ACG Sunderland Newsletter - 3 March 2023

ACG SUNDERLAND WINGS NEWSLETTER

Vol 19, Term One, Week Six, 3 March 2023

Dear Parents and Friends of Sunderland,

What a fabulous day the entire school had on Tuesday at our annual Athletics Day!

This is the 17th time we have run this event and in my opinion, this is the best event we have ever held. I’m not sure of the reason for this. It could be due to our growth – with more competitors, more heats, more atmosphere. It could also be the wonderful student leadership team which we have assembled this year. This year, the sports council with the PE staff, all lead by Mr Keen and Mr Ryan, arriving at 6.00am to set up and then finishing the pack down at 4.30pm.

In the end, for all those reasons, we really did have a wonderful time. Mr Robson and many of the new staff had not experienced our whole school event before, and all commented on the positive culture which we have established.

Certificates will be presented to students at the upcoming assemblies.

Many thanks to all those parents who helped on the day, also. The event can never run without all your assistance.

I am conscious that many parents who live in Titirangi or the beach communities of Piha, Karekare or Muriwai are still struggling with some real basic logistics with roads, power and sometimes water still not operating. Our school bus system has changed to other pickups and drop offs as close as possible for the communities to continue with their education.

Our thoughts are with these families as solutions slowly begin to materialize for them.

On Saturday, we have our first Open Day for the year, with around 35 staff and 50 student guides all assisting in the process.

This is also an opportunity for parents and grandparents to also visit the campus if you missed that chance at enrolment.

I look forward to seeing you on the day if you decide to come in. Have a wonderful weekend.

Aspire. Succeed. Respect.

Nathan Villars Campus Principal ACG Sunderland

Value

for next week is: Integrity

The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

Early Learning School

Under 2’s Room

With continuous learning via music, our tamariki are focusing on learning their body parts with many action songs this week.

Junior Room

Water play and exploration is a favourite for the children of the Junior Room! Especially during the warm summer days which we had this past week, and are so grateful for. Water play is a great form of sensory play, which develops language opportunities and collaboration between children and teachers. Junior Room children thoroughly enjoy the outdoor water trough, catching and scooping the water as it pours out!

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

Early Learning School

Senior Room

The school Athletics Day was a lovely focus for the children of the Senior Room. We were able to go over and support the children in the Junior School as they participated in long jump, shot-put and running races.

The Senior children learnt about positive sportsmanship by cheering for the children participating and encouraging each other during the games. They were very excited to see some of their friends who had newly graduated into the Primary School!

6 Waipareira Ave, Henderson, Auckland

1HOC - Morgan Chen for hard work and perseverance in all learning

1AND - Max Duan for his wonderful developing literacy skills

1BTR - Kenneth Jin for excellent attitude in class

2CAR - Lucas Qu for showing great progress in Reading, Spelling and Maths, well done

2SHA - Alexis Wang for contributing to class discussion

2GLC - Merina Zhang for doing well in her Reading

3ZOU - Lucy Goh for outstanding result in her maths test

3RIC - Cindy Chen for excellent work ethic, always doing her best and takes pride in presentation of her work

4SMI - Henry Dong for settling well into school and trying his best

4RYN - Patrick Zhang for being a responsible and diligent learner

5TRE - Omar Chopra for doing his absolute best in all his learning

5KIM - Ethan Wo for determination to achieve over and beyond in Maths

5CHE - Jensen Duan for trying his best during athletics practise

6PIR - Dong Chen for overall attitude and work ethic

6HAS - Isabella Yu for fantastic effort in all subject areas

Primary House Shield Waitakere

Week 6 Assembly

Congratulations to:

Stella Chen – 3ZOU has taken the initiative to donate money to both the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and to support the relief efforts in the aftermath of the recent earthquake in Turkey. Well done, Stella.

Player of the Day Seasprites Team Congratulations - Aiden Tian 2SHA

Primary Art Photos

Years 3 Art students are learning about the elements of art which they applied in leaf tracing and designing. They also made twotoned love bugs. Year 4 students are learning about Kandinsky painting technique.

2023 Athletics Day

Athletics Day was once again a huge success! Every year is a ton of fun, and this year was no exception. Students enjoyed a day of participating in track, field and relay events, competing for valuable house points.

The event is held every year at the Trust Stadium, which is just a five-minute walk away from the school. The day started off with the all-important 1500m, then for the rest of the morning, college students competed in track events and primary competed in field events. The track events consisted of 100m, 200m, 300m, 400m, 800m and the field events consisted of shot put, discus, high jump and long jump. After a break for lunch, primary and college swapped, so that everyone had a turn at every event.

To finish off the day, there was the annual house relay races. They are divided into four categories: primary house relay, lower college house relay, upper college house relay and, everyone’s favourite, the Students vs Teachers relay. McDonald was victorious in the primary race, Findlay took the win in the lower college race and Whenuapai swept the competition in the upper college race, beating everyone by a good 20 metres. Unfortunately, the student’s lost tragically against the teachers, with Mr Jensen speeding ahead and putting so much distance between competitors, we couldn’t hope to catch up.

Another main aspect is the house spirit of Athletics Day, students dressed up in their house colours and wore their house shirts to gain extra points. Students did their house chant and cheered on fellow students.

Overall, the day ran very smoothly, and the entirety of Sunderland had an amazing time!

By Frankie Gray, Year 11

Athletics Day Photos

BTS of Athletics Day

As we all know, the annual Athletics Day just passed, and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did! I want to give a huge congratulations to everyone that won their races, and great job to everyone that participated! We’re all eager to see who won the house competition this year!

The lower college has been preparing for this event for weeks, with all their P.E. lessons preparing them for the different events. I’m aware that many of them planned to try and beat their personal bests on athletics day, and I’m certain many did so.

I want to give a great thank you to Mr Keen for organising the event, and the Sports Council for helping set it all up. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, which no doubt helped the day run so smoothly. The school leaders and the Sports Council did the near-impossible task of being at school at 6 AM to set the entire day up (myself included)! We pushed through the heavy lifting job early in the morning, trying to get it done.

We started with a torturous early morning wake-up and drive through the dark sky. As soon as we arrived at school, we started lifting and transporting tables, chairs, boxes, water bottles, gazebos, and more. The most challenging part of the set-up was limiting the number of trips to the arena and the school. We had to use plenty of communication and listen to each other as well as Mr Keen. With someone in the trailer stacking, and the others handing them objects, there was so much going on, and being my first year in the Sports council, I was not expecting this!

As soon as everything was in the cars and trailer, we drove to the arena and unloaded everything. We then organised and set everything to its allocated position – including the occasional sunscreen around the track to ensure no one gets burnt! After that, we tested the speakers and through came the 1500-metre runners! We cheered them on as they competed in the longest race of the day while helping Mr Devereux with timing. Once all the age groups had finished the 1500m, we finished setting up and got ready to begin the day.

After the long, hot hours of sitting in the sun, running, jumping and throwing, it was time to pack up. This is when the school leaders and sports council began packing everything up as fast as we could. We did the same thing as the morning (while picking up heaps of rubbish), just in reverse order. The tricky thing about this was sitting and waiting in the hot sun while the trips to school were happening.

Overall, setting up and packing up was an exciting, but tiring experience. You get to wake up bright and early and hang out with your friends, but you also have hard labour to fulfil. We give a huge thank you to Mr Keen for organising the event, and it was very enjoyably for everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed participating and is excited about the next school event!

By Dileena Gulabdas, Year 10

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.