Friday 13 December

One week to go for the 2024 school year!

It is a busy week with celebrations, farewells and some fun end of year activities. Please make sure you read the week 10 outline below.

Swimming tags - For those who have purchased pool tags, we will be in contact early next week about new tags being issued as our tag reader is being updated.  Once this process is completed, pool tags will be available to purchase once again by our community.

You will also be receiving a Hero post about our 125 anniversary book! An amazing amount of work has gone into this special book, it is a treasure that captures the history and heart of our school. Thank you again to the 125 committee for the hours of dedication to pull it together.

Please note that our year 8 graduating students will be receiving a book as a gift this year, all other books need to be purchased and you can do this through the office.

Week 10:

Tuesday 17 December: 

• You will receive a letter that informs you about which class your child is in next year, and also details around how to access your child’s report and book in for a meeting with the teacher on Thursday 30 January, 2025.

Wednesday 18 December: 

• Assembly in the morning, farewelling staff and students.

• Students will spend an hour with their 2025 teachers.

• Year 8 Graduation ceremony - 6pm

Thursday 19 December: 

• Farewell assembly for Mrs Fursdon at 10:15am - all invited, this is our final assembly for the year.

Friday 20 December: 

• Last day of term, finishing at 12:30pm.

Term 1, 2025

Wednesday 29 January: School office is open

Thursday 30 January: Introductory ‘Meet the Teacher’ interviews all day

Monday 3 February: School starts

Thursday 6 February: Waitangi Day, school closed

Friday 7 February: School closed

Please note that our Mathematics Professional learning day for our teachers is now confirmed, it will be Friday 14 March, 2025. This will be a teacher only day.

Friday 6 December

Kia ora Taupaki Whānau,

Now we are in December there is a festive feeling in the air at school and the beautiful summer weather has certainly helped. All classes are in the pool for PE sessions and the cricket sets are out! At school we discuss sun safety and have strict expectations around wearing hats when outside. Please ensure you support your child to apply sunblock in the morning and remember whilst we have sunblock at school it is limited, so it is best to send a small bottle along with your children so they can reapply after swimming.

Our Parent Teacher Association with school staff held another amazing fireworks event this year on October the 18th. Alongside this the PTA also ran a school disco, held bake sales and provided coffee and hot dogs weekly, amazing efforts all round that have raised $65,000 for our school! We feel very privileged to be able to utilise these funds for our students next year. Some of the money is going towards the pool cover to complete the solar heating project. We are also having an overhaul of our sports equipment next year and will be putting money into updating all of the equipment and aspects of the sports uniforms. We also aim to increase our outdoor play sets and some of our indoor game sets such as chess and Lego. Our students are really very lucky and will benefit directly from these funds right from the beginning of next year, so again thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that supported this fantastic event.

In other exciting news we have two very special items coming up for sale!

1. Our bees have produced enough honey for us to have some potted! We have a limited number of these available to buy at the office for $15 a pot.

2. Our 125 celebration book will be coming out soon! More information will be sent to you about this next week. 

Congratulations to all of our basketball teams, including players, coaches and support parents, for another great semester of basketball. Mr Whiting and other staff went to watch some games over the season and enjoyed seeing Manaaki Taupaki in action.

Mr Whiting said ‘The team I watched can be really proud of themselves in the way they conducted themselves so well on the court. I was particularly impressed with the way they helped the other team up if they had fallen over and their encouragement towards each other. What great sportsmen they are’.

Please note the important dates below:

Tuesday 17 December: You will receive a letter that informs you about which class your child is in next year, and also details around how to access your child’s report, and key dates and preparation for 2025.

Wednesday 18 December: Students will spend an hour with their 2025 teachers.

Wednesday 18 December: Year 8 Graduation.

Thursday 19 December: Farewell assembly for Mrs Fursdon at 10:15am.

Friday 20 December: Last day of term, finishing at 12:30pm.

Term 1, 2025

Wednesday 29 January: School office is open.

Thursday 30 January: Introductory ‘Meet the Teacher’ interviews all day (booking information for this will be sent in the 17th December letter).

Monday 3 February: School starts.

Please note that our Mathematics Professional learning day for our teachers will most likely fall on Monday 10 March, 2025. We are awaiting confirmation but this could be a Teacher Only Day.

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend,

Christina Robertson

Principal

Community Notices

Friday 29 November

Kia ora parents and caregivers,

Today has enabled our teachers to plan for next year. We have been focusing on the implementation of the new curriculum and ensuring that each team is ready and planned to start the year. We have also had a chance to work with our new staff today, it has been great to start the connections and welcome them into our Taupaki community.

Below is a list of the staff for 2025, as I mentioned in the previous weekly news there have been some changes to how we organise the teams to align with the new curriculum phases. Information about what class your child will be in will come out in week 10.

Piwakawaka (Phase 1)

• Shannon Andrews (Team Leader), Year 0-1

• Rachel Williams, Year 0-1

• Ramona Elliott, Year 0-1

Tui (Phase 1)

• Lydia Dunn (Team Leader), Year 2-3

• Hayley Donald, Year 2-3

• Jess Vermeulen, Year 2-3

Kereru (Phase 2)

• Fin McKenzie (Team Leader), Year 4-6

• Jade Miller, Year 4-6

• Fleur Hunter, Year 4-6

Kahu (Phase 3)

• Dan Whiting (Team Leader), Year 7-8

• Julie Mercer, Year 7-8

Ruru Technology Department

Full Time

• Courtney Edwards (Team Leader), Design

• Amanda Dove, Food Technology

• Nigel Bacon, Hard Materials

• Azhar Mohamed, Digital/Media Technology

Part Time

• Renee Cosio, Design

• Anita Lambert, Food/Design

Takahē Specialist Team

• Courtney Edwards (Team Leader), Music

• Kim Taylor, Art

• Teacher currently being employed, Kaitiakitanga/Garden to table

Recently, we have welcomed two new families to Taupaki School.  We warmly welcome Gus B and Sebastian F.  We look forward to see you grow during your time with us.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Christina Robertson

Principal

Today we have a group of Year 7s at a leadership day at Massey High School and our Year 8s on their graduation trip to Rainbow’s End.

Our Year 5 and 6s have had their Nest health talks and there has also been a kapa haka practice down at the local community hall. 

Next week we have a settled week in class Monday to Thursday and then the staff will have their Teacher Only Day on Friday.

We will be meeting with our 2025 staff to start our implementation process of the new Maths and English curriculum. We feel well placed to do this and are excited to welcome 4 new staff members to our team for next year. Hayley Donald, Fleur Hunter, Julie Mercer and Jess Vermeulen (moving from the library role to a teaching role). All four of the teachers we have employed come with experience and are very enthusiastic about working in our school. We look forward to introducing them to the whole community early next year.

We will be sadly farewelling Mary Fursdon, Jo Bock and Barb Yates at the end of this year. Cheryl Gouws will be moving into the role of the Structured Literacy support teacher.

Important safety message: It has been noted that cars are stopping to pick up their children on the way down Taupaki Road as the children are walking down the road, this is very unsafe and the road is not designed for cars to stop. Please wait for your children to get down to the park to pick them up.

Friday 15th November

Kia ora Taupaki parents and caregivers,

Despite the weather this week we managed to fit in our school athletics day! It was a fun filled day with some competitive athletics events interspersed with a rotation of lively games. It was great to see the levels of participation from our students and of course our teachers! Next week we will be taking a group of year 7 and 8's to the Athletics Zone Day - all the best to this team.

As the end of year approaches our weeks are getting very busy.  Next week we have the Athletics Zone day on Tuesday, Year 5 & 6 puberty talks with Nest on Thursday and the Year 8 Rainbows End trip on Friday. As well as jam packed learning programmes happening in all classes, Footsteps dance continues and swimming sessions begin. The following week we have a Teacher Only day on Friday 29th November.

With summer approaching we are also opening the pool for all of our PE sessions and community tags will be available from the office to purchase for the season - these are $130 for the season. Please ask at the office, payment and the Pool Rules Agreement will need to be signed before tags can be given out.

Education updates from the leadership team @ Taupaki School

In last week's newsletter I mentioned the work we are doing as teachers and leaders to prepare ourselves for the new curriculum next year. We will be utilising the Teacher Only day on November the 29th to prepare for Term one and prepare our structured Mathematics programmes. The new curriculum is moving away from ‘levels’ to phases. We are therefore rejigging our teams to better align and streamline the teaching, learning and assessment processes. 

We have had some staff shifts due to these changes and we have employed four new staff members, three to replace leaving teachers and one for roll growth. We will announce staff next week, and on Tuesday of week 10 we will be able to inform you about what class your child will be in next year.

Christina Robertson

Principal

Friday 8 November

Kia ora Taupaki Whanāu,

It has been a busy start to term 4 and we are aware that with no assemblies communication with our families and caregivers feels a bit disjointed. I have also had feedback that people are missing the weekly newsletter that we used to email out every Friday and now only do twice a term. To ensure communication is clear over the next few weeks of school I will be adding a Friday weekly news to the website and we will post a link on Hero to take you directly here. Remember Hero is our main port of communication and it is important that you check it regularly or turn on the app notifications so you are always up to speed with what is happening. Our year level teams are more regularly using this to communicate about daily life at school. 

In last weeks newsletter I mentioned that our beloved Mrs Fursdon is leaving Taupaki School at the end of the year. Our very own Kylie Bryant has been appointed as Deputy Principal and will be taking Mrs Fursdon's place from the beginning of 2025. The Board of Trustees, a staff representative, myself and an education facilitator went through a very robust process to appoint a new Deputy Principal. We received 17 applications for the position, this giving an indication of how many educators want to work at our school. Mrs Bryant stood out as someone who has both passion for our school and community and extensive knowledge in educational leadership, particularly curriculum. Mrs Bryant has been a Deputy Principal on the North Shore and in the United Kingdom before joining us during the pandemic in 2021. We are now advertising to replace her role in year 7 and 8 and again have some excellent candidates coming through.

In last weeks newsletter I also mentioned the successful fireworks event we hosted at the beginning of the term. We had our de-brief meeting with our amazing committee this week, this gave us a chance to share our appreciation with this hard-working group of parents. We were able to celebrate all of the wonderful parts of the event and reflect about how we would improve in future years. In the coming weeks we will know how much the PTA will donate to the school and we will be able to shape a plan for how that money is going to directly benefit our students. Exciting!

Another exciting fundraising event we have recently completed is raising funds to solar heat our pool! Special thanks need to go to several people for making this happen.

• Our student council - a group of leaders in our school that have worked hard to promote this project and raised funds through several of their own fundraising events such as bake sales etc

• Several families linked to the school that made this happen - the Pickford, Cantell, Enfield, Knight and Roodt families.

• Special thanks go to Matt and the H2OENg team, Trent from GoLive Electrical for installing the system and Steve Mackenzie for making this happen - his passion to get this done for the school has been amazing!

Much of the funds raised for this system were made possible through a grant from the Pubs Charities trust. It is so good to see that these trusts are continuing to support community improvements - we were granted $19,771.00 for this! A huge amount and the main contributors were the following businesses in the Rodney ward - Bridge house Lodge, Huapai Tavern, JT's Bar and Grill, and the Warkworth Inn. We are grateful for this money and our swimming season has already been extended with students happily swimming in a 24 degree pool today!

Other notices:

Leftover Jolly Jars - students can go to the office from Monday to buy a $2 Jolly Jar. Please note, they will not get a choice in Jolly Jars, they will pick a number out of a hat and be allocated that jar, to pick up at the end of the day - limited to one jar per child. 

End of the year - The school year takes us very close to Christmas this year, with the final day being on Friday 20th of December. We have been planning ahead to ensure the very last week of school works well and we fit in our special events. Please note the year 8 graduation is on Wednesday 18th of December and our farewell assembly for Mrs Fursdon will be on Thursday 19th of December. More details about this week will be coming soon and include information about when we will inform you about classes for 2025.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Christina Robertson

Principal

Education updates from the leadership team @ Taupaki School

There is a huge amount happening in the education space with changes impacting attendance, curriculum and pedagogy. As a profession we are constantly being updated about these changes which can be overwhelming. Here at Taupaki School we have revisited our Pou (our underlying principles) and as we make each change we are ensuring that we have evidence that aligns with these principles. This has become particularly important as we select the Mathematics programme we will be using in 2025, we are looking for something that will be knowledge-rich, progressive and enable our teachers to teach intentionally as well as grow their own mathematics delivery practice. We will make our final decision in the next two weeks and start the programme in week 6 of term 1, we look forward to sharing more information with all parents/caregivers in the coming weeks.

Please be on the lookout for an email you will receive next week in regards to attendance targets too.

Community Notices