Haere mai Te Whanau

I hope you have all had an enjoyable term break with your families. We are looking forward to seeing you all again when school reopens for Term 2 on Monday 20^th April. We will gather at 9am for prayer in the library lead by Ruma Toroa.

A reminder about Interviews coming up this week on Wednesday 22^nd and Thursday 23^rd between 3 and 6:30pm where we will share information about the children’s learning goals, their progress and general wellbeing.

The following events are also coming up:

• ANZAC Day Holiday (School closed) – Monday 27^th April)
• Earlybirds Session (1) Tuesday 28^th April
• Pre-school visit to NEV Playgroup (Baptist Church Hall) – Wednesday 29^th April at 10am.
• Prayer Assembly with Ruma Toroa at 2:40pm

The Caritas Challenge, held late last term, was a tremendous learning opportunity for senior students. We enjoyed a very high level of family support and our ‘Cardboard City’ attracted some great publicity for our school via Dunedin Television, The Star, Valley Voice and newspapers including The Tablet and NZ Catholic.

Another great term awaits us at Sacred Heart. With very best wishes and blessings in this Easter Season.

Paul Richardson

Dance Tuition in Terms Two and Three (Register at the school office)

Xzenia Witehira and her team from Otago Dancers will visit the school for this week for a 15 minute demonstration and to answer any questions that you may have.

Come along to Nga Maara Hall on Wednesday this week (1st April) at 2pm.

More about the Otago Dancers:

The Otago Dancers’ is a professional performance group which is home to Dunedin’s leading choreographers and dancers. We offer opportunities for performers within the Otago Region who are focused, dedicated and motivated dancers that are skilled in many styles of dance and able to perform at a variety of events. We work towards being positive role models to the youth in our community, to offer opportunities for dance and performance and to show that with hard work and determination anything is possible, as long as you don’t give up.

Individually each Otago Dancer has years of experience – many overseas, nationally and locally. The team is lead by choreographers who have choreographed big events such as the All Blacks games, NZBreakers,  MamaMia Musical and currently working on the FIFA World Cup. We are involved in most  sporting events around Dunedin (Highlanders, Netball, RollerDerby, Volts and Nuggets to name a few).

The Nuggets was our choice sporting event and with the loss of the OCeanaGold Nuggets we refocused our attention and set new goals – to perform on a world stage (Disneyland) – so we have set the goal, and with a lot of hard work and determination we are going to get there.

Easter School Holiday Classes

The 2015 Otago Dancers auditioned and have been selected to perform at Disneyland in California, USA. To help raise the $50,000 funds required to take the team of 16 dancers over we are holding a Holiday Dance Programme offering a selection of classes in a variety of genres which are catered to all ages (5 -99years)

The classes will be run throughout the first week of the school holidays at the RASA dance studios in King Edward Court. People can select the class they would like to participate in, and they can attend as many as they would like. (Some may just select one, one hour class on a particular day or decide to take up a few). Classes will be ran at different times throughout the day and evening.

Classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced levels will be offered in the genres listed below. All of the classes will be taught by experienced qualified dance teachers of the particular style.

-Ballet

-Jazz

-Pompom dance

-Hip hop

-Lyrical

-Contemporary

-Musical Theatre.

Xzenia Witehira (Manager and Choreographer for Otago Dancers)

Kia ora

Last week a number of our students participated in a LEARNZ virtual field trip with a focus on Wetland Biodiversity. In a live link up we joined with a number of other schools around the country in asking key questions to the experts at LEARNZ. Thanks to Mrs Rutherford for coordinating this learning experience and congratulations to all of the children who were involved.

Dia dhaoibh (Hello)

Tomorrow (Tuesday 17th) is St Patrick’s Day and the children are welcome to wear something green to school to celebrate our Irish heritage.  We have our Museum visit in the morning and had planned to walk there and back.  However, due to the not so good weather forecast we will most likely be travelling by bus leaving at 9.45am and returning around 1pm.

We are very much looking forward to our Wetlands visit next week, Tuesday 24th March. The bus will be leaving for the Wetlands at 9:15am. We are very grateful to Mr Ken Chilton who has kindly offered to compile a photographic record of the day’s activities. Earlier in the year we asked families to indicate consent for your child’s photographic image to be published. Please let us know of any changes as we are waiting for all of the forms to be returned.

go raibh maith agat (Thank you)

Paul Richardson

New classroom names

We have an exciting change in the naming of our teaching and learning areas:

• Ruma Kiwi refers to our junior school area (Yr 1/2)
• Ruma Tui refers to our middle school area (Yr 3/4)
• Ruma Toroa refers to our senior school area (Yr 5/6)

Our students are excelling

• Reading 86% to 93%
• Writing 83% to 93%
• Mathematics 92% to 93%

• Reading and writing
• Mathematics

 New after school programme available