Kia ora e te whānau

Term 4 is off to a great start. The first 2 weeks have been extremely busy and it has been great to see our tamariki get straight back into the flow of things. On Wednesday we had 22 teachers and principals come to have a look at our amazing teachers take a maths lesson following our Numicon Maths Programme. I had the opportunity to talk to them about the journey we have been on over the last 6 years and explain the steps we took to get to where we are now. It was nice to go down memory lane and recall all the hard work that our staff have been through. We have had over 60 teachers and principals visit us this year from around Otago and Southland and I want to thank my teachers for opening their doors and sharing their expertise with other educators.

Last weekend our PTA, teachers and parents put in a massive shift to make up over 1500 baking mixes. I want to thank you all for giving up your time to achieve this and also thank everyone who supported this fundraiser. We are getting closer to being able to upgrade our playground area. Ngā mihi whānau.

On Wednesday our Year 5-6 Rugby played in the Quad Nations 2025 tournament between St Mary's, West Gore and GMS. Congratulations to St Mary's for winning the competition. I am so proud of the team but it wasn’t our day. Lots of great individual performances so keep your head up. Massive thank you to West Gore for organising a great afternoon. See ya next year!!!!

Next Thursday we have 16 students competing at the Eastern Golf Champs being held at Mataura Golf Course. This is always a fun day and if the teams place high enough they might be off to the Southland Champs. Good luck teams and thank you to our parents who are transporting and managing. 

Term 4 is going to be extremely busy so please keep track of the calendar on the website and in this newsletter. 

Principal Award

Congratulations to Walter Alderton, Lachie Wright and Carter De Groot  

The principal award for this week goes to Walter Alderton, Lachie Wright and Carter De Groot who have been showing a huge amount of respect for Gore Main School during their break times by hunting out rubbish. Even when told to go and play they keep on collecting rubbish. I am very proud of you boys. 

   
That's about it for this week whānau. Please read through the rest of the newsletter as there are some important dates for you to remember. Have a great weekend!

Ngā mihi nui

Glenn Puna
Tumuaki/Principal
Te Kura Matua o Māruawai
Gore Main School

We are so pleased to welcome Frankie Macintosh, Saij & Arlo Rika, Elly Polstra, Ambrose, Bethany & Alida Assen to Gore Main School. We hope your first few weeks have been amazing and welcome to the GMS Whānau.

Kia ora e te whānau

NZEI Members will be taking strike action on the 23rd October 2025. We have managed to find enough relievers to keep school open for normal instruction. School will be open on the 23rd October 2025. Teachers are fighting for better pay to address cost of living pressures, reduced workloads due to excessive administration and insufficient support for students with special needs, and adequate resources to ensure every child receives a quality education. All of these things are extremely important. Teachers are now expected to do more and more for our tamariki which takes time and energy. We want support from our government so that we can focus on our main job, TEACHING.

Ngā mihi

A huge shoutout and congratulations to Hunter, Reid, and Danzig for their outstanding efforts and achievements in rugby last term!

These three talented boys were selected to represent in the Eastern Year 6 Representative Rugby Team, following a stellar season of dedication and hard work. Their journey through the rep season was nothing short of impressive.

🗓 Sunday 29th June – Day One of Rep Trials:

A large group of hopefuls came together for three matches against Western, Northern, and Central. Our boys played brilliantly, helping their team secure 2 wins out of 3, only narrowly falling short to Northern. All players were rotated throughout the games as selectors worked to narrow down the squad.

We're thrilled to say that Hunter, Reid, and Danzig were all selected to continue on to the next stage of the competition.

🗓 Saturday 3rd August – Final Round in Otautau:

The refined Eastern team faced off once again in three high-intensity games – and what a result! They went 3 from 3, showing true grit and teamwork. This created a tie for first place with Northern, as each team had only lost to the other across the rounds.

🗓 Saturday 10th August – The Decider in Balfour:

To determine the overall winner, a final match was held against Northern in Balfour. Despite heavy rainfall threatening to call things off, the game went ahead – and what a game it was!

Eastern came out firing, with Hunter, Reid, and Danzig playing key roles in an epic 59–17 win, wrapping things up just before another downpour! A thrilling way to take the top spot and finish the season strong. Some future All Blacks among them, no doubt!

💪 Double Duty – A Big Weekend of Rugby:

As if that wasn’t enough, the boys also played five matches the day before at the Millers Flat 7s on Friday, 2nd August – showing incredible stamina and commitment to the sport.

👏 Well done again to Hunter, Reid, and Danzig – an incredible achievement and a great example of perseverance, teamwork, and passion for the game!

Kia ora Everyone

Thank You for Supporting Our Baking Mixes Fundraiser!

A huge thank you to everyone who supported our recent PTA Baking Mixes Fundraiser! We’re especially grateful to the amazing children and parents who lent a hand — from helping behind the scenes, to preparing the mixes, to sorting orders, to cleaning up. Thank you, even a small contribution helps us get closer to our goal.

Our next meeting is 22nd October at 7:30pm in the GMS staffroom, we hope to see you there!

Ngā mihi nui

Gore Main School PTA

Room 1 -  Izzy Littlejohn - for being such a fun and happy member of Room 1.
                  Asher Collins - for being an amazing reader.
Room 2 -  Ciara Wyllie - fantastic handwriting and writing.
                  Harlow Kerr - knowing his 'doubles to 10'.
Room 3 -  Keira Donaldson - for outstanding progress in her reading fluency.
                  Esme Stewart - for showing a strong understanding of 2 digit numbers.
Room 4 -  Arlo Rika & Elly Polstra - great start to GMS! Kia kaha!
Room 5 -  Leo McDougall - amazing mathematician!!
                  Isaac Raymond - working really hard, with good focus during writing time.
Room 6 -  Caleb Brown - excellent catching & throwing skills during PE.
                  Taimana Tai-Fowler: incredible writing.
Room 7 -  Arthur Rowe - for showing great effort & always having a positive attitude towards your learning.
                  Caci Boyes - excellent work in art! You always add extra detail to make your work shine!
Room 8 -  Hudson Tamblyn & George McLeod - excellent start to the term.
Room 9 -  Tori Shuttleworth-Tawhiao: great start to the term.
                  Indie Copland - using great deep thinking.
                  

Room 1 -  Sterling Starr - for showing respect in his learning and with his friends.
Room 2 -  Hunter Sanders - for always showing respect to everyone in our ruma
Room 3 -  Bonnie Falconer - demonstrating respect while Mrs Henry is teaching by showing me she's looking & 
                  listening.
Room 4 -  Te Atarangi Boyes - for showing respect and always trying your best!
Room 5 -  Cooper Rufford - what a start to the term! Showing great respect to everyone plus yourself and your learning
Room 6 -  Walter Alderton - thank you for being so respectful to adults & children alike.
Room 7 -  Briar Stevenson - you are respectful to everyone - always. Yu are a great role model in Rm7.
Room 8 -  Toby Brown - you are respectful to everyone, all the time.
Room 9 -  Adalita McKay - always respectful - tino pai.

Well done everyone, keep it up!!!

Room 1 -  Freddie Swindells
Room 2 -  Sadie McKay
Room 3 -  Evie Beardsworth
Room 4 -  Asher Kerr
Room 5 -  Millie Walker
Room 6 -  Ayla Tamblyn
Room 7 -  Elliot Falconer
Room 8 -  Blake McCall 
Room 9 -  Alida Assen 

This term we are looking at how to correctly pronounce local Māori place names. We are surrounded with places that have a Māori name and we want to ensure that we are saying them correctly.

These are the place names we will be working on next - Otama, Owaka, Tuturau, Waikaka

 

Here is the Kupu we have done so far this year.

Kia ora e te Whānau

Welcome to the last term of 2025!

A busy term as usual but one where we need to consolidate all the learning from the previous terms.

Our over riding Inquiry topic this term is Space Travel, Space Missions, SpaceCrafts and Rockets, with a Technology/Sciences focus. We have started the term looking at the First Man on the Moon. This is a great topic as we can watch real life footage of the Landing via you tube. Then we will delve into looking closely at rockets, how the launch and what life is like in a Space Station.

Maths has been fun lately with the tamariki using balance scales and working out how much something weighs using non-standard units. Every child knows the most important rule of weighing something, is to make sure to do a ‘fair' test. This involves checking the pan balance scales are even to begin with.

We have also looked at adding 3 digit numbers by working out an easier way to do it….eg: 4+6+5 …add the 4+6 to equal 10 then add another 5 to get 15!

Spelling at the moment is learning the double consonant rule before adding the suffix -ing, -ed.

Reading is very much learning new spelling concepts and applying this in our reading materials. We are concentrating on reading like we are ‘speaking’ to another person. Everyone knows what setting, characters, problems and solutions are within each text they read.

We are playing T.Ball and Non Stop Cricket for PE with a HUGE focus  still on throwing a ball accurately and catching by moving towards the ball. We are concentrating on keeping our eye on the ball and timing our swings to actually connect with a ball!!

We are learning to correctly pronounce Māori place names around Southland and continue learning our beautiful Waiata.

On a final note; thank you for co-educating your child with me! It has been an absolute pleasure.

Keep working hard!

Ka kite

Whaea Annabelle 

Tenā Koutou everyone!

Term 4 has started very well in the senior syndicate! We loved hearing about everyone's holiday!

This term will be an exciting term with senior syndicate swimming lessons, Year 4 camp, Year 5 camp and an E.O.T.C (Education Outside the Classroom) day at Dolamore Park. Rich learning experiences outside the classroom are not only memorable, but provide learning opportunities that cannot take place inside the classroom - so are highly valuable for many reasons. A huge thank you to our parent volunteers, who without, these experiences would not be possible.

This week we were very proud of our senior students who participated in a rugby tournament with local schools. The team was ably coached by Mr Puna, and senior teachers thank him very much for all the work put into preparing the team. The players loved weekly practices! They loved this opportunity! We have talented rugby players at GMS! Fantastic work Mr Puna and rugby players!

Wishing you all a great weekend, and we can’t wait to see our amazing seniors on Monday for another excellent week!

Mihi aroha,

Natasha McColl, Rose McKenzie & Madi McArthur

At the last board meeting the GMS Board of Trustees approved a teacher only for the 28th November 2025. In 2025 all NZ schools have been granted 2 teacher only days to use for teacher professional development around the new maths curriculum. We had one of these days in term 1 and we will be taking the second day to review our progress in maths and to set up next steps for 2026. Teacher Only Day 28th November 2025.

If your child is sick and staying home or you have something on then please let Jan in the office know. Please don’t just email the teacher. If you let Jan know then she will pass it on. You can use your @school app, text the school phone (0274562495), ring or email Jan directly: office@goremain.school.nz.

STAR - Stepped Attendance Response https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BKb6_My_zX9K_9RPd5S0ds1VvKLRGr2e/view?usp=sharing

Bible in Schools (Terms 2-3 Only)
Bible in Schools is every Thursday at 2.30pm. If your child is not attending then they must be picked at 2.30pm.

Every Friday (only) children can bring an item of food that can go into our heat up oven so that it is nice and warm by lunch. All food should be pre-cooked and only require heating (No raw meat). Pies, mini pizzas, savouries, mac n cheese etc etc. All items must be clearly named (first and last name and class number). No plastic wrapping please. All items go straight to your classroom each morning and get placed into your class's heat up container. 

Road Crossing
Safety and role modeling is top priority. Please use the crossing at all times. We have seen a few parents crossing the road up by the middle gate. Other children see you and may follow you. It's only an extra 50 metres so please come to the crossing and cross there. Also please be at school before 8.50am as this is when road patrol finishes.

This is a friendly reminder that school starts at 8.55am. Please ensure that children are at school before this time so that they are ready to start class at this time. Road Patrol also finishes at 8.50am so for safety reasons please make sure children are here before that time so that they can cross the road safely.

8.30am -   Kids allowed in class

8.55am -   Off to class

9.00am -   Session 1 starts

11.00am - Morning tea

11.30am - Morning tea ends

12.30pm - Spelling time

1.00pm -   Lunch time

1.45pm -   Lunch time ends

3.00pm -   Home time

School Docs Policies and Procedure
Go to https://www.schooldocs.co.nz/ then search for Gore Main School. Enter the user name and password.
Username: goremain
Password: GMS39Ardwick

School Bank Account
Please take note of the Gore Main School and PTA Bank Account numbers. These are 2 different account numbers. Please remember to add the child's first and last name as a reference.

03 0915 0253014 00 - Gore Main School BOT. Please add the student's name as a reference - This account is for things like after school sports, camps, payment of school accounts etc.

03 0915 0255562 00 - Gore Main School PTA. Please add the student's name as a reference - This account is for all things related to the PTA, Xmas raffle money etc.

Merino jerseys are available to order and will now be the black merino jersey. The price is $90.00 per jersey. 

If you still have the blue merino or purchased a  second hand one these are still able to be worn as part of the school uniform. There is a sample of the new jersey along with sizes for anyone to view at the office.

Sun hats
Sun hats must be worn when outside during Term 1 and Term 4.

Be sure to stay up to date with what is going on at Gore Main School by liking our Facebook

If you don’t have the @school eTap app setup then please contact the office asap!

Gore Main School

39 Ardwick Street, Gore

Email: office@goremain.school.nz 

Phone: 03 208 7615

From time to time you may have concerns about things happening at school. Discuss your concern with the class teacher. Most concerns can be addressed at this stage.

If you are still unhappy, contact the school principal to arrange a meeting to discuss your concerns.

email: principal@goremain.school.nz