Kia Ora Whānau
The end of the year is nearly upon us! School finishes this Friday (15th December) @ 12.30pm. This is the last newsletter for 2023 and it is jam-packed with lots of celebrations! 

Tomorrow at our Service to School Celebration we will be celebrating 2023, farewelling the Year 6 students and the following teachers:
Priya Dharshini (Room 7)
Gemma Singleton (Room 2)
Kelly McIntosh (Room 33)
We thank Priya, Gemma and Kelly for their kind and caring teaching and being valued members of the RPS team this year and we wish them all the very best for their next venture.

We enjoyed our Gratitude Morning Tea last week where staff baked or bought goodies for all the the special people who have given their time to support various activities at our kura. A massive shoutout to all of our sports coaches, class parent helpers, trip parent helpers, Kapa haka, Band, our PTA and our Board of Trustees - we appreciate you!

We farewelled a special volunteer this year, Liz, who has diligently shared her time with us over the last sixteen years.  We thank Liz for her outstanding service to our kura and we will miss her!

 
We also had a fabulous Year 6 Leavers ceremony last night where we farewelled our Year 6 students. We wish them all the very best for their next adventure as they move on to Intermediate. We also said goodbye to those families who end their connection with Rototuna Primary School this year as their 'last' child leaves our kura - we sincerely thank you for your years of support. 

I hope you have all taken the time to log into @school and read your child's end of year report. On this report you will find your child's classroom teacher and classroom for 2024. The students will get the opportunity on Friday 15th (our last day of school for the year) to go to their new classroom and meet their new teacher and new classmates. This is always a great way to end the year with the students knowing their classroom for next year, their new teacher and their new classmates. 

In this newsletter you will find our 2023 end of year achievement results in reading, writing and maths. There is lots to be celebrated and we look forward to continuing our mahi next year to support all students to reach their potential.

Lastly, on behalf of the Rototuna team I wish you a very Merry Christmas! Thank you for all your fabulous support this year. We have certainly enjoyed working alongside you to make Rototuna Primary School a great place to be for your children.

Kia pai tō ra koutou 
Enjoy your day everyone,
Kylie 

Congratulations to the following students who have shown manaaki and kindness over the last couple of weeks.

Week 8 Manaaki Stars:

Phoebe R18, Fatima R6, Victoria R15, Beaudie R2, Xander R2, Huy R8, Lilia R40/41, Lydia R40/41, Ocean R40/41, Aryan R40/41, Remy R22, Jal R35, Asha R5, Felicity R7, Archie R13, Julia R13, Elena R32, Raegan R31, Salome R30, Mikayla R17, Eric R10, Parav R10, Daman R12, Gaby R9, Jasper R34, Deiss R14, Anav R16, Blake R16, Libby R19, Amelia R19, Diza R38, Indigo R24, Bento R21,Cooper R11, Dorian R20, BJ R39, Tyler R39, Blake R23.

Week 9 Manaaki Stars:

Sophie R8, Mason R20, Tutu R5, Jayden R7, Lina R15, Unaysa R18, Emma R30, Hazel R32, Cynthiyaa R31, Fidha R6, Brodie R2, Riley R1, Harley R9, Odin R11, Oliver R11, Alera R12, Gurnoor R17, Ziming R14, Dylan R13, Sabaren R34, MItchell R24, Lincoln R16, Isaac R22m, Logan R40/41, Inna R38, Lucas R40/41, Cade R39, Tyler R39, Khade R35/36, Shiven R 35/36, Manveet R35/36, Dayton R19 and Mea R21.

Year 4-6 Interschool Athletics Results 2023
Our Year 4, 5, and 6 athletes represented Rototuna Primary extremely well at the Interschool Athletics which was held at Southwell School last Thursday. Their performances on the day were amazing and their behaviour was fabulous - a real credit to our kura. A massive thank you to Anna Beveridge, Anna Parkinson and Ricky for their organisation and to all the parents and whānau who supported this event. Below are the results of our placegetters. Congratulations to all our talented athletes! 

Gultaj Singh: Ist High Jump

Gultaj Singh: 2nd Long jump

Lola Pointon: 2nd= Long Jump 
William Underwood: 2nd 50m sprints

William Underwood: 3rd 100m sprints

2nd place to Year 4 Boys Relay team

Sebastian Vosuga: !st Cricket Ball Throw

Rynhardt Koekemaer: 3rd Cricket Ball Throw

Jake Harvey: 1st Long Jump

Alex Gale: 3rd 800m

2nd place to Year 5 Boys Relay team

Tammy Pakinga-Ainsley: 3rd Cricket Ball Throw

Skylar Cecil: 3rd Long Jump

Levi Brough: Ist 100m sprint

2nd place to Year 6 Girl Relay Team

Ist place to Year 6 Boys Relay Team

Karina was awarded 2nd place in the 11-14 year old category in the recent Mokopuna Ora national literacy competition run by the University of Canterbury! They received over 300 entries so Karina should be very proud of her achievement. Congratulations Karina! We are proud of you! 

You can find a more detailed strategic plan on our refreshed school website, click the link below. 

Our school choir had a very busy end to their school year. Last week they visited the Tamahere Church to sing Christmas Carols and they were invited back to Sovereign Isle to sing Christmas carols too. We are so proud of their singing talents and love to be entertained by them. A massive thank you to Vanessa Matai'a for leading our choir, organising practices and single-handedly organising both trips!

At Rototuna Primary School we use OfficeMax for our school stationery orders. Click on the link below to find  information about setting up your OfficeMax account:

OfficeMax Information 

OfficeMax also have a Get back to School offer if you place your school stationery order in December. See below for details:

If you require any further information about how to order school stationery, please contact one of us in the office. We are more than happy to help! 

We are super excited to be working with Liz and her team from Direct Group Uniforms to design our sports uniform and our school uniform. We think they have done a fabulous job of providing design possibilities for a sports kit for our school that incorporates our new vision! We are looking forward to hopefully having a new sports uniform ready to go for the 2024 winter sports season! Thanks to Dee-Anne Leith (Board of Trustees) for her passion and commitment in supporting this mahi! 

Our lovely teacher and Christmas enthusiast, Amber Mattsson organised a School Christmas Window Competition. Teachers, students and staff have been getting into the festive spirit by decorating their classroom window or classroom door. On Monday afternoon, the whole school wandered around enjoying the Christmas Art and finding clues for the 'Cracking the Code' activity. Congratulations to Room 15 for cracking the code first! It was such a lovely way to come together as a school. The windows/doors were judged on Monday by Ricky and Leanne, our resident Santa and Elf helper. The winners of the Christmas Window Competition were:
Juniors: Room 9 (Miss King)
Seniors: Room 21 (Mrs McLeod) and Room 34 (Mrs Singh)
Adults: Rimu Office (Mrs Kell)

Last Friday the whole school participated in capturing drone footage of us coming together to celebrate two things: our new motto: Kia Manawanui  - strong of heart and 20 years of our school being open! A big thank you to Lisa Burgess, our receptionist, for finding just the right Drone company to support us with this idea. Andrew from Skyview Photography was awesome to work with and we can't wait to share the special video at our Service to School celebration tomorrow! Once the staff and students have viewed the video, we will post to our website and school Facebook page. 

Below you can also find a link to an article in the Waikato Times celebrating our 20 years!

A massive thank you to our awesome Board of Trustees members who give hours of their own time to ensuring our kura (school) is the best place to be for students, teachers and whānau. On Monday we had our last meeting for the 2023 year and then went out for dinner together. It was a lovely way to end the school year! Matt, Dee-Anne, Neil, Ali, Laura, Jane, Delwyn and I are all looking forward to a fantastic 2024 at Rototuna Primary School!

I can't end the year without saying a massive thank you to our wonderful teachers, support staff, office staff, and caretakers.  It is an absolute privilege to work with such a talented team who turn up every day to work together for the good of our students.
 
A special thank you to Stacey Lawrence and Tina Anderson  - Rototuna Primary School's Deputy Principals. They do a mountain of work behind the scenes to help make Rototuna Primary School awesome and we are so grateful for their commitment and dedication to our kura (school).