Year 7 Step Up Programme

In week 3 our Year 8 students went off to leadership camp. While they were gone, our Year 7 students took part in our Y7 Step Up programme. The aim of this programme was to encourage our Y7 students to step up as leaders and sometimes this means stepping out of their comfort zone. Students were split into 3 groups: Strikers, Duck Life and Team Thunder. Upon their reflections, the team leaders shared how they got to mix and mingle with students they would not have normally worked with and this helped to build relationships across the year level and make new friends. 

Some of the activities we did were solving murder mysteries, art and minute to win it games. It was great to see teams working together and supporting each other throughout the three days. Here is a little snippet of some of the fun we had. Keep stepping up Year 7's!

Team 5 Garage Sale 2020

Next week is our Year 8 camp so to fundraise, we held a garage sale in the weekend. We had a variety of things to sell from our very popular bake sale, Mrs Flavelle's bric a brac table as well as our usual cheese toasties, hot dogs and hot and cold drinks sale. 

We were also joined by many other vendors who packed out our hall with many different things to buy. Sands and Talitha groups had a lolly stall as well as chop suey and potato salad, Whaea Saff had deliciously hot mussel chowder and fried bread and even Team 4 teachers had a stall! They were selling yummy pulled pork buns and waffles. 

Mrs Ilaoa's sister had beautiful succulent plants and Tamaki College had clocks that students made out of vinyl CD's. 

Overall a very successful day for our Team 5 campers and a great day connecting with our community. Thank you to everyone who contributed to our bake sale and who came along to buy lots of goodies. 

A World of Difference

Welcome back to Term 3! After a very different Term 2 we were very excited to get back to our Immersion Assemblies to see what our inquiry is for this term.

This term we are travelling around the world. Different teams in our school covering things from different food, schools, languages and cultures from around the world.

In Team 5, our teachers performed a beautiful story about Sina and the Eel from Samoa. Mrs Tele'a explained that we were covering myths and legends from around the world. Specifically, we are looking at myths and legends that help to explain land forms, monuments or pieces of nature.

The story of Sina and the Eel goes like this. Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl named Sina. She befriended an Eel as she spent more time near the water.

As time went on, the Eel got bigger and bigger. He told stories of once being a handsome prince and one day they would live happily ever after. But as he grew bigger and stronger and his affection for Sina grew stronger, sadly Sina did not return this same feeling. She ran away to her relatives. However, as she was near the water, the Eel popped up everywhere she went.


She became frightened and ran to her uncle who ordered his son to deal with the Eel once and for all. The warrior sliced the eels head off. The eels dying wish was for Sina to bury his head in the ground. From that grew a coconut tree.

The coconuts have two eyes and a nose which resembles the face of the eel. This way, every time Sina would take a drink from the coconut, she would be kissing the eel. This is the story of how the coconut tree came about through the story of Sina and the Eel.

T2W10: Inquiry - What is the Biosphere?

Task Description: Sorry for not posting an inquiry for last week but here it is. The sphere we have from last week is Biosphere and that is what I will be sharing with you. Inquiry for the week is going to be doing the one from last week and here it is. This week the inquiry was based on the Biosphere, one of the four spheres. I've learn't so much about the biosphere such as what the biosphere is and all that stuff. I've also learn't a little Greek word and that is life. The word bio from biosphere in Greek is life. That was a bit of a little learning experience for me and how to say life in Greek.

By Deborah

T2W10: The Story of Matariki

Walt: Synthesise information from a range of texts.

Task Description:

Our learning intention for this week was to focus on our Matariki celebration. Within this presentation we had to focus on multiple texts explaining what Matariki is. We also had questions based from each text that we had to answer. Also on the last slide i've shared a Matariki poster for our younger tamariki to understand  basic facts about it. ENJOY! 

By Leilani

T2W9: Maths Tasks

Task Description:

This task was followed up by the last task which was "Hmmmm I Remember" looking back on what we could remember about things we'd covered for decimals . This task was an early finishers task. It was based on Decimals and Word Problems put in place together. It was mixed with different types of word problems money decimals and more!

By Lillyana

T2W8: Vocabulary Task

Walt: Use New Vocabulary In A Sentence


Task Description: Vocabulary. Learning some new vocabulary. That's what I
just finished doing. If you wish to find out more then look above this text.

By Amira

Samoan Groups gift to PES

The theme for this years Samoan Language Week talked about preparing a 'gift'.

Tapena sou oso mo lau malaga - Prepare yourself a gift for your travels.

Last week, our Samoan Dance Group at PES gifted us a beautiful Siva Samoa. It was so graceful and full of story telling and emotions expressed through their actions. Students had learnt this item as part of their fiafia group last term. But due to the lockdown, we were unable to go through with our fiafia night. So our students were able to practice this week and graced us with their beautiful smiles and actions during our school assembly. Such a beautiful gift from our talented alii ma tamaitai (girls and boys). Their tutors were Mr Wright and Ms Timmi. Job well done team!

Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa - Samoan Language Week

O pese ma viiga a le fanau mai Pt England.

Here are 2 songs sung by our Samoan Group at PES. Our guitarists are John and Mr Wright.
1. Le Alii e le Atua e
2. Ufiufi mai
If you know the songs we'd love for you to sing along.

Tapena sou oso mo lau malaga

Prepare yourself a gift for your travels.

This is our theme for this years Samoan Language Week. Mrs Ilaoa and Room 11 put together this movie to try and explain the literal as well as the deeper meaning behind this years theme.

They've also shared some of the different things they've been doing in class in Samoan.

Ia manuia tele le vaiaso o le gagana Samoa.
Tofa Soifua

The 'New Norm' @ PES

It's week 6 of Term 2 but it feels just like the start of a brand new term. In a sense, it is. We are in our 4th day back to school after being in lockdown and away from school for 7 whole weeks!

Our return to school has brought about a new norm. Changes that are necessary in order to make school a safe place for us to learn as well as talk to our friends. Some of the changes are shown in our video below. We must ensure physical distancing as much as possible. In team 5, we've used the phrase 'Teu le vā' which mean to look after the space between you and others. This means not just the physical space between you but also the relationship you have with others. Another new norm is ensuring we sanitise our hands anytime we enter and leave a building. This ensures we are not carrying germs from one place to another. Our teachers also have a big job of spray and wiping our desks and chairs at the end of every day.

We really enjoy getting out at morning tea and lunch to play non contact games using the sports equipment that Ms Vaafusuaga cleans after each session. Such a big but necessary job.

So those are the new norms for us. What's some changes your school has made? We hope to hear some feedback from our neighbouring schools.

We are so happy and blessed to be back in school!

GM 4 GM - Good Manners for Google Meets

Kiaora everyone! We hope your bubbles are all well and making the most of time with family during this lockdown. Our 1st week of Term 2 ended off with an awesome school assembly put together by Mr Burt and our Prefects and Rangatahi of the school. With distance learning well on the way, this weeks korero was the perfect one for how we are learning now. We hope you are enjoying distance learning online and don't forget to mute your mics when joining those google meets.

Good manners for google meets or GM 4 GM. Check out the video below and enjoy!

Staying connected during Covid-19 lockdown

The news came fast and week 8 kicked off with 1 day of school before the government closed all schools and started preparing everyone for 4 weeks of lockdown. Luckily, Team 5 were well on their way to being prepared for connecting online and starting our distance learning journey from home.

We were fortunate to kick this off on Tuesday 24th March with students tuning in to their literacy teachers at 9.30am and then their maths teachers at 12.30pm. We quickly got into the routine of things and even managed to have our normal spelling test on Friday with the whole team (the 40+ who managed to tune in) as well as our very own Mrs Flavelle to call out our spelling words.

This was followed by our whole school assembly where all our teachers and support staff jumped online to give out their Duffy certificates. Check out our school site to tune in to our school assembly every Friday.