Kaurihohore School

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

School News - Week Nine

Kaurihohore School Week Nine, Term Four 2025

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua," Let our past guide our future

Manaaki te katoa - be kind to all.

Respect - Empathy - Kindness

Kia ora e te whānau,

We are reaching the end of term, but things are still busy around the school with lots going on. It was great to be able to get through our Year 1-4 athletics on Monday. It was amazing to see the senior children out there helping with events.

I want to take this opportunity to say farewell in writing to Ronda, Nicky and Chelsea.

Ronda has taught her whole career here at Kaurihohore (21 years.) She now leaves us for retirement. Ronda has been an integral member of our staff and so many of our children have benefited from her care. In fact over 21 years almost 500 children would have benefitted from being a part of her class. Ronda has always approached her role from a place of care and understanding and she will be greatly missed.

Nicky Robinson has been working with Lisa in Rūma Pīwakawaka as a teacher aide. Her kind, empathetic and compassionate nature have been an absolute bonus for that class and we hope that one day we can twist her arm to come back.

We also farewell Chelsea Woods as she heads to further adventures up north. Chelsea has been with us for 7 years and in that time has become an integral part of staff, a great support to many children and an awesome multitasker. We wish Chelsea all the best for the future!

It is with great excitement that I announce to you that our Halloween event raised a total of $16 059.57. That is a whopping amount and an increase of $3005.02 on last year. Again, a massive thank you to everyone that put in such a big effort to make this event possible. Take some time to let the 2025 event become a distant memory and in Term 1 we will start thinking about how we can get even more help to help the event run smoothly in 2026. An event like this truly is a team event, so please think of ways that you will be able to help out.

This is the last full newsletter for the year. I will send home a fundraising update and the start of 2026 information at the end of this term.

Leslee Allen

Dangerous Behaviour

On the weekend a member of our community found a handful of boys at school in the evening. These boys were attempting to climb from the tanks, onto the canopy. They recognised one of the boys as a year six child currently attending our school, but do not know their name. There were no cars parked at school, so the boys must have been dropped off at school or will have walked. If you suspect this may have been your child, please have a stern word.

This behaviour is incredibly dangerous. If your child uses the school grounds unsupervised, please be aware of what they are doing here and remind them that this type of risky behaviour is not ok.

Respect

As we near the end of the year, we always notice that the respect shown for our place and our people begins to slip. We have been really frustrated by the lack of care children show for school property, their natural surroundings and their own belongings. Please support us in helping to reinforce that we all have an impact on those around us and small things really do count.

Snapshot - Achievement in Literacy and Maths 2025

This document provides a snapshot of our curriculum progress in 2025. As you're aware, the curriculum was updated in 2024, and this updated curriculum is now mandatory for us to work with. The expectations of this curriculum were significantly raised, meaning that children who were previously meeting curriculum expectations may not meet them now.

When our school was assessed against the old 2023 curriculum, the majority of our students were meeting or exceeding expectations. However, the results discussed below are based on the 2024 curriculum edition. Despite the 2024 curriculum being mandated for 2025, it was revised again in October, further raising the bar for expectations. This means we are now working with the third curriculum change: one in 2023, another in 2024, and the latest in October 2025.

To illustrate the extent of these changes, consider the area of number knowledge and equations and expressions. In the first year of school under the 2007 curriculum, there were three knowledge areas to be developed. This remained the same in 2023. However, in 2024, this increased to five areas of knowledge, and in the revised version of October 2025, it expanded to nine areas. These changes affect just two areas within the maths curriculum for the first year of school. Overall, there are now 47 aspects of knowledge in maths that need to be developed in the first year.

As you can imagine, these changes will impact what we are teaching and the achievement levels of our students. We appreciate your patience as we navigate these transitions.

Many schools would simply report to you on curriculum level, year 1- 3 being level one and year 4-6 being level two. However that would be misleading as there are three bands within each level, these three bands are what the percentages below are based on.

Achievement In Maths - Whole School

Term 2	Well Below	Below	At
	3.5%	61%	35.5%
Term 4	Well Below	Below	At	Above
	1.1%	30.7%	61.5%	6.7%

54 children have moved from well below/below to now achieving curriculum expectations.

Percentage of children working within their curriculum level 94%

Achievement in Reading - Whole School

Term 2	Well Below	Below	At	Above
	6.5%	55.9%	29.4%	8.2%
Term 4	Well Below	Below	At	Above
	3.4%	32.6%	42.5%	21.5%

41 children moved from being well below/below to now achieving curriculum expectations.

Percentage of children working within their curriculum level is 97%

Achievement in Writing - Whole School

Term 2	Well Below	Below	At	Above
	3.5%	67.1%	28.3%	1.1%
Term 3	Well Below	Below	At	Above
	2.8%	29.8%	59.7%	7.7%

46 children moved from being well below/below to now achieving curriculum expectations.

Percentage of children working within their curriculum level is 95%

Last Day - 16th of December

School will finish at 12pm on the 16th of December, please ensure children are picked up before 12.30pm.

Hats

This has been a huge area of frustration for us, all children should have a hat at school and know the importance of wearing one. We need your support with this. Please no caps in Term 1 and 4.

In Term 1 and 4, the expectation is that all children will wear hats when outside. Hats must have a full brim or a flap at the back. We recommend having a school hat that gets left in your child’s bag. If children do not have a hat, they will have to play in the courtyard area of the school.

Out of Zone Positions

Positions for new entrant children for 2026 have now all been filled. However, we still have positions available for other year levels in the school, particularly year 3 and 4 for 2026. If you know of anyone thinking of enrolling, tell them to get in touch with us. If you know of anyone moving into our zone, encourage them to get in touch as soon as possible. All of this information helps us in the confirmation of classes for 2026.

End of Term Awards

Tomorrow we will hold our end of term awards. This is an opportunity to recognise effort during Term 4 and to announce the overall good citizen for Term 4. This will start at 2.10pm under the canopy.

Our Finalists

Junior Prizegiving - Year 1 - 3

This will be held at 1.30pm under the canopy on the 10th of December.

Senior Prizegiving - Year 4 - 6

This will be held at 1.30pm under the canopy on the 11th of December.

Christmas Raffle

Please return all ticket butts and money by Friday.

Work Around The School - School Holidays

During the school holidays we have property work going on around the school. If you are using the school grounds please respect those areas that are taped off. Work will be going on to room 3 and to our septic system.

Stationery 2026

Exciting news 2026 Stationery ordering. This means you can pay for your child's class stationery on Kindo. Individual invoices will be sent to you through kindo. Your child's stationery will be delivered directly to the school classroom.

*Taking the stress out of ordering Save time – No more trips to town or online ordering and the wait for it to arrive.

*Stationery is ready and sorted in your child's class

*Every student has the right stationery ready on the first day Save confusion - Don’t worry we have got it sorted.

*CHEAPER, as we are bulk buying and able to pass this on to you. Save money – who doesn’t like that.

*This can be paid off

We will send you an invoice via Kindo for your child/children’s classroom stationary, you have until the 20th of January to pay this.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email or call in to the school office.

You are welcome to opt out of this, however we need you to let Shelley in the office know ASAP.

Gardening Around School

As you are hopefully aware, we do not have a caretaker. While our contractor endeavors to keep on top of as much as he can in the 5 hours he is allocated each week, on such a large site, this is a near impossible job. This means a lot of the weeding and general clean up falls to the children and us. If you have any time and are happy to potter around and weed at any stage, we are always grateful for the help. The native bush area is an area that requires a lot of love and we are always happy to have extra hands.

Fundraising

Our target this year is to raise $40 000 to cover learning support needs. This learning support serves to ensure we have people on the ground outside of classroom teachers that can give our children the support they need, when they need it. Unfortunately this is not currently funded by the Government.

Total raised in Term 1 was- $5281.20

In Term 2 we raised: $13 001.76

In Term 3 - $9803.80

Total so far - $28 086.76 (Term one two and three)

Term 4 Fundraisers-

Halloween - $16 059.57

Christmas Raffle - this will be drawn on the 10th.

Cookie time cookies - raised $885 in total!

Contacting Us

You can find all staff emails on our blog page under the tab ‘our staff,’ however the best way to contact your child’s teacher is via seesaw message. Teachers will endeavour to answer when they have time during the day, however please don’t expect replies to messages or emails after 5pm. We will respond the next day as soon as we can. Please refrain from using Facebook messenger, or our personal phone numbers to contact us.

Our school blog is kaurihohoreschool.blogspot.com

Office emails are:

Shelley- admin@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Dianne - reception@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Chelsea/Enrolments - kaurienrolments@gmail.com

Leslee - principal@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Reporting Absence - kauriabsences@gmail.com

If you have questions or concerns, please direct these to your child’s teacher as soon as you can, so we can nip anything in the bud before it becomes a bigger issue.

KINDO

Kindo is an app that allows online payments for items at school like pizza days etc. If you go to the links below to either create an account, or log in. These links are also at the top of our school blog site.

Create and account.

https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/flow_join.shtml

https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/index.html

Term Four

4th December - End of Term Awards 2.10pm - whole school

10th December - Junior Prizegiving 1.30pm (Year 1 - 3)

11th December - Senior Prizegiving 1.30pm (Year 4 - 6)

Last day of the year - 16th of December 12pm finish

2026 Dates - 3rd February to the 15th December

School Bank Account Details -

Account 12-3093-0200709-00

Kaurihohore school board of Trustees

Food for thought…

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Week Seven News

Kaurihohore School Week Seven, Term Four 2025

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua," Let our past guide our future

Manaaki te katoa - be kind to all.

Respect - Empathy - Kindness

Kia ora e te whānau,

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks here at school, with teachers working hard to get reporting comments out to you via seesaw and to fill in end of year reports.

It was disappointing that we could not go ahead with the athletics day, but the teachers worked hard to ensure the Year 5 and 6 events were completed so that a group could go to Glenbervie yesterday. We know it is disappointing when you do not get an opportunity to watch your child, but while we wish we could control the weather, it is very much out of our control.

We will find another date for the Year 3 - 4 events and the Year 1-2 events and let you know as soon as we can. As I am sure you can understand, the calendar is pretty packed at this time of year.

I wanted to make a special mention of all our fabulous sponsors for our Christmas raffle. Thank you so much for the support you show our school.

We may be on the downhill slide towards the holidays, but here at school there is still a lot of work to do. Classes are busy going over crucial learning, particularly in literacy and numeracy amongst all of the other business at the end of the year. Please ensure children are still coming to school each day, attendance remains very important.

Leslee Allen

Behaviour

At this time of the year, children’s behaviour can slip. We understand behaviour is a form of communication and negative behaviour can be communicating many things. This might be tiredness, overwhelm due to the business of end of year events, the excitement at changing classes, or even the excitement at moving to Intermediate. Like us, children get tired, their ability to regulate decreases and like us, they become much more likely to react to small triggers.

Please talk to your child about continuing to make good choices, continuing to show manaakitanga and aroha towards others and continuing to show respect to those around them. Encourage them to take time out in Te Kōhanga when they need it, or simply walk away from situations that are overwhelming them.

While we don’t have school rules, we do have habits that we like children to adopt to be a positive citizen of our school, and understand that our actions have an impact on others.

We have noticed over the last five years a real decline in basic manners, emotional and social skills, this of course impacts inside and outside of the classroom. Rather than accepting this, we want to play our role in turning this around.

As a staff, we sat down and wrote a list of minimum expectations that we expect from all of our children, of course taking into account their developmental stage and any other needs (an acknowledgement of a greeting, the way I listen, or say please and thank you etc, may be different for some children and that is ok and accepted here.)

We then shared these with children and asked for their input (remarkably these were very similar to ours.)

The list below is what we have settled on for now, under the headings of respect, ready and safe. We will be using these as a foundation for conversations in class next year, with the aim to have all children work together to set a positive tone for our school.

You might like to go over them with your child because the more we practice a habit the more natural it will become.

This of course does not replace all of the other things we do, but adds to our kete as we strive to create a place of belonging and safety for all of our ākonga.

Obviously these are minimum expectations, we will be making sure to recognise those that go above and beyond these on a daily basis.

Class Swaps

Today, the 25th of November and the 2nd of December, we will be running class swaps. The idea of these is to dispel any unease children may be feeling about changing classes and allow teachers to begin to build strong relationships with the children they will have next year.

While some schools will wait until the end of the year to put our class lists or even wait till the first day back, we don’t feel this approach is affirming to the needs of our children and hence prefer to follow this process.

We understand that some children will be expecting to be in a certain class and may be disappointed. We want to reassure you that we have put a LOT of thought into these classes and started this process during Term 3. We usually find that by the end of the third visit, they are feeling much more positive about the change.

Having three visits, allows children to feel more confident and settled about where they will be going next year.

All of our teachers are amazing, we all have our own strengths and children’s perception of us as teachers when they are not in our class, is often not the reality. They are often very attached to the teacher they are leaving and worried about the change. We thank you for supporting them through this process and understanding that change is ok and in fact a very positive process.

Those children not returning to us, will be supervised for a swim during class swap time.

Reporting

Teachers are currently busy working on reports. Via seesaw you will receive reports in English and Maths and at the end of the term you will receive a general report.

It is really important that you are aware of the changes in curriculum, in particular reading, writing and maths. We were given new curriculums to work with this year, on the understanding that these were confirmed. As we told you last year, the bar that these curriculums set in English and Maths were already far higher than before. A matter of weeks ago, without any warning, the MOE then released new updated curriculums in English and Maths. These amended curriculums had significant changes that again raised the bar even higher for our children. That means we have had three changes to our English and Maths curriculums over the last two years.

While we are absolutely not against having high expectations for achievement, we want you to be aware that for a child to meet expectations for their year level, the bar is set high and it may be that your child is marked as progressing towards or needing support.

As a staff, we agreed to continue reporting against the curriculum expectations we used at the beginning of the year to report on and will adopt the changes next year.

You will see four indicators at the top of the report, as you did in term one. Exceeding and Proficient both mean that your child has met year level expectations, or slightly exceeded current year level expectations. Progressing towards and needs support are both indicators that mean your child has not yet met expectations for their year level.

Next year, the MOE has added indicators to be used.

Please understand, we are doing the best we can in what is a very changeable landscape in education right now. Many of these changes, we hear about at the same time as you. We will continue to do our best to report accurately to you.

For children moving to Intermediate, this will also mean the Intermediate is working with the newest iteration of the curriculum, so expectations from 2025, will be different in 2026.

Swimming

Please ensure that children have their togs at school on their allocated swimming days. Swimming is part of the curriculum and it is expected that all children swim unless they have a reason they should not be swimming.

Hats

Out of Zone Positions

Positions for new entrant children for 2026 have now all been filled. However, we still have positions available for other year levels in the school, particularly year 2 and 4 for 2026. If you know of anyone thinking of enrolling, tell them to get in touch with us. If you know of anyone moving into our zone, encourage them to get in touch as soon as possible. All of this information helps us in the confirmation of classes for 2026.

Fundraising

Total raised in Term 1 was- $5281.20

In Term 2 we raised: $13 001.76

In Term 3 - $9803.80

Total so far - $28 086.76 (Term one two and three)

Term 4 Fundraisers-

Halloween - we do not yet have a final total, but will let you know as soon as we do.

Christmas Raffle - raffle tickets have come home with your children. This raffle is simply awesome, with so many awesome prizes on offer.

Cookie time cookies - raised $885 in total!

Dates for 2026

First day back 3rd February. Last day of the school year 15th December.

Contacting Us

Our school blog is kaurihohoreschool.blogspot.com

Office emails are:

Shelley- admin@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Dianne - reception@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Chelsea/Enrolments - kaurienrolments@gmail.com

Leslee - principal@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz

Reporting Absence - kauriabsences@gmail.com

If you have questions or concerns, please direct these to your child’s teacher as soon as you can, so we can nip anything in the bud before it becomes a bigger issue.