Panui - Term 1, Week 6, 2026
Kia ora whānau,
It has been an action-packed start to the term! We've already managed to tick off beginning-of-year camps / trips, swimming sports, cycle safety, rippa, and Grandparents' Day. We loved having so many of your special people visiting our school. If you haven't seen them yet, make sure to check out the photos we’ve shared on our Facebook page.
Last week we farewelled Mrs DT and her whānau who are now living in Australia. Dawn will be missed greatly by the staff, students and whānau at Tawhiti; she has left a positive mark on our kura that is for sure. From next week we welcome Eseta Lamamu as our learning support co-ordinator. Eseta will be working alongside Renee Clegg to help provide learning support to those tamariki who need it.
Our learning programmes are well underway across the whole school. A real highlight over the last few weeks was the visit from the Taranaki Enviroschools team. The tamariki had a fantastic time getting hands-on and looking into soil, worms, pollinators, and more. This year our annual school goals focus on basic facts, spelling, reading fluency, and attendance.
Rata and Kowhai are now settled into their classrooms and are loving learning in their refreshed environment. The toilet area and a few finishing touches are still being worked on, but we are hopeful these will be fully completed ASAP.
As you will have seen on the Hero app, we also have landscapers on-site creating new outdoor paths and play areas. Exciting times ahead! Because of this work, access from Perth Street into the office area is currently restricted. For the next couple of weeks, please use the Galt Street (main gate) or Glasgow Street (field) entrances when coming into the school. This also means we will have no wheels or bikes at school until further notice. Thanks for bearing with us while we continue to make sure we have the absolutely best environment for your children to learn and play in.
I look forward to updating you and sharing more things as they happen throughout the rest of the term. As always, feel free to pop in if you need me.
Sarah Johnston
Every morning our Year 2-6 children 'check in' using SWITCH.
We are pleased to share that our February Wellbeing Report shows a 'Good' overall wellbeing score of 77/100 for our students. It’s wonderful to see that 88.6% of student check-ins reflected pleasant emotions, and our students feel particularly strong in their peer relationships and ability to seek help. Moving forward, we will be focusing on building student confidence in sharing their ideas and expressing their emotions more freely with trusted adults.
We are also noticing through our check-ins that a number of children are coming to school without eating breakfast. As a Mum, I know the breakfast battle can be real, but we would appreciate you encouraging children to eat breakfast every day, ensuring they are fuelled and ready for learning.
As many of you may be aware, the Ministry of Education requires all schools to assess children's phonics after they have been at school for 20 weeks and then again after 40 weeks. The phonics assessment asks children to read a selection of real and made up words to determine which sound patterns they are familiar with and how they can blend sounds to read words.
We are really proud to report that Tawhiti students outperformed the national results at both the 20-week and 40-week checks! This is a huge achievement for our tamariki.
What’s even more encouraging is that we saw a strong, clear upward trend in average student performance as the year progressed. This shows us that we aren't just collecting data, our team is using it to inform their teaching, ensuring every learner is getting exactly what they need to move forward.
I feel very lucky to have such amazing teachers and equally amazing learners here at Tawhiti! Ka pai, team.
Since the introduction of the government's "Phones Away for the Day" policy last year, we are starting to notice a bit of a new trend: an increase in kids using smartwatches to send messages during class time.
We totally understand why you want your children to have these devices. They are fantastic for peace of mind and making sure they get to and from school safely. We aren't asking you to leave them at home. However, we do need to ask that absolutely no messaging occurs during class time.
If we do find that children are using their watches to message during class, the same rules will apply as cell phones. They will be asked to drop their device off at the office in the morning and pick it up at the end of the day.
Thanks so much for having a chat with your tamariki about this and helping us keep our classrooms focused and humming!
All our school policies and procedures can be found online. We use a handy online service called SchoolDocs to keep everything maintained, updated, and easy for our community to access.
There can be accessed via our website or by clicking the following link www.tawhiti.schooldocs.co.nz
We encourage you to have a look around, familiarise yourself with how things run, and give us feedback on our policies as they come up for review.
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