Term 3 Newsletter 4

From the Acting Principal

We are excited to announce our Student Led Conferences on the 17th and 18th of September. Our teachers and students have been working hard to prepare, and we hope you will prioritise attending.

To ensure every child has the opportunity to celebrate their learning, we’ve scheduled the conferences in Week 9. We know how important it is for students to have both their parents and teachers in the classroom, sharing in their progress. Your presence truly makes a difference and shows that their learning is valued.

We look forward to seeing you there!

HPPA Rehu Tai Speech Competition

We sent Chloe Kang from Room 22 to represent Pigeon Mountain Primary School at the Rehu Tai competition held at Mellons Bay Primary. Chloe was the overall winner for her speech on ‘Unity’. Congratulations Chloe!

HPPA Dance Festival

Pigeon Mountain presented ‘The Greatest Showman’ at the HPPA Dance festival held at Sommerville Intermediate on Wednesday 28th August. They danced, leaped and twirled into the audience’s hearts and weaved in a clever story of friendship and teamwork. The final act of the dance saw students bring out apparatus. Well done to all of the dancers and their coaches Miss Kemp, Miss Ryou and Ella, we are very proud of you all!

Special Blokes Day / Open Classroom Hour

It was wonderful to see so many of our parents attend our Open Classroom Hour on Friday. We’ve now had a chance to showcase the literacy and numeracy practices that happen in the classrooms at different year levels.

If you didn’t make it to the event, feel free to complete the Kiwi Bloke quiz and check out the small bit of information that I shared around the upcoming curriculum updates here.

Mandarin and Cantonese Speech Competition

On Friday, we held our Mandarin and Cantonese speech competition. These students have written and learned their speeches this term alongside their English speeches they delivered in class and they did an exceptional job. Thank you to Mrs Cox for organising this event as well as Mrs Kang and Serena for judging. The winners of this event will represent our school at the HPPA competition hosted by Waakaranga in Week 10.

Councilors School Disco

Well done to Kelly and Demi and their mentor Miss Tupou for bringing the disco to life on Friday night! These events are a massive team effort and many hours go into the preparation so a big thank you to everyone involved.

We had a wonderful attendance at both the senior and junior school discos so we want to thank our community for your support towards this event!

Curriculum Updates

Today marks the conclusion of our consultation period on the latest maths curriculum documents. Over the past three weeks since receiving the draft, our team has developed a clear plan for how we will address these changes, ensuring we are fully prepared for 2025.

Last Thursday, we also reviewed the new English Curriculum draft. We are excited about this document, as it provides well-defined learning progressions that will be particularly valuable for newer teachers. During the consultation period, we will continue to refine our strategies for effective implementation across our school.

In other curriculum news, our Structured Literacy initiative is gaining momentum. Last week, we sent a group of teachers to observe best practices at other schools as part of our preparation to implement the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA). This week, another group of teachers begins their structured literacy training, and we are thrilled to embark on this journey.

Thank you for your ongoing support. We will continue to keep you informed with updates from our school’s perspective in future newsletters.

Safety and Supervision at the end of the school day

We have, once again, started to notice a number of our students waiting at the Loloma entrance and inside the school grounds for a considerable amount of time to be picked up. This morning we reminded our students of the procedures below.

You can contact the School Office on (09) 534 9765.

Together, we can maintain a safe and supportive environment for all our students.

Safety Around our Roads

We wanted to say a HUGE thank you to all those that are following the road safety rules around our school. We have seen some great improvements; however, we still have people doing the wrong thing which puts our students and community at risk.

We are having to continually remind people that:

By law all children MUST be wearing seatbelts
Not to park across driveways when dropping your child off
Not to park on yellow lines.
When your child is getting out of the vehicle to get outside of the vehicle on the footpath side NOT the roadside and only when the car is legally parked.
The speed limit is 40km from 8.20am – 9.00am.
Not to make three-point turns during pick up and drop off times, but to continue driving ahead and making a safe turn at the next available intersection.

All of these rules are to keep our children, you, and others safe. Please help keep each other safe.