NEWSLETTER #5

Kia ora koutou, talofa lava and warm greetings to our Weymouth Community, Parents, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, Cousins and our beautiful Tamariki.

Term One completed - well done TEAM. ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’.

The saying it takes a village to raise a child is alive and happening @ WPS. We have the most amazing community that works alongside our staff for the best outcomes for our children. We should all be proud of the hard work we have put in for the term. Now you get a wee rest then it is full steam ahead in Term 2.

Our theme this year is ‘Champions’ and I have heard and seen lots happening about what is a champion and who are our champions. Our teaching & learning was about ‘Honoring the Past’ and we did this by learning about our whakapapa and in the curriculum area of Social Sciences. We were striving for excellence while staying grounded in gratitude for those that came before us. Please take some time to discuss your child’s learning and celebrate the successes and opportunities they have been exposed to for the start of our year.

Our Weymouth Way focus for term 1 was: We think and each week we had a ‘we think’ statement to help our children when they are learning. Term 2 we will focus on ‘We care. Another opportunity for you to also support us in the home with our Weymouth Way.

Our term has been hugely busy and I am so thankful to all our staff for their hard work. We have had lots of opportunities for learning; Duffy Theatre, NZ book month, David Riley visited our school, Kapa Haka & Pasifika, Leadership training days, Sports Days, Sailing for our Y6’s, visits to our local library, Meet & Greet night and Learning Conversations, testing week, Life Education, Bible in School, Water and Wheels Day, Book Character dress up day, Celebrating Cultural Diversity, lessons in Te Akomanga o te Taiao, and finally an open day to celebrate the term’s learning. We rock WPS!!!

At WPS we believe in creating as many opportunities as we can for our children to learn. We want learning to continue over the break with lots of reading, writing and maths and mostly having fun while learning alongside your children.

ATTENDANCE - we had … children get 100% attendance this term. Congratulations to each and every one of you for getting to school every day. We know every day counts so well done. Next term we hope we have more children get 100% attendance. Let’s strive for the best in our attendance for Term 2.

Our winner for a brand new bike goes to:

Next term we'll have another draw for a brand new bike. So please make sure you send your child to school every day. It is only a 9 week term and there are 2 public holidays. So for 43 days let’s try our best to ensure every child comes to school on time and every day.

LATE CHILDREN - next term any child that comes to school after 9am will be deemed as late. Teachers will be calling their roll at 9am. All children who come after 9am will need to come to the office to get a late pass and also a note that will come home stating the time they arrive. It is our expectation as a school that every child comes to school on time. It is our job to prepare our children for the world as they grow up. We really need your help. Continuous lateness will be followed up by the principal and then or Board of Trustees. It is a privilege to come to our school so coming to school on time shows respect for our school. We look forward to your support.

THANK YOU MANUREWA HIGH TRADES ACADEMY - today we had a bbq table delivered from MH which was made by their students in the trades academy. This was a thank you for allowing them to make our school lunches. We are blessed to have made this partnership with MH and we are very grateful for our table. Malo aupito.

TALANOA AKO - a huge congratulations to our 15 families that graduated from a 9 week parenting programme, with one more online session to go. I am so proud of you all for your hard work, dedication and commitment to wanting to learn more about how to support your child’s learning journey. (photos on the camera - perhaps put the one of the group in)

Thank you to the team which was led by Moana Iese to run the workshops and to Miss K and Miss B who were on babysitting duties every week so our families could learn. To our local chefs who fed our families every week; Elizabeth and Rajeev Singh, thank you.

We run Talanoa Ako every year in Term 1. Miss K will be phoning around our families to see who is keen to do this next year.

On behalf of our staff @ WPS we wish you all a wonderful break. See you all back at school before 9am on Monday 28th of April. We will have our Pōwhiri followed by an ANZAC Day ceremony at 10am. We welcome all families to join us.

Kia ora e te whānau,

At the end of last year I was lucky enough to be awarded a position on our Kāhui Ako team. This means I get to spend time working in our closest schools (James Cook High, Waimahia Intermediate and Clayton Park School) and I've thoroughly enjoyed being able to see some of our past students up at Waimahia each and every week.

Our Kāhui Ako team for 2025 have made a positive start to the year, getting to know each other better and finding our feet with our new team. It's full steam ahead! It is wonderful to have Claire from James Cook and Jayne from Waimahia supporting us as Across School Leads. We are grateful to them, and the stewardship team, for their presence, support, and work alongside us at the table.

Our first piece of work was to develop a 'road map' for the year ahead which includes how we will support work to ensure our Achievement Challenges are addressed and reduced. Our achievement challenges across our 4 Kāhui Ako schools are:

1: Improve pedagogies to support the learning of Māori and Pasifika students

2a: Strengthen learning transitions between Kāhui Ako schools and learning centres

2b: Re-establish and extend our relationships with ECE centres relevant to our primary schools

3: Increase the preparedness of students, teachers and whānau for the changes to NCEA

We started the year alongside Waimahia, Clayton Park at our first Teacher Only Day of the year at Ihumātao marae, where we learnt new pūrākau to share with our students, knowledge of our history and began work on a special korowai that we will get displayed in the office for you as soon as we can. We gathered feedback from all of the staff and have used this to help guide us in our thoughts. We have already put out our first newsletter of the year, and plan to do so every week 5 and 10 of term. Have a look at this here.

We have also spent time gathering student voice across our 4 schools, to see what they like about each school, how they feel their learning is going, if they feel challenged in their learning, how confident they feel, and how they feel about transitioning between our schools. It was wonderful to see that our students love it here, with my favourite quote from a year 1 student who said "I love it all the way up to heaven".

Culturally Responsive Practice is a large part of our work this year and we have our upcoming Teacher Only Day with education leaders Russell Bishop and Jacinta Oldehaver presenting to us. We have begun by making a survey for our teachers to self assess their strengths when working with Māori and Pacific students. We are currently gathering this data and look forward to looking at our strengths, and identifying gaps that we can support our staff with. We also look forward to seeing the shift with this when we resend the survey in Term 4.

We have held our first Within School Leaders meet and greet, and gathered ideas from them also, with our first action being to develop a support network for our Beginning Teachers across our schools, not just within, as they start their journey into teaching. Their first meeting will take place in week 10.

We've spent the last week analysing our writing data as a starting point to see if what we are doing in the realm of Culturally Responsive Practices will make a shift in student achievement. It was so incredibly exciting to see that Weymouth's students' attitudes towards writing were the highest and most positive out of all our schools!

A big piece of our work this year will be our Cultural Festival to showcase our amazing schools and our talented students. Student leaders from across our schools will be a significant part of this celebration as they will be hosting the event and to support this will be part of different leadership workshops in the lead up to our event. We are taking our house captains to their first workshop this coming Monday at the Botanical Gardens. Watch this space for more information regarding our festival later this year.

Behind the scenes our schools are collaborating well, with Waimahia coming to visit Weymouth during book week to read to our students. Much fun was had by all! We look forward to developing this further hopefully with sports and other collaborations throughout the year.

We are looking forward to a fabulous year ahead.

Ngā mihi,

Tania Johnson

WEYMOUTH PRIMARY
2025 PRINCIPAL AWARDS

T1 Wk 7 Friday 21 March 2025

Rm 1 Abigail Goddard For being a super reader and learning how to sound out the letters!
Rm 2 Savannah Ioe For your positive presence in the classroom and always sharing your bright smile with us.
Rm 3 Kuini Funaki For working hard and achieving fantastic results in maths. Keep up the great effort!

Rm 4 Roger Lotoahea For his hard work and perseverance in class. Keep striving for the best!

Rm 6 Bryan Titimaea For being a caring and helpful class member.
Rm 7 Arsh Ali For having a positive attitude in all his learning. Ka pai Arsh!
Rm 8 Seine Lagofaatasi For awesome effort in class! Keep striving for the best Seine!

Rm 9 Edward Finau For moving up a reading level. Well done!
Rm 10 Amora Edward For taking responsibility for her environment and demonstrating the Weymouth way. Ka pai!
Rm 11 Lyndon Godinet Rangtaawa For showing Weymouth way and values in class.
Rm 12 Declan Hodder For being a caring and helpful class member.

Rm 13 Kimiora Petero For always showing the Weymouth way all the time.

Rm 14 Teiva Nganu For trying her best in reading by sounding out her words and practicing the Weymouth way. Meitaki Teiva!
Rm 15 Joshua Saulala For being a great helper and always demonstrating the Weymouth Way.

Rm 16 Zobiyah Zabid For showing our school value, honesty. She found $20 and did the right thing!
Rm16 Gurnaz Kaur For demonstrating active listening and applying new learning to tasks. Thank you.
Rm 17 Niko Leaupepe For starting off 2025 as a leader both inside and out of the classroom. Ka pai to mahi Niko!
Rm 18 Chevy-Blaze Heta Who is always striving for the best in her mahi! Keep it up Chevy!!!
Rm 19 Jaxson Pirihi For striving for the best and engaging in all learning with a positive attitude. Ka rawe Jaxson!

Rm 20 Ansh Anand For some fabulous work in writing! Tu meke!

Rm 21 Gemma Kasi For settling into school life quickly.
Rm 22 Kaya Tumai-Totorewa-Tavui For working hard in all areas of her learning. Tino pai Kaya!
Rm 22 Sativa Murray-Samuels For consistently supporting your classmates. You always demonstrate our Weymouth Way of caring and helping!

Rm 23 Terii Raivaru For always showing our Weymouth Way and for encouraging his friends too. Ka rawe Terii.
Eco Warrior Award An Nguyen R14 For being a superstar rubbish collector while walking to school. Tau ke An!
Road Patrol Award Niko Leaupepe R17 Thank you for filling in at the last minute Niko. Kia pai to mahi!
Travelwise Award Anzac Matafeo R11 For being such a confident member of our walking school bus. I love chatting more and more to you each week. Ka pai Anzac!

100% Attendance so far this term.
Moana Team - Amorey Swart Rm3
Papa Team - Pearl Nemaia Rm10
Maunga Team - Bella Nguyen Rm17
Rangi Team - Jayden Saia Rm15

Class Attendance Winners
Moana Team - Room 4 with 81.54% Attendance
Papa Team - Room 10 with 86.92% Attendance
Maunga Team - Room 18 with 90.77% Attendance
Rangi Team - Room 14 with 85.83% Attendance

T1 Wk 10 Friday 11 April 2025

Rm 21 Ephesians Eagle For showing progress in his learning.
Rm 1 Essence McGrath-Dixon For working really hard in Maths and becoming so confident with solving addition and subtraction problems

Rm 2 Eliyas Teariki For participating in class discussions. Ka pai, Eliyas!
Rm 3 Agnes Omeka Toese For fantastic progress in handwriting and writing - you are using your letter sounds to spell words more confidently. Ka rawe!
Rm 4 Roger Lotoahea For trying his best in Reading and Writing. Ka pai, Roger!
Rm 6 Dante Barlow For making huge progress in his Reading. Ka pai, Dante!
Rm 7 Edward Sitaleki For being a motivated and independent student with a great love of learning.

Rm 8 Ella Vaki For striving for the best in her learning! Ka rawe Ella!

Rm 9 John Kitea Turia For trying his best in Writing. Well done!
Rm 10 Elizah Singh For being a responsible learner and showing great progress in writing.
Rm 11 Palatimani Finau For always being responsible for his learning and showing Weymouth way and values in his behaviour. Ka Rawe!
Rm 12 Luan Swart For being a responsible learner and showing great progress in reading.

Rm 13 Knirvana Taoa For being able to receive feedback positively and demonstrating the Weymouth Way all the time.

Rm 14 Dillon Unuia For showing his interest in doing work in the classroom and for practicing the Weymouth way.
Rm 15 Louise-Mairi Sylva For always doing her best in all her work.

Rm 16 Abraham Tu'atonga For taking learning risks and contributing more positively to Sweet 16. Malo aupito!
Rm 17 Lola Ofakihelofa For always doing her absolute best in all curriculum areas, and consistently striving for the best. Ka rawe Lola, we’re so glad you’re back!

Rm 18 Atunaisa Afimeimounga For his tremendous effort during Maths! Tau ke Atunaisa!
Rm 19 Thea Titimaea For demonstrating respect and being a positive role model for others.
Rm 19 Whitireia Hutchins For striving in his learning and presenting information about his chosen champions with confidence and enthusiasm.

Rm 20 Rithvik Swamy For your fabulous attitude towards your learning this term!

Rm 22 Jaxon Afuie For your consistent effort in all areas of our learning. The effort you put into your art is outstanding.

Rm 23 John Tu’atonga For being an exemplary and kind learner in class. Ka mau te wehi John!
Eco Warrior Award Laderra Tu’ua R17 For remembering your duty each week and reminding your buddies too.
Tau ke Laderra!!
Road Patrol Award Ayva Te Nahu-Multani R16 For covering at the very last minute even in the pouring rain!!
Ka rawe Ayva.
Travelwise Award Toni-Lee Philp R9 For always riding her bike so sensibly and wearing her helmet. Ka pai to mahi Toni-Lee!

100% Attendance so far this term.
Moana Team - Piper Cunningham Room 2
Papa Team - Keiare Rigamoto Room 6
Maunga Team - Lwel Lay Room 20
Rangi Team - Braxton Chinnery Room 14