Dear Parents & Caregivers,
This week has been a busy but a celebratory one!
On Monday we held a special School Assembly to present the Sir Peter Blake Award to one of our Year 5 - 8 students. The Blake Young Leader Award is presented every year by Westpac and BLAKE to students all around the country who show great leadership, in making a positive change towards a better future for our communities and our planet earth, just like Sir Peter Blake did. It is our great pleasure to announce that this Award was presented to Liefke Stakenburg. All of our staff and students were able to nominate our Y5-8 students for this special Leadership Award and Liefke was the student most people voted for. Congratulations Liefke!
On Tuesday evening we were so proud of our four Speech Winners last evening who represented St Patrick’s School, at the Rotary Speech Competition at Belfast Rugby Club. Congratulations to Everest Rawson who presented his speech titled ‘My Body’
Naomi Svoboda - ‘When I Grow Up’
Tino Ilalio - ‘Why Do People Hold Grudges’
Emerson Eustace - ‘Why We Value Nurses’
Special congratulations to Tino who was awarded second place in the Year 7 section. A big thank you to all the Whanau who supported our talented speakers and the Belfast Rotary Club for organising this great speech competition.
Yesterday our students and staff performed their hearts out in our School Production- ‘We Can Be Heroes.’ They gave it all they had to produce the best performance we have ever seen for the cameras! Sadly the only thing missing was the audience! The video of our Production is available for $20 per USB stick, from Wendy at our School Office. A special thank you to Mrs Culling and Mr O’Dowd for being such great Directors of this fabulous show! Please see the photos below in the Photo Gallery!
The Catholic Bishops of Aotearoa New Zealand have chosen Te Ara a Maria: Mary’s Way as the name of the project to renew the country’s dedication to Our Lady Assumed into Heaven. “We needed a formal name for the renewal, and this beautifully captures the role of Mary as the model of discipleship who leads us in the way of missionary discipleship,” said Bishop of Hamilton Stephen Lowe, Secretary of the NZ Catholic Bishops Conference. (see photo above)
The Te Ara a Maria is going to be visiting our St Patrick's Church and School. Our students will get to view this amazing Artwork tomorrow after we celebrate five Baptisms in our school. Everest, Kadon, Riley, Michael and Ella will be baptised at our 9.30am Parish / School Mass and then the Artist Damien Walker (a member of our Waimakariri Parish, will talk with us about Te Ara a Maria, which is touring all of our New Zealand Parishes.
Our classes and teachers for 2022 have been organised as follows:
New Entrants / Year One : Mrs Jacque Culling
Year One & Two: Rachael Woodward (mornings and Monday & Friday afternoons) Janice Beckett (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday afternoons)
Year Three & Four: Miss Jessie Conlan
Year Five & Six: Mrs Emma Sheeran
Year Five & Six: Mr Pax O'Dowd
Year Seven & Eight: Mr David Harrison
Reading Recovery / Structured Literacy Groups : Mrs Janice Beckett
Release Teacher : Mrs Liz Leitch
Next Friday 10th December you will receive your child's report on HERO in Writing, Inquiry, RE and General Comment as well as their progress graphs in Reading, Writing and Mathematics. They will also be given their class and teacher(s) for 2022.
Our children will spend the morning in their new class for 2022 with their 2022 teacher, on Wednesday 15th December. If there are things that you wish to discuss with me or your child's class teacher, regarding class placement for 2022, could you please email or phone Wendy for an appointment or email the teacher directly.
With the COVID traffic light system starting on Thursday 1st December, we have decided to work within the COVID regulations for our end of year Prizegiving. We will be having four smaller Prizegivings rather than one large one. There will be a limit of 2 adults per student and you will be encouraged to wear masks, scan and socially distance. Please note the following dates in your Diary:
Year 1 & 2 Prizegiving: Tuesday 14th December 5.30-6.15pm
Year 3 & 4 Prizegiving: Tuesday 14th December 6.45 - 7.30pm
Year 5 & 6 Prizegiving: Wednesday 15th December 6 - 6.45pm
Year 7 & 8 Prizegiving: Wednesday 15th December 7 - 8pm
All of these events will be held in St Patrick's Church.
We will continue to update you with any new requirements for these events to go ahead when the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education shares them with schools. At this stage the Ministry of Education have said that schools will be following the Alert Level 2 requirements, until the end of the school year.
Good luck to our Lego League Team who are competing in the Regional Championships at Kaiapoi North School on Saturday. A big thank you to David Harrison, Pax O'Dowd, Martin White and the children from Kaiapoi North for coaching and preparing our team.
All parents and caregivers are encouraged to please wear masks on our school grounds, scan and sign our contact tracing register by the Office.
Thank you for your continued support of St Patrick's School, Kaiapoi!
God Bless you and your family,
Kind regards
Trish McKendry
