HVHS Newsletter

Kia ora koutou,

Schools' Pride Week Celebration

This week we celebrated Pride Week. This is an important way for school communities to affirm that rainbow students, staff, and whānau belong. It's crucial for rainbow tamariki and rangatahi (or those with rainbow parents and whānau) to see themselves reflected at school – so they know they are OK, and can thrive, shine, and grow freely. A special thank you to Jill Skinner who facilitated our LGBTQ+ community.

Student Achievements

Our students have been busy with various sports, cultural and academic pursuits. Of particular note are our cross country athletes who competed in Christchurch last weekend at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Cross Country Championships under the guidance of teacher Eric Speakman. Highlights include:

• Toby Ireland (12CS) won gold in the T10 Junior Boys Para 3km
• Jacob Williams (9GSSP) won silver in the Year 9 Boys 3km
• Leo Hyink (9GSSP) placed 8th in the Year 9 Boys 3km
• Jessie McKenzie (12SM) placed 19th in the Senior Girls 4km
• Jacob Williams (9GSSP) , Leo Hyink (9GSSP) and Finnigan Strickland (9GSSP) won silver in the Year 9 Boys 3-Person Team.
• Jacob, Leo and Finnigan also teamed up with Toby Pepper (9BQMA), Leo Boyle (9PUPF), Matheson Porter (9PUPF) in the Year 9 Boys 6-Person Team and placed 7th.

On Sunday, three students were involved in the 4 x 2km Regional Relay Championships representing Wellington:

• Leo Hyink (9GSSP) won bronze as a member of the Wellington Year 9 Boys Relay team
• Finnigan Strickland (9GSSP) won bronze as a member of the Wellington Year 9 Mixed Relay team
• Jessie McKenzie (12SM) won bronze in the Wellington Senior Girls Relay team.

Duke of Edinburgh Award

I’m thrilled to announce that Sarah Coales, our Coordinator of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, received a prestigious long-service award at Government House last weekend. This recognition highlights her dedication and commitment to the programme over many years, in three different schools. Some of our staff completed their award with Sarah when she taught at Sacred Heart College and speak very highly of the experience. Additionally, I am delighted to share that 130 students have signed up to participate in the Duke of Edinburgh Award this year. Reflecting on her experience, Sarah remarked, "I have watched the most unlikely individuals tackle the challenges the Award brings and seen their confidence, mana and self-esteem grow as a result." This award is open to everyone and is a fantastic addition to your Curriculum Vitae. For more information about the Duke of Edinburgh Award at HVHS click here

Year 13 Future Planning

It is that time of the year when Year 13s need to start thinking about their futures. For many, it is a scary time as decisions need to be made. Some students know exactly where they are going and what they want to do. However, many are still unsure, and that is okay. Over the years, I have watched students – my own son included – complete a 180-degree turn about what they are going to study. Next week, I am meeting with a former student who has finally decided to embark on a degree and teacher training course, which she and I spoke about three years ago. It is never too late to challenge yourself or change your career or study path. School often provides you with the skills to learn new things, to persevere, to collaborate, to lead, to be part of a team – all transferable skills.

Career Path Advice

Time-tested advice suggests selecting something enjoyable, something you are good at or aspire to excel in and something that piques your interest. You need to balance practical considerations with encouragement for personal growth and discovery.

Key Points for Choosing a Career or Work Path:

1. Explore interests: identify passions and research careers aligning with your interests
2. Gain experience: seek internships or part-time jobs and volunteer in areas of interest
3. Education and training: consider further education or vocational training and embrace continuous learning
4. Financial planning: plan for the cost of education and potential loans, and research earning potential in chosen fields
5. Seek advice: talk to professionals in the field, our school’s Career Coordinators, Jude Allen and Amanda Walters, and find a mentor for guidance
6. Personal growth and flexibility: be open to changing paths and build resilience for challenges
7. Balance passion and pragmatism - balance what you love with practicality and set long-term career goals.

Good luck!

Ngā mihi nui,

Denise Johnson, Principal

• School is closed on Friday 28 June, for the Matariki public holiday.
• Free period products are available for students, they are welcome to help themselves to two packets of period products per month. With only two more weeks of Term 2 left, we also encourage students to take products home for the school holidays as well.

So far this year, students have earned house points by competing in a wide range of activities, including quizzes, volleyball, ultimate, Capture the Flag and on Athletics Day. The points for each house are close enough to be anyone's 'waka', with Pukeatua currently leading.

Results to date: 1st - Pukeatua, 2nd - Tararua, 3rd Equal - Ōrongorongo & Matairangi, 5th - Pukeariki and in 6th place is Remutaka.

'House Has Talent' in Term 3 is the next major house event on the school calendar. Students are encouraged to start prepping now!

- Jill Skinner (Teacher)

This week the school has been celebrating Pride Week. This event is organised by our Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) which is a group of LGBTQ+ students plus supporters and allies. Pride Week is an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the students within our kura, and in particular our rainbow ākonga.

We have had a number of activities running at lunchtime for students to participate in, these have included: a pride flag scavenger hunt, nail painting, face painting, tower building competition, rainbow wall of kindness, lolly scramble, pride-themed Kahoots and rainbow chalk messages on the pavements.

On Wednesday we ran a rainbow bake sale, raising over $200 for OutLine (a queer helpline service). Today we end the school week with a Wear Your Pride day, where students can visibly show their support for the queer community.

Photo credit: thank you to Eris Sabiston (13WA) and Miriam Water (9GSSP) for the Pride Week images.

- Jon Nash (Head of Maths Learning Area)

Future Topic History

Mathematics as taught in school is often ancient in the truest sense of the word. Pythagoras will be part of both the Year 10 and Year 11 work in Term 3, this dates from 500 BCE, probably even earlier. Al-Khwarizmi’s algebra that is simply a word from the title of his book “al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah” dates from 800 CE. Maths is old, very old. The flip side of this is that our Year 12 Statistics students will be studying a relatively new branch of Mathematics, the networking algorithms are named after Djikstra, Kruskal and Prim, two of whom only passed away in the last 5 years. Mathematics is an evolving global journey with the only truly common language and it belongs to all cultures.

Junior Programmes

The rewrite of our Junior Curriculum enabled us to make sure our students were as prepared as possible for the Numeracy CAA. The Year 10 students had their first attempt at the exam in week 4 of Term 2. It is an online exam set by NZQA that is sat digitally. It is notoriously wordy and one of the biggest challenges for our ākonga can be extracting the mathematics from the words. Fingers crossed that the hard work of the students and teachers pays off.

Senior Programmes

Greater specialising in the senior years has enabled students with a Calculus focus to pick up extra topics that link closely to their pathway and the future content. Similarly, the Statistics students are no longer covering algebra that they find challenging and irrelevant to their pathway. Hopefully, these changes lead to increased success for all ākonga.

A group of Year 13 Maths extension students are completing the University of Canterbury's MAT199 paper via distance learning. Students undertaking this course are continuing to flourish, with the course also being available to our international students. We have an international student in the course currently who is keeping pace with the content and the rest of the candidates which is an incredible accomplishment in a second (or maybe third) language.

Maths Competitions

The Otago Junior Maths Competition ran earlier this year, results from the first round were published previously. The second round has been completed but the results aren’t in yet. We have three more competitions in August, so keep an eye out for entry opportunities. Finally, the Maths and Science Departments are collaborating in a visit to Auckland University Medical School as part of The New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge, a competition for Year 11 students to learn about the brain, its functions and neuroscience in general. The event is run by the Australasian Neuroscience Society.

Our English Learning Area has been hosting a writing competition this term. The school-wide competition aims to find and celebrate our talented writers. Ākonga have been asked to write a short piece, no more than 1,500 words to go in the draw for some fun prizes. They are able to write any style of writing for this piece.

The final pieces of work are to be emailed to teacher Megan Tompsett at megan.tompsett@hvhs.school.nz by Friday 28 June (Week 9). The winners of the different groups will be announced during Mentor Time on Wednesday 3 July (Week Ten). There will also be a display of the different pieces submitted in the library in the first two weeks of Term 3.

We have already had a range of entries from our ākonga, across all our year levels, and we look forward to reading what they can produce over the next few weeks!

Panda’s Heroes, the Enterprise team from Tautoko - Supported Learning Centre (SLC), presented their business pitch to a team of Youth Enterprise Scheme judges at Upper Hutt Cosmopolitan Club.

The Panda’s Heroes team are up-cycling soft toys and making them into door stops, tablet stands and sensory supports. Using our school Panda mascot as our inspiration, each individualised product has a hand painted panda button.

If you are interested in purchasing one of our products; $15 for large items and $10 for small items, please contact Heather Lear at heather.lear@hvhs.school.nz for the price list and options currently available to purchase.

A team of HVHS students competed in 48Hour, New Zealand's largest guerilla filmmaking competition. Teams have just 48 hours to write, shoot, and cut a film with a given genre and a few random elements.

The 48Hour film made by Kyran Dennis (13LG), Jacob Anderson Wallace (13DL), Mātai Taptiklis (13EV), Tegwen Aberhart (13NZ) and Phoebe Lowe (13NA) was awarded 3rd place in the heat for the People's Choice Awards, a massive achievement.

Our student's film - 'Dead But Not Gone' has now premiered and can be shared. If you have a spare 4 minutes and 2 seconds, please enjoy the hard work of our amazing students by clicking here

On Monday 27 May, sixty-five dancers from Hutt Valley High School spent the day at St James Theatre showcasing their creativity at the Wellington Showquest event. The HVHS team placed second overall for the Wellington Region and received several additional awards: Best Choreography, Best Props, Highly Commended Theme and Highly Commended Lighting. An amazing result from our talented rangatahi at Aotearoa's Biggest Performing Arts Competition.

Anna Flaherty (Co-Head of the Arts Learning Area) praised our performers' generous support of other schools and their celebration of the hard work and efforts of students across the region.

This year’s Showquest event was sold out, but you can watch our students’ performance by clicking on the video below. The student-designed and produced performance focuses on sustainability and the need to be more thoughtful consumers.

Bringing together some of the finest student musicians in the Capital City, two HVHS bands competed in the recent Wellington Regional Final for Rockquest – The Boy Boilers and Dude, We’re Screwed. A huge congratulations to Seth Houghton (11MS), the drummer from ‘Dude, We're Screwed’, who won the award for Best Musicianship.

Two weeks earlier at the Wellington Tangata Beats Final, Ezekiel Fata Meafou (13JD) won the award for Best Lyrics for his song with Moana Melody. View the performances below. Thank you to the staff and whānau who tutored, directed, accompanied and supported our young musicians.

The Boy Boilers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCpnX4XalE

Dude, We’re Screwed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzgMjCIchic

Ezekiel Fata Meafou’s with Moana Melody - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1ktxNaMehk

- Kristi Tia, Sports Director

On Tuesday 11 June, we were lucky enough to travel to Whanganui High School to compete in our yearly sports exchange. It was a great day to see so many HVHS students compete and participate in various sports. Some of our sports teams didn’t get the results that they wanted, but I want to congratulate all teams on their performance and the good sportsmanship they showed, as well as representing HVHS with pride.

Thank you to our coaches/managers who travelled with the teams and were present on the day. Without you, we could not do half the things we do. Check out the results from the exchange below:

• Basketball Boys Senior A, 64-26 to WHS / MVP - Titan Kaio-Ross (11KG)
• Football Girls 1st XI, 5-1 to HVHS / MVP Jess Owens (12GL)
• Football Boys 1st XI - 0-0 draw / MVP Yaxye Axmed (13AL)
• Hockey Girls 1st XI, 4-0 to WHS / MVP Hannah Cole (13RS)
• Hockey Boys 1st XI, 6-0 to WHS / MVP Dineth Abayaranthna (12CS)
• Netball Premier 1 Girls, 33-32 to WHS / MVP Beatrix Harrison (Wa Ora)
• Netball Premier 2 Girls, 27-23 to WHS / MVP Grace Rogers (12BG)
• Rugby Girls 1st XV, 71 - 12 to WHS / MVP Mila Haami (12GL)
• Rugby Boys 1st XV, 20 -17 to HVHS / MVP Matiu Lowrie-Ronson (12NB).

Congratulations to the following students on their recent achievements:

• Aaron Chong (12RI) and Arhit Acharyya (13FL) competed in the Central Regional Badminton Tournament in Palmerston North. Their team won all their matches and the overall Competition Cup Trophy (pictured). A fantastic achievement especially as the last time the Hutt Valley u19s Badminton Team won was in 2010

• Anna Jamieson (13LG) won the Wellington and Central Powerlifting Brett Gibbs Scholarship for 2024 which will go towards travelling to the World Championships in September
• Mikayla Sola (13JD) competed at the Fiji Oceania Athletics Championships in the senior women's category and placed 9th in shotput, 7th in discus and 6th in hammer. Mikayla was the youngest competitor and is now 2nd best in New Zealand for the U20 women’s grade for hammer and 3rd best in the Pacific Island Countries in hammer and discus.

College Sport Wellington Individual Swimming Championships

Well done to all the students who competed at the CSW Individual Swimming Championships. They proudly represented HVHS and achieved fantastic results.

• Daniel Williams (13JD), competing in the 15 & over category, placed 1st in four races: the 100m Individual Medley in 58:74, 50m Backstroke in 27:83, 200m Freestyle in 1:57.38 and the 100m Backstroke in 1:08:88, and 2nd in the 50m Freestyle in 24:43
• Desmond Lin (9PUPF), racing the 14 & under category, placed 6th in 100m Breaststroke and 7th in the 50m Breaststroke
• Hannah Sampson (10MVVY), competing in the 14 & under category, placed 1st in three races: the 100m Breaststroke in 1:15:62, 50m Butterfly in 30:24 and the 100m Butterfly in 1:07:39
• Kayne Howat (11MS) in the 15 & over category placed 1st in 50m Butterfly in 25:93, 1st in 100m Butterfly in 1:02:50 and 3rd in 50m Freestyle in 24:65
• Lily Pua (10BEPC), racing in the 14 & under category, placed 3rd in three races: 50m backstroke in 32.25, 50m Backstroke in 33:70 and the 100m Butterfly in 1:18:42
  
• Olly Goodfellow (11BR), competing in the 15 & over category, placed 2nd in the 100m Butterfly in 1:10:27, 9th in the 100m Individual Medley and 9th in the 50m Butterfly
  
• Oxie Taylor (10PDHA) competing in the 14 and under category placed 5th in the 14 & Under 50m Breaststroke and 7th in the 14 & Under 100m Breaststroke and 9th in the 100m Individual Medley
  
• Samuel Li (9OADS) in the 14 and under category placed 8th in 50m Breaststroke, 14th in 100m Individual Medley and 17th in 50m Freestyle.

A Warhammer Club is starting up in Term 3 for Year 9 students. The club is for beginners and experienced players. Warhammer is a tabletop miniature wargame where players assemble and paint miniature models representing their armies.

The club will start after school in Term 3 on Wednesdays in B1 with three sessions of 90 minutes. The focus of the Warhammer Club is on painting figures rather and not gaming. If you're interested, please contact teacher Sarah Thomas at sarah.thomas@hvhs.school.nz

Students who come along with receive a free model and be introduced to a new hobby.

Our kura has opted in to a new Wellbeing focused initiative lead by the Ministry of Education and Police. The purpose of the Programme is to notify schools in a timely manner when one of its students has been affected by a family harm episode.

The Ministry of Education will manage and monitor alerts from Police and send a notification to the enrolling school or kura with no other detail other than the students name. As a result of these notifications the school or kura is then aware that a child has experienced an event within the last 24 hours and is then better able to assist these students through more appropriate and sensitive behaviour management, and the provision of additional supports when required.

This programme fits within our Child Protection policy requirements and supports a small number of selected staff to support Tamariki who may require a little extra care. Our school has created a process to ensure information is kept private and safely stored.

if you have any questions about the process contact Grace Wright (Deputy Principal) at grace.wright@hvhs.school.nz

The Coding and Animating Club is open to all year levels. It is a space for students of all levels of experience to share ideas and knowledge. Students are welcome to bring their own projects or learn how to code and animate 3D games, multiplayer games, 3D models, and complex animations.

The club runs on Thursday lunchtime in B14. For any questions, please contact Katie Long (Head of Technology Learning Area) at katie.long@hvhs.school.nz

Enrolments for 2025 are open for in-zone and out-of-zone applications. All enrolments are now completed online. Please go to the enrolment page to find the online enrolment form and key enrolment deadlines.

We strongly encourage parents and caregivers to enrol their child as early as possible. This allows us to plan for their learning needs and ensure a smooth transition to high school. An added benefit of enrolling now is that your child will be in the first group to receive the email with subject selections (many subjects have limited spaces).

If you have any questions, please email our Enrolment Coordinator, Lesley Mackay at lesley.mackay@hvhs.school.nz

The Resource Centre is running a Uniform Sale. Families can take advantage of great deals on selected uniform items:

• Tailored Black School Shorts. Now $20
• Plain Black Tailored Straight-Legged Trousers. Now $30
• HVHS Grey Pleat (with Zip Pocket) Skirts. Now $40
• HVHS Grey Unfitted/Unstructured Short Sleeved Shirts. Now $20
  
• HVHS Grey Pinstripe Fitted/Structured Short Sleeved Shirts*. Now $20.

* A fitted/structured shirt is shaped across the chest area.

Please note that sizes and quantities are limited, and all sales are final - no returns or exchanges will be accepted. If you're interested in purchasing any items, email resource.centre@hvhs.school.nz with "Uniform Sale" in the subject line.

Why the Sale? HVHS is in the process of switching uniform suppliers and is selling off the remaining stock from our old supplier. Rest assured, the design of our uniform remains unchanged; only the supplier is new. Don't miss out on this opportunity to stock up on uniform essentials at reduced prices.

We are fortunate to have Bea DnD Games sponsor HVHS's Dungeons and Dragons Club and the Chess and Card Game Club. Bea DnD Games has asked us to let you know about the Kiwi RPG Week, which starts on Sunday, 23 June.

The week features live streams every day of different New Zealand-created RPGs. These are also run by Kiwis, and all the players are Kiwis. The timetable is below, and the QR code will take you to the stream.

Monday 24 June

• Matariki Celebrations (all week)

Wednesday 26 June

• HVHS Board Meeting, 5:30pm-7:30pm, Boardroom, HVHS

Friday 28 June

• Matariki (public holiday, school closed)

Thursday 4 July

• New Zealand Defence Force Presentation, G8, 1:30-2:15pm

Friday 5 July

• HuttFest
  
• Last day of Term 2

Monday 22 July

• First day of Term 3

Friday 9 August

• Year 9 Disco, 7:30pm Start

Monday 12 August

• House Got Talent Competition (runs all week)

Email: office@hvhs.school.nz
Website: hvhs.school.nz
Location: Hutt Valley High School Woburn Road, Woburn, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
Phone: 04 566 4584