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09 278 9763PAPATOETOE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL NEWSLETTER
No. 4 – 23rd March 2023
Important Term 1 dates
Wednesday 23rd March
Student Leaders to Williams Buck in the City
Monday 27th March – Thursday 30th March
EOTC Week – cost $20 per student. Permission required.
Tuesday 28th March
South/West Zone Boys and Girls Tag
Thursday 30th March
South/West Zone Boys and Girls Tag – Saving Day
Sunday 2nd April
Daylight saving finished – turn your clocks back one hour
Tuesday 4th April
Year 8 HPV Vaccinations
Interzone Boys and Girls Tag
Wednesday 5th April
Class Photos – Photolife
Thursday 6th April
Mufti Day – Gold coin donation towards RSA (ANZAC day) – Poppy Day Observed
Final Day of Term 1
Monday 24th April
Teacher Only Day – School Closed for teacher professional development
Tuesday 25th April
ANZAC Day – School Closed
Wednesday 26th April
First Day of Term 2
Thursday 27th April
South/West and Counties Zone Orienteering
PRINCIPALS MESSAGE
Farewell
Farewell to Gita Singh – Room 20 teacher – who leaves us to teach in Australia (Just out of Melbourne). We know her class will miss her as will our staff. She has been a treasured staff member.
Welcome
Welcome to Adele van Zyl – Room 8 teacher and Cara Davidson – Room 18 teacher. Both Adele and Cara started with us on Monday 20th February but due to a computer glitch this was not reported to our community.
Welcome to Geethu Scaria – Room 20 teacher, who started with us this week on Monday. Geethu has moved from Christchurch to work with our students.
Thank You!
Thank you to all the families who attended the ‘Getting to Know the Learner’ Conferences. We had over 92% of whanau attend
Thank you to parents who attended our Swimming Carnival. What a fantastic event! The students and staff had so much fun.
Thank you to whanau who are helping with EOTC – we still need more helpers if you are available. This is an exciting and challenging week the more helpers we have the better.
Marae trip – thank you to Manurewa Marae for hosting such a brilliant learning experience for our Y7 students. This trip will be repeated every year from now on.
Thank you Opera NZ for sponsoring the performance for our students and ensuring it is free.
WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO OR HAVE AT SCHOOL
NZ OPERA IN SCHOOL
Friday afternoon was a day we would never forget as we were entertained by a group of talented singers and actors from the New Zealand Opera.
As we all entered the hall, we could see the hall was staged for a show. The actors were all dressed up in costumes.
When they started singing and acting, we were surprised by the way they were singing, the voices of the singers were all different. Some had very low voices whereas others had very high voices. Some had very powerful voices but could also sound very graceful. We were beyond amazed and totally enjoyed the show.
The story was based around the fairytale of sleeping beauty. It included lots of humour and twists, and made the show very entertaining. Especially with some of us who were not familiar with opera.
We saw students around us, dropping their jaws as soon as they started to sing. We were speechless and very thankful to have had this experience and hope we get to see them again…
By Mary, Priyanka, Maria – Room 17
TRAVELWISE TRIP
On Wednesday 8th of March, the Travelwise Ambassadors were grateful for the opportunity to go to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church for a Travelwise Student Leader Conference.
What is Travelwise?
Travelwise is a program to make school travel safer, healthier and more fun. As well as encouraging kids to walk, bike, or use public transport. Travelwise students help parents to park safely around the area.
During the conference we talked about the qualities of a leader and how we can improve it. We did many workshop activities such as using speed guns, encouraging drivers to slow down by drawing posters. There were also events and games. We met the travelwise mascots.
We had an amazing day, and it was a fantastic time to spend with the travelwise team and to know more information about travelwise and how we can increase more people to contribute to our school.
By Nishita – Room 6
BLAKE EXPLORERS CAMP
From Tuesday the 8th to Friday the 10th March a group of 20 year 8 leaders went to a camp called Blake Explorers. Kia Ora my name is Ilayna and I was lucky enough to go on this camp. This camp was an experience I have never experienced before in a great way. The first day of the camp went really smoothly. It took about an hour and a half just to arrive at our location where we met our amazing instructors Thomas, Grace and Shawn who had to deal with us for the next 3 days. We played a lot of games just to get to know each other before we went snorkelling on goat island. I’m normally not a big fan of nature and things in the ocean but when our snorkelling instructor took us into the ocean where we got to see a lot of different fish I was amazed.
Shortly after that we freshened up ready to choose our cabin buddies and settle in our cabin. Throughout the camp we had to make our own meals so each day the boys or girls would cook on the BBQ grill or would cut the veggies. The people who weren’t doing anything agreed to wash the dishes and surprisingly everything went well, the food was good and the dishes were clean. Later into the first night we all gathered together to play games and just hang out until lights out. We did water colour painting and charades. Of course the girls won because we’re just that good.
The next day ran exactly the same beside our activities. We got to kayak across the lake next to our camp, and it was really exciting. There was a little island where all of the mangroves grew and we got to get off our kayaks and explore, pick up rubbish as if it was a marine reserve. We got back to the campsite and we showered, hung out for a little while the girls were singing karaoke. While that was happening, our instructors were preparing for our next activity which was our bush walk. We arrived at the park later in the afternoon. We had lunch at the area where we were waiting for it to get dark so that we could go into the bush to find kiwis.
We had to be super quiet which was super hard but we managed to see about 4-6 kiwis which Thomas our instructor said “was really rare as the last school saw nothing”. We got back to the vans and the amount of times where I almost fell because of how dark it was is way more than I can count. We got back, headed to our cabins for our last night there. The next morning we woke up at 7, had breakfast and got ready to go snorkelling again but at a different location where it wasn’t a marine reserve. We were told that we were going to dive down into the ocean to find kina. After almost everyone trying to dice down it was unsuccessful to we just had our instructors go down and find some.
They found about 8 all together and when we got out of the water they cracked it open and some of the students had some. I unfortunately didn’t have some because I didn’t want any but a lot of them were saying it tasted like salt and that was it. We got dressed all freshened up and we thought we were heading back to school but they surprised us. They took us to a really nice looking restaurant and everything was free, which was absolutely fantastic. After that we said our goodbyes to our amazing talented instructors and headed back to school. Blake camp took a lot of my energy but in the end it was all worth it.
The time I shared with the other leaders was precious as we didn’t really know each other that well but as the hours went by we slowly started to become best friends with each other. Overall this camp was impeccable and definitely a core memory of mine that I’ll remember forever and for future Blake students to look forward to!
Ilayna – Room 1
BLUELIGHT
Sunday 19th March 2023 Ashaz and I were given the opportunity to fly in a plane and helicopter through the Bluelight Foundation. I went in a plane and Ashaz went in a helicopter. I had never been in a plane, while Ashaz the other student had, however he had never been in a helicopter. We both had a lot of fun flying around Auckland city, seeing the Sky Tower, Auckland Harbour Bridge, Rangitoto Island and Waiheke Island. When in the air both saw a wonderful view of the sea and islands. It was an amazing experience for both of us. We had the most awesome time. We both were very exhausted afterwards because of how much fun we had. Both of us will treasure this experience forever. Thank you to the Bluelight Foundation and Constable Marina Phillips for giving us this opportunity.
By Chiara – Room 10
ARE YOU AND YOUR WHANAU PROTECTED FROM MEASLES?
With people travelling overseas again, there’s a risk that someone with measles could unknowingly bring the disease back to Aotearoa.
Measles spreads easily and quickly, usually between people who are unimmunised or only partially immunised. It can be serious and life threatening. In the 2019 measles outbreak in Aotearoa more than 30% of the people infected has to be admitted to hospital.
The best protection against measles is the free MMR vaccine. It will protect you and your whānau, and prevent the virus from spreading.
You will be protected against measles if you:
– had 2 doses of the MMR vaccine
– had measles before
– were born before 1 Jan 1969
If you’re unsure if you or your tamariki have had any or both doses of the MMR vaccine, check by calling your GP or hauora provider. Alternatively, check your Plunket Well Child Tamariki Ora book. If you’re still not sure, be safe and get immunised – there are no safety concerns with having an extra dose. MMR vaccines are free at your local health provider and many pharmacies.
As measles still occurs in many countries, if you’re travelling overseas these holidays it’s especially important to be immunised to prevent the risk of being unknowingly infected and causing an outbreak in Aotearoa on your return.
More information about the measles vaccination can be found here:
Measles vaccination – Ministry of Health
If you haven’t done so already please send through your child’s immunisation record to vaccination@papint.school.nz so we can update our records.
THANK YOU TO ROOM 17 for their article for this Newsletter
It has been an exciting year so far for us all. We have made some new friends with our Y7 and 8 mates. It is nice knowing new students and being able to socialise and to learn from each other.
In class we are doing some great learning, completed our assessments and are participating in a range of activities. We have set our term goals, using the Keagan activities to share our learning in class, able to put lots of our learning on EDUCA. We have learned some good Reading Comprehension strategies and also we’ve been learning about many different mathematical strategies for Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Divisions. Learning together has been fun!
Taking part in Breaktime activities, PE games and swimming carnival was cool! Some of us were lucky to be in the schools’ Softball and Tag teams.
We look forward to the EOTC activities and the school holidays too!!
