ACG Sunderland Newsletter - 10 March 2023

ACG SUNDERLAND WINGS NEWSLETTER

Vol 19, Term One, Week Seven, 10 March 2023

Dear Parents and Friends of Sunderland,

I hope, like me, you have enjoyed the more settled autumnal weather this week. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have this over the summer break.

Speaking of weather, I do hope those families who have been displaced or are still battling with home and property damage are making some progress.

This week, Mr Murray Jackson has joined the property admin team. Murray is the new Property Officer. He will be overseeing the property portfolio here at Sunderland, plus completing the caretaker role too. Please make him feel welcome.

Murray has experience as a builder and is certainly a welcome addition.

This Friday, all students will receive a school report. This report is an initial communication to parents giving some feedback/feedforward, plus for Primary and Lower College the PAT scores also.

Parent/Teacher interviews are scheduled to take place next week on Tuesday and Wednesday, and parents will have received instructions on how to generate meeting times. Please appreciate that, if you require some more time to chat with an individual teacher, we welcome you to schedule a longer meeting for another time.

My philosophy is for parents to have informed communications with teachers and therefore, having a reference document like this report is important to frame such conversations. I look forward to seeing many of you next week.

On Thursday this week, we had our annual ‘ Whole School’ photo on the lower basketball court. 750 children were in the photo – minus the preschool and unfortunately, we have maxed out the stands that Photolife use for this event. Next year, as the school continues to grow, we will probably need a drone to take this photo.

For your reference, this photo can be found in the centerfold of the yearbook. It is an important record of the school and, if at all possible, we would like to keep it going.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone – stay safe.

Aspire. Succeed. Respect.

Nathan Villars Campus Principal ACG Sunderland

Early Learning School

Under 2’s Room

Tuakana with prior knowledge in paint inspired the ways of exploration with other younger teina who were encountering this novel medium through their potent engagement. The knowledge is shared through the gaze, sensual and peaceful interaction in this slick, vibrant and bold sensory experience

Junior Room

Beautiful colours through experiments and crafts have been a lovely welcome focus for the children of the Junior Room. Using food colouring hidden underneath the baking soda, the colour magically appears once the children add pipettes of vinegar, giving children the opportunity to build on their colour recognition and hand-eye coordination through science. Making rainbows from clouds with coloured paper supports the colour focus this week - so pretty!

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

Early Learning School

Senior Room

Kia ora! This week, the Senior tamariki have been focusing on the letter “p.” The children have been engaging in activities that involve the formation of the letter and sound.

1HOC - Bryan Zhao for working hard at his sight words and reading.

1AND - Marco Meng for a positive attitude towards learning.

1BTR - Queena Jia for settling to work quickly and quietly.

2CAR - Allison Wang for getting 100% in Basic Facts level 3 and 100% in spelling.

2SHA - Amber Wang for working hard on reading responses.

2GLC - Winston Lan for working diligently in class.

3ZOU - Matilda Townshend for writing a character description with interesting language.

3RIC - Sofia Onodera Menezes for settling well into ACG Sunderland and 3RIC

4SMI - Simon Wang for a positive attitude – he is always smiling and willing to help others.

4RYN -Yomal Navarante for great PAT results achieved.

5TRE - Jason Zhang for having a positive attitude towards all his learning.

5KIM - Ethan Wo for keeping his books neat and completing each task.

5CHE - Nicole Patterson for asking questions when she is unsure.

6PIR - Angela Zhou for her amazing effort finding words for homework.

6HAS - Kingsley Lin for a fantastic effort in all subject areas.

Primary House Shield Tong

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

Week 7 Assembly

Eason Sun – 3RIC

Lower Primary Trophy Winner

The Catastrophic Start to 2023

Just at the end of January and February, 2023, and we have already had circumstances beyond our control; what a disastrous start to the year. We presumed the worst was behind us, but 2023 is astounding us yet again. I’ll be talking about some of these natural disasters in slightly more detail.

Let’s start with the flooding. The first month of the year was treating us well, but decided to end with a bang! On the 27th of January, the upper part of the North Island suffered catastrophic floods, caused by heavy rainfall. Auckland was the most significantly affected, especially West Auckland and the North Shore. According to NIWA, an entire Summer’s worth of rain fell within this one day, which will be remembered as one of Auckland’s worst floods in modern history. Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson stated that the event was “New Zealand's costliest non-earthquake event ever.” Landslides occurred, online school for a couple days, cars were flooded, houses were wrecked, the Auckland International Airport was closed for a week; damage was tragic and widespread.

And when the earth decided that we hadn’t suffered enough, she hit us with Cyclone Gabrielle. This cyclone not only affected New Zealand, but also parts of Australia and Vanuatu. Unfortunately, there was one firefighter whose life was taken in the cyclone, in Muriwai. He was investigating a flooded house when a landslide occurred, and he was missing for a couple of days before being found buried under the house. The loss of was one of the greatest tragedies caused by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Once again, we had online school, this time for slightly longer. Hawkes Bay, Bay of Islands, parts of Auckland, Taranaki and many more places were affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, and councils are working hard to help deploy engineers to assess affected houses and infrastructure. Many temporary shelters have been made for families whose houses were completely flooded, or are in danger of collapsing. The NZ army jumped into the crisis for extra support to help the people of New Zealand. Auckland Airport had the worst closure in the history of the airport; domestic and international flights were cancelled and passengers already in the airport weren’t allowed to exit, and had to spend a few days inside the airport. There was even one instance where an Emirates flight departed from Dubai headed to Auckland and had to take a 180 degree turn halfway during the flight back to Dubai.

As stated by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins: the cost of recovery is estimated to be a whopping 13 billion dollars! It will be challenging to reconstruct major infrastructure damages due to shortage of construction workers; it could take up to a year to completely recover Auckland, and bring us back to the stable state we were in. Insurance companies are full of clients needing money for their cars and homes, after the hefty amount they’ve been paying every month. All that money the insurance companies had flowing in, is now gone. Insurance companies are sure to increase prices after what has been a major loss for them.

And to continue the trend of random natural disasters, on the 15th of February at 7:38pm a 6.1 magnitude earthquake occurred near the capital city of Wellington. The centre of the earthquake was 50km from the town of Paraparaumu on the south-western coast of the North Island. And just to end the whole February natural disasters theme, we had a nice “light” rain on the 24th of February.

This has definitely been a rough start to 2023. Hopefully the best of this year is yet to come, and we’ve got through the worst. It’s a hard time for North Islanders, but now that it’s mostly over, it’s about NZ working together to rebuild.

By Akarsh Shankar, Year 9

Auckland’s Summer Weather

So, it’s been raining lately. We have had at least two instances of very heavy rain in the past few weeks.

First, on January 27th, an atmospheric river spanning the Pacific Ocean was pushed into New Zealand by the tropical depression called 06F. What does that mean? An atmospheric river is a long, thin “river” of concentrated cloud water, that can span many thousands of kilometres, sometimes across oceans. This stream of heavy rain clouds was not initially directed at New Zealand, but when a tropical depression (a tropical storm too small to be called a cyclone) moved south from the Tasman Sea, toward New Zealand, it “pushed” the atmospheric river into our country.

The result was quite powerful. According to Metservice, in 34 hours, 299.5 millimetres of rain fell on Albert Park. $1 Billion dollars of property damages (the costliest storm in New Zealand History, at the time). What could top that?

On February 8th, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology upgraded the rating of Tropical Depression 14U to a Category 1 Tropical Storm and named the storm “Gabrielle”. Over the next few days, the storm would move to the west of the Australian State of Queensland and move across the Tasman Sea toward New Zealand. Vanuatu and New Caledonia were mildly affected by the passing of the storm to their East, with a village heavily damaged in Vanuatu. The cyclone then passed directly over Norfolk Island, on February 11th, and at that time had been upgraded to a Category 2 Tropical Storm. Winds in excess of 140 km/h were recorded. The island was prepared, and a shelter had already been established before the storm hit. No significant damages were recorded on the island.

On the 11th of February, the Storm was downgraded to a Subtropical Cyclone, after having peaked at Category 3 Tropical Storm. On the 12th, the storm made landfall on Northland. Heavy rain, high winds, storm surges, landslides, flooding, power cuts, and more damages occurred. The highest recorded rainfall for the storm was in the Gisborne area, with 488 millimetres of rain for the single storm. Many habitations were evacuated throughout the North Island. Hawkes Bay was the most severely affected region. The now infamous town of Eskdale was struck by a 7-meter flash flood, destroying, or damaging everything in the valley. Entire houses were swept away. 40,000 homes lost power after a substation near Napier was damaged due to another river far exceeding its banks. Four of the main roads out of the region were closed due to serious damages to the infrastructure. The damages have amounted to over $10 billion dollars, making this the most expensive storm in the Southern Hemisphere, ever.

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

With two record breaking storms spaced two weeks apart, how out of the ordinary was this summer? Here shows historic rainfall data for Auckland, from Metservice:

As you can see with the large blue bar to the right, our January has been more wet than Winter 2022. Winter 2022 was one of the wettest on record, according to NIWA. This is shown on this graph, on the far left:

This shows beyond doubt that the weather has been changing. Our climate is getting warmer, and wetter every year, in the short term. This could be attributed to localised weather treads over times of 300 years. For example, from the 1300s to the 1800s, Europe and North America experienced a cooling of the weather, that would be reverted by the start of the 1900s. Another explanation for our weather trends is the all too often mentioned “Climate Change” (various rather different terms are used to explain the same phenomenon, so I choose to keep “Climate Change” in quotation marks). This means we all need to be more prepared in case of flooding and cyclones. I recommend looking at the Civil Defence website for their disaster preparation recommendations. I hope we all stay dry in what could become the wettest year on record.

By Arthur Deutsch, Year 11

Senior Tutorials

Tutorials are offered to students as a means to give extra support and guidance. The key to tutorials is be prepared.

Examples of what you could get help with and what you should bring but not limited to

• Review past exam questions

• Specific questions related to the course

• Practice essays

• Questions on your coursework

• Teacher is reviewing a specific area you are not confident in.

The key is being specific, remember staff like it when you are proactive. The tutorial is the opportunity to look closely at the requirements of a piece of work with the guidance of a staff member.

Arrival at School

Please be reminded that school starts at 8.30am. Students must arrive by 8.15am and they will be marked absent if they are not in class by 8.30am.

Lost Property

We are accumulating an awful lot of lost property – uniforms, drink bottles, lunch boxes, shoes etc.

Please ensure that ALL your child’s belongings are labelled with their name.

Sundry Purchases

If you are purchasing sundry items from Reception like calculators, badges etc, can you please ensure your child has the correct money as we do not have change at reception. We are unable to put these on your school account.

2nd Hand Uniform Shop

A reminder that the 2nd hand uniform shop is no longer sending cheques out or able to pay into your school account for uniform items sold on behalf. If you know you have uniform items in the shop to sell, please go to reception or ring the school with a bank account number to deposit the funds. No bank account number – no payment

School Lunches – Ordered from Libelle

When placing your order via our website for the student café – please ensure that you have update the class and room for 2023..

School Socks

We have available in the 2nd hand uniform shop, a range of brand new boys socks in a variety of sizes. Price is $14 per pair.

School Badges

House Badges $5, Sunderland Badges $8.50, Speciality Badges $12. Please ensure your child has the correct money as we cannot charge these to your school account. These can be purchased from Reception.

Dropping Off Items to Children

Reminder – when you are dropping off items or collecting your children from school for appointments – you MUST report to reception and NOT go directly to their classroom.

Parents and Friends Committee

Dear Parents and Friends of ACG Sunderland, ACG Sunderland is an independent school whose students are of incredibly diverse ethnicity. From pre-school to senior college the school strives to help their students achieve their full potential. The Parents and Friends Committee works alongside this aim of the school.

Parents and Friends is a committee run by volunteers all, unsurprisingly, are friends or families of the school! The committee raises funds to cover items of benefit to the students that are not covered by school fees. In the past this has included such things as donations to the school ball, shade sails over playgrounds, cricket nets, and the planting of a hedge for privacy at the front of the primary playground.

All activities run by Parents and Friends are fun, social activities that help to instil a feeling of belonging throughout all families attending the school. Meetings take place on the first Thursday of every month at 8.30am in the staffroom. Please let Mrs Sonya Eldridge know if you are interested in joining the committee by email: sonya.eldridge@acgedu.com

The next meeting is Thursday 2 February 2023.

ACG Sunderland Parents and Friends Committee Scholarship

Parents & Friends Committee would like to let all parents know about this scholarship for 2023.

The purpose of the ACG Sunderland Parents and Friends Scholarship is to assist an individual or group of current students to participate in an activity that extra finances are required to allow the activity to take place. These activities may include (but are not limited to) representative sports, music, the arts, or sponsorship.

Criteria

 The student/s must be currently enrolled at ACG Sunderland

 A full application Form must have been completed and signed

 At the discretion of the Parent and Friends committee a maximum of $1000 may be allocated each academic year.

Application forms can be requested from Linda Storey at linda.storey@acgedu.com

Sunderland on Service at ACG Sunderland

Dear parents and students, as you maybe knowing service is a crucial value that should be practised by all ages. Here at Sunderland we want to recognise those who already do active selfless service at home or in their community, but most importantly we would like those who don’t really do active service to be given a chance and to be educated about service, and this can be reached through Sunderland On Service (S.O.S).

What is our Mission statement?

To develop the values of service and respect by helping others in our school and community.

To actively contribute within our communities, display values of selflessness, enthusiasm and determination.

How to get involved or get your badge?

We will be putting up information about different activities that can be done on our notice board and will be posting more information soon. You can collect a sheet at reception to fill in with your hours or find it on blackboard, and it can be handed back to reception so that we can award you for your outstanding service.

Anything you want to count as your hours should be done as a volunteer, meaning you shouldn’t be paid for doing it. Remember to keep the service age appropriate.

Below is the information for the badges:

Ground Crew

Freedom2Play School Wear Shop

40 Patiki Road

Avondale

Auckland

Tel 09 838 6164

Open

Tuesday, Thursday from 9.00am to 5.00pm Saturday from 9.00am to 1.00pm

Closed

Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Public Holidays

As a reminder all school uniform continues to be available for purchase online on our Freedom2Play website freedom2play.co.nz/collections/schoolwearschools-acg-sunderland-school

Kids at School Care

Kids at School Care operates in G02, Monday to Friday, from 7.00am to 8.20am and 3.10pm to 5.45pm. They also run a Holiday Programme.

Contact Beth Rivero for enrolment and fees information by email beth.rivero@gmail.com or Phone: 022 394 5743.

Staff Emails

Email format for staff is: Firstname.Surname@acgedu.com

Sunderland Second-Hand Uniform Shop

The shop is open. Please ask at reception for access. We are taking good quality uniform items for the second-hand shop. Blazers must be dry cleaned.

Lunch Orders – From Libelle

You can order your child's yummy and healthy lunches at www.lunchorders.co.nz. Cut off time for ordering same day is at 8.30am. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Lunch Orders team via email on lunchorders@libelle.co.nz or flick a message on the Lunch Orders FB Messenger. Happy Lunch Ordering!

No cash-out service available.

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

Lost Property

All lost property can be found by the Second-Hand Uniform Shop.

For your best interest, please name all clothing, lunch boxes and drink bottles, as we will return all named items to the student’s homeroom teacher.

School Contact Details

School Office: Phone: 838 7070

Address: 6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson

Waitakere 0610

Email: sunderland@acgedu.com

Attendance: sunderlandattendance@acgedu.com

Web: www.acgedu.com

2023 Term Dates

Term 1: 26 January to 6 April

Term 2: 26 April to 30 June

Term 3: 24 July to 22 September

Term 4: 9 October to 8 December

2024 Term Dates

Term 1: 25 January to 12 April

Term 2: 29 April to 27 June

Term 3: 22 July to 27 September

Term 4: 14 October to 3 December

Traffic- Safety

Please note that numbered car parks are for staff. Please do not park in the numbered carparks.

Contacting School Bus Drivers

Please do not ring or text the drivers after 7.15am as they will not be checking their cell phones while they are driving. Thank you for your support.