Term three comes to an end this Friday. Wow! What a busy term it has been. At the beginning of the term we celebrated Room 17’s move from the staffroom and into the new room. During the term there have been many highlights including the Ski-Skating day at Tekapo for our Yr 7-8’s, Footpath Frenzying with Mayor Damon Odey, and the amazing Student 50c Gala.

Today the PTA run their Walkathon-Colour Walk fundraiser. The weather has certainly been kind to us, and we’re looking forward to a great event after lunch today. Keep an eye out for all the colourful photos on Facebook later on in the day. A massive thanks needs to go out to Sarah Johnson and the PTA team for organising this event. No doubt it’s going to be a great success, and your dedication and support to the school is greatly appreciated.

Our cover stars are some of our Team leaders getting the colour ready for the big event! Looks like it’s going to be amazing.

Tomorrow we are lucky to be hosting three of our own rock bands for a lunchtime concert. I’m really looking forward to hearing what our students can do. It’s bound to be entertaining and a lot of fun! Feel free to come along and listen if you like.

Last week in the newsletter we mentioned that seven of our students were heading away to Nelson as part of the South Canterbury Cross Country team. Overnight we heard that Ashley Batt and Nadia van den Bosch will be the team captains for the Yr7-8 teams. What a great honour!

Congratulations to Corban Sprague who came third in the Aoraki Secondary Schools Yr 7-8 Mountainbike Cross Country event in Oamaru recently. Great effort Corban J

During the holidays Rooms 9-10 will under go a well overdue refurbishment. This means that Rooms 9 and 10 will begin the fourth term for a couple of weeks or so in different accommodation as the refurbishment is carried out. Room 9 will begin the fourth term in the meeting room beside the hall (we used this as the staffroom last year), and Room 10 will begin the term in the Library. Obviously this is just temporary as the refurbishment is undertaken and the inconvenience will no doubt be well worth it!

Footpath Frenzy will run for the final time in 2018 on Friday. This week we’ll be up on the corner of Pages Road and Hunter Hills Drive at 8:30am. See you all there .

Enjoy your holiday break everyone, we’ll see you all back at school fit and healthy on Monday 15th October.

Steve Zonnevylle

Principal

Gleniti School

Read the full publication

Yesterday I spent the day with Mrs Spittal and the Wave team. Jane Sullivan from Community and Public Health came to talk to the team about the development of the School Transport plan. Just over thirty Gleniti students from the Wave Team were able to confidently share their thoughts with Jane about solutions for our traffic congestion around the school. It seemed to me an excellent example of our students having a very clear voice in a problem that involves them. I was impressed that the Wave Team were happy to give up their lunchtime to have their voices heard. However as Mrs Spittal will tell you, this wasn’t a one off, the Wave Team frequently meet to talk about all sorts of issues around the school. They are a very solution based group of students. What a team!

For me it reminded me of what Gleniti school is all about. At Gleniti we are a definite WE. There is much to gain academically and socially from being in an environment whereby everyone is an intrinsic part of being a collective. Together we are very much a bigger and better whole. I wrote a line on our website that goes “It is our belief that Gleniti School should be a veritable smorgasbord of positive experiences, opportunities and challenges.” The Wave team are a classic example of this. But they’re not alone. We also see this from our Kapa Haka group, our Jump Jam Teams, our Chess Team, our Netball/Basketball/Hockey/Touch/Tee Ball teams, our Rock bands (did you know we have three of them!), our authors who have had stories published in magazines, our teams who have competed in Aoraki Maths Competitions, Spelling Competitions and Current Event quizzes, our Peer Mediators … the list goes on! These are all examples of our children involving themselves in the “veritable smorgasbord of positive experiences“ of school life at Gleniti. And tomorrow our School Council does the same when they host the Gleniti 50c Gala. The School Council add greatly to the overall fabric of the school. Here they are providing an event organised by the students for the students. Wow! Awesome! And at the same time they all tick off each of the schools values of Achievement, Responsibility, Caring, Honesty, Effort and Respect. Great effort everyone!

Congratulations to Kea and Taj who competed in the MacKenzie District Primary School Ski Race at Mt Dobson earlier this week. Taj placed 8th in the year 1-2 boys and Kea podiumed with 2nd place in the year 3-4 girls. Great effort for their first ever ski race!

Just a reminder that we have changed our Phone App. The new App is called Skool Loop (a confusingly similar name to the old one!) and can be easily downloaded from Google Play and the App Store. We won’t be uploading any information to the SkoolBag app anymore. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Footpath Frenzy continues this Friday. This week I’ll be up on the corner of Pages Road and Hunter Hills Drive at 8:30am. See you all there J

Congratulations to our Principal Award recipients at Assembly last Friday.

Steve Zonnevylle

Principal

Gleniti School

Read the full publication

Welcome to Spring everyone! Our cover stars are enjoying all the spring daffodils around the school. Thank you everyone who supported the Daffodil Day fundraiser for the Cancer Society last week. As a school we raised $292.

Next week is shaping up to be a busy one. On Wednesday we will be hosting the team from Kolourcare for our annual school photos. Please ensure that your children come to school in correct uniform.

And on Thursday (13th September) the School Council will be hosting the School Council 50cent Gala. Keep an eye out for more details. This is always a great event, run by our students for our students.

Last night I attended the monthly PTA meeting. Wow! What a great group of parents who give their spare time to help organise events and fundraisers for all the students at Gleniti School. Sarah Johnson does an amazing job as the chairperson of the group and she’s well supported by a dedicated committee. I’m really proud of this group! Great work PTA!

For the last five years we have been using a Phone App called SkoolBag as one of the many ways to keep in touch with families and whanau. SkoolBag have needed to put their prices up unfortunately and we’ve decided to move to a New Zealand based App instead which is free to the school. The App is funded through local sponsorship. If you have a local business who would like to advertise on the App then please let me know.

The new App is called Skool Loop (a confusingly similar name!) and can be easily downloaded from Google Play and the App Store. We won’t be uploading any information to the SkoolBag app as of today. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Footpath Frenzy continues this Friday. This week I’ll be up on Gleniti Road across from Cedar Place at 8:30am. See you all there

Steve Zonnevylle

Principal

Read the full publication