at TET Stadium, Inglewood

Friday 8th November: Grandparents Day

Tuesday 12th November: Year 3-4 Tabloid Sports at Midhirst

Thursday 12th December: School Production

Note: Please check the school calendar on your Etap App to keep up to date with what is happening at school. Thank you!