It’s time for Quiz Night 2016!

Get ready for yet another fun, exciting night out, testing your brain power, dressing up, having a wine, and bidding on some fabulous auction items.  

Set aside Saturday 3rd September, get a table of friends together, pick a dress up theme if you want, and a fab name, and get ready for ‘game on’.

There’ll be prizes for Best Dressed Team, Best Table decoration, Winning Team, Spot prizes, Mystery Bottle Auctions, and other Auction prizes too.  

We’re raising funds this year for new resources and equipment for the planned new classrooms, so every little bit helps.  

If you have any products or services you can donate for this event, please bring them into the school office, or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  We’re always very grateful for any support we receive.

Any spare bottles you’d like to donate for the Mystery Bottle Auction too would be great.  Dig out that bottle of Baileys you’ve never got around to drinking, or that fancy Olive Oil.  We’d love it all.  

Tickets will be on sale from Monday 22 August, and we’ll be using an online purchase process this time with payments straight into the PTA bank account. Easy peasy!  But, there’s only a limited number of tables ($25 per person, 10 people/table), so we’ll need the tables paid in full once booked.  Full instructions will be included in the e-mail that comes out soon, so watch this space.  Dont worry though, if you dont have a full table, there’s tickets for individuals too: we’d love you to come along and make some new friends on the night.

And any corporate’s out there who’d like to sponsor a Corporate Table, and have some extra fancy food, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  or 027 2306336.

Student Led Conferences 10 August 2016

This week we had our annual Student Led Conferences.  What a wonderful opportunity for students to share their learning with their parents and whanau.  Students were able to share their latest work and talk about their strengths and next learning steps.  

At St Mary’s we want to develop students who under-stand what they are learning, why they are learning this and what they need to do next to get better.  

Here’s what some of our students thought about our Student Led Conferences:

It was great!  I finally got to share my learning with my parents.  Most of all, I had fun doing it.  Mitchell R8

Mum and Dad felt a little bit nervous because they didn’t know what to do.  I helped them because we had a schedule.  Louie R16

We were in charge of our learning.  R16

I thought that it was really nice that we could share our work with our parents, because they don’t get to come in every day.  It was good for mum and dad to know where I am at.  Georgia R9

Catholic Character 11 August 2016

Thank you for the very warm welcome to St Mary’s Tauranga; myself and my family feel very blessed to be part of the community.  I have moved to Tauranga from Rotorua where I was DRS at St Mary’s Rotorua and had taught there for the past 14 years. My husband, Neil and I moved to Rotorua from Auckland when I had finished training as a teacher.   We have three children, Samuel (year 7) at Aquinas College, Sarah (year 5) and Adam (year 3) both here at St Mary’s.  As a family we are looking forward to new challenges and experiences that our move to Tauranga will bring. 

Please feel free to contact me at anytime This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Last Tuesday we were able to thank and praise God for the gift of Grandparents.  It was fantastic to see so many Grandparents. Students were able to proudly share with them their school life. I am sure it is quite different today to when they went to school.

This week we welcomed 29 new families to the school. Dear Lord, We pray for our new students and families, that they are always welcomed and supported by the community.  Help them to settle into our school and feel part of our faith community. May they come closer to you each day. 

School Mass

On Friday 12 August 9:30 at Church the school will be celebrating Mass for the Assumption. 

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

On this feast of Mary we celebrate a special favour that God gave to Mary, our Mother.

The Assumption means that Mary was taken up into the glory of heaven not only with her soul, but also with her body.

Jesus, the Son of God was born from Mary’s pure womb. So when Mary died, God the Father and Jesus, would not let the body of the Mother of God be spoilt. This was her reward for her love of God and her years of faithful prayers and suffering.

Now Mary is in heaven. She is queen of heaven and earth. She is the Mother of Jesus’ Church and queen of apostles. Every time Mary asks Jesus to give us graces, he listens to her request.

After the resurrection from the dead, we, too, can go to heaven with our bodies. Our bodies will be perfect. They will not suffer illness anymore. They will not need any more food and drink to keep alive. They will be beautiful and splendid!

If we use our bodies now to do good, those bodies will share in our heavenly reward.

As we celebrate the feast day of Mary, we can ask our Blessed Mother Mary to guide, protect and care for us.

Prayer for the Assumption of Mary

Father in heaven, all creation rightly gives you praise, for all life and all holiness come from you. In the plan of your wisdom she who bore the Christ in her womb was raised body and soul in glory to be with him in heaven. May we follow her example in reflecting your holiness and join in her hymn of endless love and praise.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Teresa Rush
DRS

A message from our BoT Chair - Claire Stott 8 July 2016

Kia Ora Koutou

As the newly elected chair of St Mary’s Board of Trustees,  I wanted to take the opportunity to say hello to you all and thank you for participating in the recent election for our 5 new parent representatives.  

Our first meeting last week showed we’ve got a very strong, skilled team and we’re all keen to keep building on the great work our last Board have done. We thank Kelly Quin and her team for handing things over in a very thorough and helpful way. 

We will obviously be using the next few weeks or so to get up to speed as a new Board but we are looking forward to working closely with Mr Fuller and the school community to ensure we meet our current strategic priorities as set out in our school charter: all with the focus of helping our students learn and achieve to the best of their ability. 

Look out for more information from your Board next term. 

Have a fabulous holiday and take care. 

God bless 

Claire Stott
Board of Trustee Chair

Sports News - 8 July 2016

Bay of Plenty Cross Country

We sent a small team of runners to the Bay of Plenty Champs in Opotiki. All of our runners finished in the top 20 in their respective age groups.

Emma Rogers 5th - year 4 girls

Holly Fausett 17th - year 4 girls

Renee Carey 2nd - year 5 girls

Hugo McCarroll 12th - year 6 boys

Anna Tustin 16th - year 6 girls

A special mentions must go to Renee for placing 2nd in the whole of the Bay of Plenty.  

Miniball World Cup

St Mary’s sent 2 teams of year 5/6 children along to the Miniball World cup. A fantastic day of basketball was had by all. With over 400 children taking part there was a real festival atmosphere inside ASB Arena.

Team Switzerland, coached by Kevin Schuler took out best dressed team and with some good wins and some very close loses had a very fun day .

Team Greece coached by Robin Deal landed in a tough pool including the eventual winners but played with good spirits and determination all day.

Our year 3/4 teams took to the court yesterday and we will report on them in our next newsletter.

A huge thank you to all our coaches. Kevin Schuler, Robin Deal, Di Kahura and Wayne Fausett.

Representative Sports Selection

Jayden Hyland and Pateriki Parker  U9 representative football team for WBOP.

Anika Hyland and Maraih Gardiner-Hano 

U11 Tauranga City Basketball 

Briar Davie and Maia Kahura U13 Tauranga City Basketball. 

Congratulations to these children. It is a fantastic effort to reach representative level and we wish them all the best for the season. 

Cathy Pini
Sports Coordinator

Interim Reporting

Today, Friday 8 July, you will receive your child’s Interim National Standard Report.

This Interim Report, discusses your child’s current strengths and next steps and identifies how your child is tracking to meet the End of Year National Standard in Reading, Writing and Mathematics.

There are different National requirements for reporting depending on Year level:

In Years 1 to 3, a judgement is made on your child’s birthday (anniversary) and a judgement is made between each birthday (interim).  These judgements are reported to you mid year and end of year.  

In Years 4 to 6, a judgement is made mid year (interim) and end of Year and reported at the same time.  

Our teachers continue to use many different ways to find out where your child is at and how your child is tracking, according to meet the National Standard, in Reading, Writing and Maths. This is called an Overall Teacher Judgement (OTJ).  

This includes:

• using a range of formal tests/assessments
• watching your child working in the classroom
• talking with them about their learning
• your child assessing their own and each other’s work

We encourage you to spend time discussing your child’s report with them, their next learning steps and congratulating them on their progress and effort. We look forward to working together with you and your child in Term 3 and 4 to help them achieve their learning goals.  

Anna MacKinnon, 

Deputy Principal

Parent information workshops - Assessment procedures in the first year of school

St Mary’s will be running a series of parent information workshops during the rest of this year.  Please see the calendar for the first two workshops which will be a repeat of the same topic to enable choice of dates and times:

Monday 8 August, 9:15 - 9:45am - Assessment procedures in the first year of school.

Wednesday 24 August - 3.15 - 3.45am - Assessment procedures in the first year of school (repeat).

We look forward to seeing you during the year.

Parent information workshops - Assessment procedures in the first year of school

St Mary’s will be running a series of parent information workshops during the rest of this year.  Please see the calendar for the first two workshops which will be a repeat of the same topic to enable choice of dates and times:

Monday 8th August, 9:15 - 9:45 - Assessment procedures in the first year of school.
Wednesday 24th August - 3.15 - 3.45 - Assessment procedures in the first year of school (repeat).

We look forward to seeing you during the year.

Anna MacKinnon
Deputy Principal