In today’s newsletter we have the following:
- News from the Principal and DP’s
- Upcoming Events for June
- Vandalism
- Student Congratulations
- ESOL Student Trip to Auckland Art Gallery
- Bigfoot Bike Adventures
- Parent Arts Evening
- Psychologist and Counsellor Spot
- PTA News
- ANI Sports-Pro Programme
- House Points Update
- Community News
NEWS from the PRINCIPAL and DPs
Dear Parents and Caregivers
Tēnā koutou i ngā whānau o te kura.
Snippets this month are:
A Word from our Student Leaders – video
2022 Enrolments – video
Update on student achievement at ANI – teaching and learning – video
Joint Parent evening at Maungawhau School – video
Professional development for teachers at staff meeting and Teacher Only Day – video
Social Media
We often get asked “How much is too much?” for students on social media and “How harmful is it to a young person’s mental health?”. Through a variety of wellbeing programmes in place at school and lessons taken by the counsellor we teach students how to manage the prevalence of technology and digital devices in their lives. A few golden rules include:
- No devices in the bedroom
- Make sure you have FamilyZone loaded onto the devices your young person uses (at school and at home)
- Have device time/non-device time routines
- Keep an eye on websites visited, watch for cyberbullying
- Check regularly on social media accounts if they have one (including any hidden accounts they may have set up)
A wise parent keeps a close eye on time spent on social media and the material being accessed. When young people know their parents are interested and watchful, they may be influenced to make good choices.
If the choices are not what you would expect, then try this strategy (we use it at school) – “Mess up, fess up, fix up!”.
Netball
The Netball season has started with a flourish of activity on and off the courts. Most mornings and afternoons you will see students participating in drills and friendly games on the school courts. This is all put into practise on Monday afternoons at the Windmill Road courts and on Tuesdays at Auckland Netball in Mt Wellington. Here is a shot of one of Monday nights games at Windmill Road courts.
Student Coaching
Students coaching students has been an integral part of the learning culture at ANI for a number of years. Students have opportunities to be coached by a trained teacher, which can be a classroom teacher or one of the SLT. Students can either nominate themselves or be nominated by a teacher to attend workshops to become a trained student coach. Once they have been trained as a coach they then work in classrooms with our Year 7 students to set goals using the GROWTH coaching model.
We then ask our Year 7 and Year 8 students to join in the second round of coaching workshops to ensure we capture as many students as possible to keep this great opportunity available and sustainable for years to come. They learn a variety of skills such as: active listening, responding to students needs (goal setting), questioning, empathy, emotional intelligence and breaking down information to make it manageable and achievable in realistic timeframes, to name a few.
If you think this might be something for your child, please let Mr Devery know via email at sdevery@ani.school.nz.
2021 International Competitions for Schools (ICAS)
The ICAS schools competitions, organised by Educational Assessment Australia of the University of New South Wales, will be held on the following dates:
- Writing (w/c 9 August) $26
- Digital Technology (11 August) $22
- English (w/c 16 August) $22
- Science (w/c 23 August) $22
- Mathematics (w/c 30 August) $22
This is an optional assessment test for students to take part in. The closing date for entry to these competitions is Monday 28th June. We cannot accept any entries later than this date.
A more detailed letter will be coming home with students this week, as well as an alert on School Apps. Any questions, please contact Mr Devery on sdevery@ani.school.nz.
Property
Check out our ‘Property Project’ button on School Apps to see our fortnightly updates, as well as pictures of progress.
Kia ngatahi ai te tu
E pakari ai te tuara
Together we are Strong
Jill Farquharson – Principal
Bryce Mills and Shane Devery – Deputy Principals
UPCOMING EVENTS FOR JUNE
Put these dates in your diary so you don’t miss a beat:
Tuesday 1 – Central Zone Boys Year 7 Football; Table Tennis trials at Auckland Table Tennis Association on Gillies Avenue, Newmarket; 2022 Prospective Student School Tour #1 1.30-2.30pm; 2022 Prospective Student Parent Information Evening #1 at 6.00pm
Wednesday 2 – ICAS letters going home (and on School Apps)
Thursday 3 – Year 8 HPV #1 catch-up; Central Zone Boys Year 8 Football
Friday 4 – Teacher Only Day (school closed)
Monday 7 – Queen’s Birthday (school closed)
Friday 11 – Central Zone Rugby U45/ U55/ Open – Girls and Boys
Monday 14 – Friday 18 – Wellness Week
Thursday 17 – PTA Social from 6.00-8.00pm at Greyfriars Hall, Corner Mt Eden and Windmill Roads, Mt Eden
Thursday 17 – Friday 18 – Year 7 Vision Screening in Eden Room
Monday 21 – Central Zone Boys Hockey; Cat Levine Assembly Bounce Back Better; PTA Meeting at 7.00pm
Tuesday 22 – Central Zone Girls Hockey; 2022 Prospective Student School Tour #2 11.00am-12.00pm; 2022 Prospective Student Parent Information Evening #2 at 6.00pm
Wednesday 23 – Board of Trustees Meeting at 6.00pm
Thursday 24 – Year 7 Boostrix; Central Zone Table Tennis Boys and Girls
Monday 28 – Ski time trials; ICAS money to be paid by today
Tuesday 29 – Year 7 ESOL trip to Maritime Museum
VANDALISM
We have had one of our bronze wreaths stolen from the memorial gates at the Poronui Street entrance of ANI (see pics below). There has also been an attempt to remove the second wreath on the other side – if you or anyone has any information about this, we would love to hear from you. Such a shame given they are commemorative gates.
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STUDENT CONGRATULATIONS
Congratulations to both Taraz (Room 27) and Qasem (Room 28) who both received a Principal’s Award for demonstrating empathy and tolerance towards their peers.
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Congratulations also to Feya (Room 27) for showing determination, courage and independence throughout the week at EOTC, and then channelling this into a beautifully creative poster.
ESOL STUDENT TRIP TO AUCKLAND ART GALLERY
On Wednesday 12 May our ESOL students had a lovely day at the Auckland Art Gallery exploring Toi Tū Toi Ora – an exhibition showcasing contemporary Māori art.
Students saw people wood carving, a live haka and song performance and some of them even got to have a go on a virtual reality headset!
Aideen Ryan, Kate Shin and Gina Speedy
BIGFOOT BIKE ADVENTURES
Back in early May, we had Bigfoot Bike Adventures at ANI taking students through their bicycle skills and safety lessons.
PARENT ARTS EVENING
On Thursday 13th May, ANI held an arts evening to celebrate the arrival of our new Yamaha piano. There were recitals, student’s art on display as well as our vocal ensembles singing. What a great night showcasing our talented students’ art skills to the community. We had a mixture of the choir, art and talented musicians who shared their stories through different art mediums.
Great to see our teachers and parents sharing the evening with our school.
Well done and a huge thank you to Mr Allen and Mr Marshall and especially the students.
PINK SHIRT DAY
ANI celebrated Pink Shirt Day on Friday 21st May with fun activities to promote the message of inclusion and diversity. We encouraged students who were enjoying Mufti Week to dress in their finest pink clothing. The day ended with a stirring assembly including singing and dancing – the perfect end to the week.
NATIONAL YOUNG LEADERS DAY
On Wednesday 26 May our student leaders attended NYLD at the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau.
Mr Andy Lawrence
PSYCHOLOGIST & COUNSELLOR SPOT
Our ASK ANI focus this month is on helping young people who are finding it difficult to focus, are forgetful and who leave school and home tasks undone or done to a poor standard. This can impact home and school life and become a source of considerable stress for families.
Early adolescence is a time of enormous change in terms of physical and social development. Young people have a few valid reasons for being distracted and unfocused at home and school. We acknowledge this is frustrating and at times the source of friction between parents, teachers, and young people. However, and this is a big one, if you want to change the situation you will need to change your responses to the young person. It helps if you can see the funny side of at least some of the situations and to keep in perspective that this is a relatively short period of your parenting journey. Just like potty training, eventually, you will be past it. Talking with other parents about the strange or out of character things your child has done is often reassuring.
The key is to assume that if they are not doing the things you would expect, such as being organised at home and getting their schoolwork done, then they need some help somewhere along the way. Ask yourself how clear you have been about what you want them to do. In this situation you do need to be very clear.
For example, if you expect your child to tidy their room and they don’t do so, then ask yourself why is this the case? You may think you have told them to do so but they clearly don’t understand this request fully. Do they know when and how frequently they are supposed to tidy their room, do they know how to do so and to what standard? You may need to write this out for them and post it somewhere obvious such as on their bedroom door or on the fridge and make a note on their phone. You may need to tidy the room with them, showing them what you expect, and you may even need to take photos of what the end product should look like. The question of what standard is a tricky one. My advice as a parent of grown-up children and as a psychologist (Robyn) is to think about what your minimum standards are. You may never be able to get an uninterested child to make their bed with hospital corners, but you may be able to get them to pull a duvet up and toss their pillows on top. Once the task is done to an agreed-on standard don’t forget to give them praise and attention for getting the job done! I often hear parents saying that they don’t want to praise their child for doing what they should be doing. There are reasons why this is critical but at a bare minimum if it gets the job done then it’s a good reason to praise and the best way to get them to do it again.
Routines are also important. If you notice your teen forgetting and losing things, then thinking about developing routines around managing their possessions may be helpful. As adults we have assigned much of our daily life to a routine or habit, so we don’t have to think about what to do. For example, many of us put our car keys in the same place when we walk through the door, so we don’t need to hunt for them every time we go out. Think about the items that are being lost and work on developing a routine for them. When you arrive home plug your phone into a specific outlet, leaving a plug and cord there will help, put the laptop in a similar location and plug it in. In the morning develop a routine of talking through the items needed for the day and picking them up as you go. Talk about the upcoming day the night before and make sure you put any supplies in your bag or in an obvious place so it’s hard to leave them behind in the morning. Don’t forget to praise your young person when they get it right. If they get it wrong, model a problem-solving approach, try to figure out what didn’t work and how to do it better next time.
Difficulties with schoolwork can be managed in a similar way. You may want to have a chat with your child’s teacher to understand what is required and ensure you know what the expected standard of work is. Ensure there is a clear routine for working on schoolwork at home. A quiet space and uninterrupted time is best. Young teens can have great difficulty understanding how to plan so they may need some more support with breaking tasks into doable chunks. They may look at an assignment and believe that it all needs to be done at one time – this can become overwhelming, and they then don’t do it at all. Using a timer, (phones are great for this) set a 5–10-minute timeframe for doing one aspect of a task, then offer a break and after this come back to do another 5–10-minute chunk. Often once you get past the first chunk of work it’s much more inviting to keep on going.
As parents it’s healthy and helpful to keep a perspective on our role. Sometimes what we need to do is to step back and marvel at the new and interesting ways young people make the simplest task difficult or dramatic. Keep calm and carry on would be a helpful motto for most who are busy parenting young adolescents!
askani@ani.school.nz
ASK (Advice, Support, Kindness) is a helpful email for parents to contact us (Gina Speedy – School Counsellor and Robyn Stead – Educational Psychologist) with questions about raising our young
adolescents of ANI.
How it works…
- Send your questions or queries to askani@ani.school.nz
- We will select common questions to answer here in our newsletter column
- All emails will be treated as confidential and identifying information will be removed in answers.
Gina Speedy & Robyn Stead
School Counsellor and Educational Psychologist
PTA NEWS
School Social – Thursday 17th June, 6.00-8.00pm
The first PTA Social for the year is coming up on the 17th June from 6.00-8.00pm at the Greyfriars Hall, corner of Mt Eden and Windmill Streets, Mt Eden. This is a fun night for our young people to meet up with all their friends outside of school in a safe and supervised environment. Last year we had around 200 students who came along and had an absolute blast. Students will be getting a permission slip handed out to them on Friday 11th June which they will need to bring along with them on the night. Please note: Start time of 6.00pm and pick up at 8.00pm. Parents please be on time as there is no supervision after 8.00pm.
PTA Meeting – Monday 21st June at 7.00pm
Our next PTA meeting is Monday 21st June at 7.00pm in the Library – all welcome.
Julie Rope – PTA Chairperson
ANI SPORTS-PRO PROGRAMME
We are immensely proud of the ANI Sports-Pro Programme. This sports academy is multi-faceted and meets the needs of a wide range of students. Topics and lessons range from high-performance sport and nutrition, to working with learners who find learning challenging. This programme digs beneath the surface and looks at the various components of sport. Have a look at the website dedicated to this programme HERE.
For more information, contact Mr Carlos on ckucera@ani.school.nz.
Central Zone Year 8 Girls Football
On Thursday 27 May, the Year 8 Girls football team attended Central Zones at Western Springs. The day started far more smoothly than the year 7s, with only one tournament scheduled and no girls forgetting their boots.
The first game for the girls was against St. Cuthberts AIMS team. What an incredible start to the day. The girls managed to clutch a 1-0 win against a strong side, setting the tone for the day.
The rest of the day was filled with ups and downs, some draws, wins, and losses. The girls fought hard enough to gain entry to the quarter-finals, where we faced Balmoral. It was a tight game, ANI scoring early and Balmoral coming back to level the score. In the last minute, substitute Jemma went on a flying run down the line, leaving the Balmoral backline in the dust, clutching ANI a 2-1 win and entry to the Semifinal.
Unfortunately, after a long day of football, the girls couldn’t quite manage a win against Kowhai Intermediate. Eight games of football in a day with a 20-minute lunch break, the girls were exhausted.
We left Seddon fields with a final placing of fourth place, very proud coaches, and exhausted but happy girls. A huge congratulations to everyone who competed in the tournament. Bring on AIMS!
Ms Jess Philpot
Central Zone Year 7 Girls Football
On Tuesday 25 May, the Year 7 Girls Football team went to Western Springs Football Club to compete in the Central Zone competition. They came a brilliant third and had a great day out.
With the weather playing ball as we arrived to the club, we were immediately presented with the usual challenges of bringing a team to a tournament. Not only has one player left their boots in the library, another player has entirely forgotten to come. Not a great start.
To add to the drama, we arrived to a tournament of what was supposed to be six schools, to instead see roughly 250 kids, kitted out and racing around the fields in excitement for a day of football. We were quickly informed of the most colossal double booking the organisers had ever seen. Two separate tournaments had booked the fields so as the gracious (and correct) participants, we problem solved and set up three temporary fields for our small but no less important tournament to take place.
The tournament consisted of a round robin of five games and in our first, we showed all the nerves and excitement and absolutely zero ability to pass the ball or in some cases, run in the correct direction. We still battled to a tense 1-1 draw. I felt it would not be the last we would see of our local rivals Balmoral.
In games 2-5 we started to hit our stride, notching four wins in the bounce to beat Waikowhai, Royal Oak, Pasadena and Ponsonby. A special mention has to go to Scarlett from Room 22, who marshalled the defence and showed an eye for a pass that Paul Scholes would have been proud of.
Confidence was high and who better to give a rousing pep talk before the semi finals against a motivated Waikowhai team than the captain of Auckland United’s premier women’s team; Jess Philpot. Such was her command of their admiration and attention, had she said jump, they would have indeed asked, “how high?”
It was a nervy game. And nerve racking for me in the middle of the park with the whistle. The desire to coach on the field was overwhelming and on many occasions I found myself instructing our midfield to press higher before catching myself. Evie from Room 25, stepped up and would have done her Celtic-mad teacher, Mr Dyer, proud with a low finish into the bottom corner following some excellent work from Emily in Room 20 and Safah in Room 27. With no more than 15 seconds on the clock, a deflected pass from the spirited Waikowhai team trickled into the ANI goal to a chorus of cheers from their supporters and a silent groan from yours truly. The full time whistle came. It was the equally dreaded and anticipated situation every football fan is familiar with; penalties.
Now what I’m about to tell you, could not have been written in advance. I’m sure you’ll all be casting your minds back to the famous champions league penalty shootouts. Istanbul in 2006, Moscow 2008 to name but a few. After every available player in each team had taken a penalty, the score was still tied at 1 goal apiece as both goalkeepers played a blinder in saving the majority of the spot kicks. Fast forward to the 16th penalty taker and Skye from Room 20 bravely stepped up with the heavy responsibility of needing to score to stay in the shootout. Alas, we missed and Waikowhai erupted! The sportsmanship on show from both teams was admirable, the girls did ANI proud.
Now, things weren’t over just yet, we had our 3rd place playoff to fight for and faced a familiar foe in Ponsonby Intermediate. The game was hard fought, with our girls visibly tiring as the game closed out. And to add icing to the drama, another penalty shootout! The girls approached it with casual confidence while myself and Jess sighed with emotional exhaustion. As if desperate to banish the memories of the previous shootout, ANI cleanly scored 3 penalties and Emily from Room 20 saved three to see us grasp 3rd place and roar with delight!
Mr Kieran Gleeson
Central Zone Waterpolo
Great effort by our Waterpolo team at Central Zones bringing back a silver medal.
We started off strong, winning our pool relatively comfortably then moved into the semi finals where we beat Ponsonby 6-3 to enter the final against St Cuthberts.
Unfortunately, our swimming ability held us back in and we went down 11-4 in the final. But few things to work on and there will be lots of improvement and we are looking forward to a rematch.
Some great games by all players and good sportsmanship all round.
Mr Thomas Jones
Central Zone Girls Futsal
On Thursday 13 May, the girls teams headed off to the Central Zone Futsal girls competition at AUT Auckland. The day was amazing and they got great results.
The Year 7 girls had a great experience – most of our players were out for the first time in a CZ competition ever and they placed 5th overall.
Our Year 8 team is very talented – they only lost two games during the entire day and placed 5th overall.
Mr Carlos Kucera
Central Zone Boys Futsal
On Wednesday 12 May we entered three teams (two Year 8 and one Year 7 team) into the Central Zone Futsal competition. They had a great day and the boys had a great attitude during all games. They won most of their games with good results. Yet, by losing some important games they ended up in the following positions:
- ANI Y8 A – 5th (out of 18 schools)
- ANI Y8 B – 9th
- ANI Y7 – 6th
Mr Carlos Kucera
HOUSE POINTS UPDATE
Go Whenua – leading the pack, but Wai, Te Hau and Ahi are all nipping at your heels – it’s a close race!!
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