Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa – warm greetings to everyone

Uniform:

Following the community survey last term, it was indicated that 62.1% were in favour of a school uniform. The board have decided that this is enough to further pursue Reporoa Primary School in becoming a uniformed school. A sub-committee has been set up to manage this and further community voice will be sought in the process. If you are interested in joining the current 3 BOT members on the uniform committee, please leave your name at the office. The committee will meet once this term to plan the required steps moving forward. This process is not a fast one and many decisions will need to be made along the way – so don’t worry, plenty of warning will be given if a uniform is to be implemented. The community will be seeking opinions from you about many things in the terms to come.

My own opinion – I sit on the fence on this one sorry! I have been in schools with uniforms and I have been in schools without uniforms. The last two schools I have worked in prior to coming to Reporoa started out without uniforms and moved to uniforms while I was employed there (not driven by me though!). I am well aware of the process required to implement a uniform. There are strong arguments for both sides, and good reasons both for and against. At the end of the day it comes down to what the community want for their children. I will listen!

Turf:

It is finished and looks fantastic! The children are very excited to be able to use the turf to play on and have been playing skill games of netball and basketball today. The sand is still very loose as it needs to have some rain to settle it.

The rules of the turf are fairly simple – no food, gum, smoking, sprigs, golf or cars please. If we follow these rules, it will last a very long time.

I will take this opportunity to remind parents that we expect children to go home after school and not return until after 4pm if they wish to come and play. Teachers have meetings and also require time to prepare for the next day. They cannot be responsible for children after 3pm who just want to hang out at school. Young children should be accompanied by an adult if they wish to return to school to play.

Stars of the week:

Congratulations to Stormie for an amazing jump up in his reading level to Green! Ka Pai Stormie! Well done Dani’el for some excellent writing. I was impressed at the level of thinking from a group of children in room 2 as they worked on re-crafting their writing to add interest for the reader. Awesome!

Sports:

Athletics

Remember to dress up in your house colours on Thursday for our Athletics Day! We had a bit of a whoops moment with the running track as Mr Ross is away overseas so we have not had the track marked out (that is usually his job). We are making do this year – my apologies!!!

Cricket

Good luck to our cricket team who are competing in the BOP Festival of Cricket next Tuesday. They have been practicing hard!

Orienteering

If you child is interested in orienteering, they need to collect a notice from Whaea Jill.

The 2017 CBOP Schools’ Orienteering event is coming up. So it is time for schools to get teams together for this year’s event.

In the meantime, get into developing orienteering skills, especially map reading skills, with your students.

Date: Tuesday 14 November 2017
Venue: Kuirau Park, Rotorua
Entries close: Monday 8th November
Cost: $7.50 per student (Sport BOP will invoice schools)
Entry:
•Entries are open to Year 5 and 6 students only.
•Teams must be made up of either 2 or 3 members, all from the same year.
•There is a mixed grade this year however if there are not enough entries for mixed teams they will be combined with the boys grade for that year group.

Thank you:

A big thank you to our wonderful lawn mowing mums – Shelly Monk and Jolene Guyton. They have been mowing our lawns while “MR ROSS” our caretaker is away. Great job ladies!

Good Luck:

We wish our maths team luck next week in their event on Tuesday. Our senior students – Jock, Hunter and Bella will be representing our school at Broadlands School in the cluster maths competition.

Calendar:

Reminder:

Download the calendar app – all community notices will be transferred onto this app as they come in.

Back to School Stationery Orders:

We will be going with OfficeMax My School again this year. There will be a pamphlet coming home today that explains everything there is to know about ordering.

Library Bus:

Here today  and every 2 weeks at approx 11.30 – 12:10,  and parents are also welcome to browse and borrow with a library card

Nãku i runga i aku mihi ki a koe – Yours with thanks

Richelle McDonald

and our team –Jill, Phil, Susannah, Esther, Rachel, Julie, Maureen, Heather, Tina, Mary, Kim, Ross & Emma.