Greetings, Kia ora, Kia orana, Talofa, Mālō e lelei, Namaste, Ni Hao, Bula, Hola, Kumusta, Namaskārām,
Sat Shri Akaal, Vanakkam and Ayubowan
Dear Families
This week it was lovely to welcome our new families and ākonga/learners for 2026 with a Whakatau and Liturgy on Thursday morning. During our time together, we shared important school information, and ākonga/learners met their 2026 kaitiaki/teachers and each other for the first time. They enjoyed a wonderful morning getting to know one another in their learning community for next year.
We felt very proud to share about our learning across this year “OUR COMMON HOME” – caring for, nurturing, sustaining and serving our common home – All our learning leads us to SERVE – through our serving we can empower ourselves and others to continue the mission of God’s Church.
We also shared our vision statement Learn/Ka Ako, Love/Ka Aroha and Serve/Ka Manaaki in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We hope that our new whānau/families will hear these words many times as they begin their schooling journey with us. Our prayer for them is that as they join Holy Trinity School community, they will feel and see the charism of the Holy Trinity for whom we are named … expressed in many ways – through unity, love and relationship!
It was also great to catch up over a shared morning tea, where we connected in a relaxed setting. Thank you, whānau, for attending—we look forward to seeing you all in 2026!
Advent Season
Next Sunday, the liturgical season of Advent commences. Advent is a season observed as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. The term Advent means “coming” in latin. Many families will have an Advent Wreath at home where they light one candle each week in joyful and expectant hope of celebrating Christ’s Birth.
We too, can light a candle and in the silence of our hearts and name one thing that we can be more aware of this Advent Season, that will draw us more deeply into Christ’s light and love.
As we light our first purple candle which symbolises hope, on the Advent Wreath, let us pray … ” Jesus you are light even in dark places, shine hope into our hearts we pray”
DRS Report
LC Awa Service in Action
The students and teachers of Learning Community Awa have been creating gift bags full of hand-made goodies as part of their learning in the concept of Serve this term. Today, Saturday 22 November, they will be at the 5:00pm Mass at St Mary’s Church and you will find them after Mass, gifting their creation to the Parishioners as well as their teachers who will be serving hot soup. This is part of their transfer task that they have been working towards by identifying the people they would like to serve in the community.
Christ the King Mass
This Sunday 23 November, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. St Mary’s Parish will be celebrating Mass at Central Park in Papakura at 10:00am where all are welcome to be a part of. Some of our students will be taking a more active role through their ministry of altar serving and taking up the offertory for Mass.
RE Books Coming Home
Next week, your child will be bringing home their RE books to share their learning in Religious Education. We are enciouraging whānau to write a family comment in the space provided in your child’s RE book. It’s wonderful to celebrate our student learning and growth in Catholic Education.
Sacramental Programmes
We are lucky to have the Sacramental Programmes open for registration for both St Mary’s Parish Papakura and St Anne’s Parish in Manurewa. We encourage all our whānau with children that need to complete the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Holy Communion to sign up. It’s important to note that registration at St Mary’s Parish Papakura closes on Friday 5 December.
End of Year Leavers Mass
On Wednesday 3 December, we will be celebrating our End of Year Leavers School Mass at St Mary’s Church in Papakura at 1:00pm. The whole school will be travelling by bus to church and back. We look forward to celebrating all our leavers and giving thanks to God for the gift of this year. All our year 6 studenty leavers are invited to the school hall/Taamaua to share afternoon tea with their whānau when we return from Mass.
School Nativity Evening
Our tamariki are beginning to practice their songs and dances for the Nativity evening held on Wednesday 10 December at school. We will be inviting families to come along and have a whānau picnic after school and watch the sharing of the story of the Nativity later on.
Praise-giving 2025
Families are invited to attend our 2025 Praise-giving Celebration this coming Friday 28th November commencing 12:00pm in Taamaua.
Email notifications have been sent to families whose children will be receiving Praise-giving certificates.
Praise-giving is a time to acknowledge particular students who have excelled throughout the year whether it be in living out our school Gospel values, academic and personal development or in their various leadership and service roles.
It is also a time to acknowledge ALL of our students who have worked steadfastly throughout the year – SO to ALL of our students, WE SAY … be proud of your progress and achievements, of attaining your learning goals, of being able to do something new, of gaining new knowledge, of developing your skills, of giving things a go – we are proud of you and of your accomplishments!
Ray White HTCPS Colour Fun – Friday 28th November
- Tickets are available to purchase using the following form: https://forms.gle/
dBvjv3aNPWUE53ar5 - The online form is the preferred method and payment is via internet banking.
- Alternatively, pop into the school office during school hours to fill out a form and pay via cash or EFTPOS.
- Tickets will be issued on day of the event
- Access to the colour run obstacle course
- Fun activities to win prizes
- Ice block
- Cathy Mei from Ray White who is our main event sponsor
- Ostle Electrical who are sponsoring our BBQ
- 24 Engineering, sKids Holy Trinity and Priyanka Chacko who are sponsoring our colour stations
HTCPS PTFA
PTFA News
2nd Hand Uniform Donations
Is your child growing out of their uniform or heading off to another school next year? Stocks are running low at our second hand uniform shop and we would be grateful for any uniform donations.
The second hand uniform shop provides a great opportunity for families to get quality second hand uniforms
If you have any uniform donations please
The PTFA will be running the first 2026 uniform sale in late January and will also be accepting donations throughout the school year.
Last Chance to order Calendar Art
Orders for Calendar Art are closing on Monday so get in quick if you would like to order!Follow these instructions to place your order online:
1/. Go to www.kidsartworks.com
2/. Use the Entrance Code: KZ8081
3/. Enter your child’s room & name when prompted
Orders are open until Monday 24th November and will be delivered in early December. Payment can be made over the website via credit card or account2account.
Please reach out to the PTFA if you have any questions at all, on our email ptfa@holytrinity.school.
PTFA Monthly Meeting
Our next Parents, Teachers & Friends Association (PTFA) meeting, will be held at school Tuesday, 25th November. We would love to see you there! We will be focusing on getting our plans together for the Colour Run and 2026 events!
This is open to everyone and is a great way to meet some of our HTCPS parents and friends!
Date: Tuesday, 25th November 2025
Time: 7:00 PM
Venue: School Staffroom
This is a great opportunity to contribute your ideas and volunteer support for the upcoming 2025/2026 events, get an update on what’s happening at school, and chat to other parents.
HTCPS PTFA
End-of-Year Online Student Achievement Reporting on Hero
We are looking forward to sharing our term’s learning with our families including individual students’ achievement levels in reading, writing and maths. Teachers/Kaitiaki and students have completed assessments and recording evidence of their progress and achievement to share with families through the HERO online parent portal.
The End-of-year reports will be published on HERO from Monday 1 December. These reports provide information about where your child is working in relation to the expected curriculum levels across key learning areas.
Enjoy reading through and sharing the HERO online reporting comments with your child/ren so that together you can celebrate learning successes and the positive personal growth and development that has occurred across the school year.
Save the Dates: 2025 End of Year Special Events and Activities
Please save the date for these ‘end of Term 4’ celebrations events and activities. These are all family/whānau events and we are delighted to warmly welcome our school families and wider school community to be part of each special event and activity where we celebrate who we are as a catholic school – rejoicing in our catholic faith, our students achievements and our school’s achievements from throughout 2025.
Friday 28th November
Praise-giving Awards Afternoon 12:00pm @ school in Taamaua/school hall
Friday 28th November
PTFA School Colour Fun Run 5:00pm – 6:30pm @ school
Monday 1st December
Liturgy and Assembly for Other School Leavers and Service/Leadership Awards 9:00am @ school
Wednesday 3rd December
Whole School End of Year Mass – Blessing and Acknowledgement of 2025 Year 6 Leavers and their families @ St Mary’s Church, Papakura 1:00pm followed by afternoon tea for Year 6 leavers and families back at school
Thursday 4th December
School Supporters and Helpers THANK YOU Morning Tea 10:30am @ school
Wednesday 10th December
Whole School Whānau/Family Picnic and Nativity Liturgy celebrations 5:00pm – 7:00pm @ school
THANK YOU Morning Tea for our 2025 Helpers and Supporters
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THANK YOU for the Mahi Tahi Conferences
Thank you to all our whānau for you presence and participation at this week’s Mahi Tahi Conferences. This is such a valuable opportunity for all to discuss and celebrate your child’s learning progress and achievement in relation to their year-level expectations for Reading, Writing and Maths.
It is important that the ākonga/learners are part of these conversations so that they can share about their learning – they know their learning goals and being able to talk about what they are learning, how they’re going with their learning and their next steps empowers them to be self directed and successful learners at their respective levels!
Thank you for valuing these important opportunities for school/whānau engagement and partnership.
Learning Community News
Learning Community Whenua
Currently LC Whenua learners are working on transferring their understanding and learning into a new situation to create and present their way to serve others at home, school, community and beyond.
This week in Religious Education, our learners explored how people show kindness by serving in our church community. They discussed and identified helpers such as the priest, altar servers, readers, choir members, musicians, cleaners, and volunteers. Learners selected a church helper and made thank-you cards to give them as a way to show their appreciation.
In Literacy, we are currently developing Descriptive Writing skills where our focus is to share ideas using descriptive language. Learners are sharing their ideas about different topics and using describing words to explain how something looks, sounds, feels, smells, or tastes.
We continue our Health & PE lessons about being physically fit so that we can serve others better. Learners are engaged to design a simple physical activity that helps care for others around us in our common home. As part of our transfer task, Whenua learners will create and present a chosen physical activity that can help us encounter Christ through caring, kindness, and service to others.
LC Whenua will be having an EOTC (Education Outside the Classroom) Day on Wednesday, 26 November 2025. Through hands-on activities on the day, we aim for our learners to apply their learning to encounter Christ by actively seeking ways to serve, nurture, and sustain our common home far and wide – beyond Holy Trinity community. Learners will engage in Garden to Table by making Bilo Bilo (a Filipino dessert), create upcycled products to share with others, and take photos or videos showing Māra kai/Pataka kai behind the scenes.
Learning Community Awa
This term, our concept of SERVE has come to life in Awa Learning Community!
During our EOTC days last week, our learners were fully immersed in hands-on activities that connected service, sustainability, and faith. They prepared vegetables and helped cook a delicious vegetable soup, which everyone later enjoyed with a slice of French bread. They also learned how to repurpose old candle wax to make new candles, created thoughtful prayer cards in RE, and designed their own gift bags through our Technology learning.
Serving Our Parish Community
Our learning journey continues this Saturday, 22 November at the 5pm Mass, where our tamariki will put their learning into action. Together with their teachers, they will offer gift bags containing handmade candles, prayer cards, and packets of soup to parishioners, as well as serve warm homemade soup after Mass.
All items have been lovingly created by our students using vegetables harvested from our school garden and recyclable materials gathered during their learning.
Religious Education
In RE, we have begun exploring the Feast of Christ the King—learning about its origins and significance in the Church year. This learning will lead us into our next focus: the season of Advent.
Literacy
Our writers have been busy crafting personal recounts of their EOTC experiences. They are enjoying retelling their adventures from their own perspective while strengthening their storytelling skills.
Maths
In Maths, we are continuing our work on rational numbers. Students have been practising equal sharing and identifying numbers as they divide their handmade candles, prayer cards, and soup packets into gift bags—applying their learning in a real-life context.
Learning Community Ngahere
Last Thursday, our Ngahere Learning Community enjoyed a wonderful Outdoor Education experience where learners worked together to prepare “Foil-Wrapped Herb Potatoes” using pre-boiled potatoes, a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and herbs such as rosemary, thyme, or parsley, as well as a fresh salad made from lettuce, grated carrots, sliced tomatoes, and other vegetables. The day was filled with teamwork, problem-solving, and plenty of excitement as students helped one another with food preparation and learned practical skills they can use at home.
In Religious Education, our learners have been creating plans to teach others about the Sacraments and how these special moments help us encounter Christ in our daily lives, and they are now collaborating in groups to turn their ideas into meaningful presentations they will share with their peers.
In literacy, we have shifted from persuasive writing to recount writing, and students have been enthusiastically retelling their Outdoor Education experiences, practising how to sequence events, use descriptive detail, and express their personal reflections.
In Health and PE, students have been challenged to design their own creative physical activities that support health and wellbeing, and they will be sharing these activities with others in our common home while also explaining how taking care of our bodies through physical activity is another way we can encounter Christ.
Learning Community Maunga
Last week, our learners had an exciting and engaging experience with Outdoor Education. They actively participated in making pizza, using different ingredients to meet their classmates’ allergy needs. This hands-on activity helped ensure that everyone could enjoy pizza safely and happily.
Additionally, the students learned important safety steps for cooking pizza on hot stones. This part of the activity encouraged teamwork and cooperation, as they worked together to follow safety procedures and complete the task successfully.
Through these activities, the learners connected their understanding of helping people with allergies to finding practical solutions that address their needs. It was a wonderful opportunity for them to learn about caring for others and working as a team.
Additionally, the children extended their learning into writing by creating clear, step-by-step instructions for cooking pizza over a fire. This integration of practical skills and literacy not only enhanced their understanding but also made learning enjoyable and relevant.
We are proud of their growth in compassion, communication and teamwork during last week’s outdoor education activities!
Learning Community Moana
Inter-School Athletics
Some of our Year 5 & 6 learners from LC Moana represented our school at North Counties Inter-School Athletics Competition at Massey Park last week. The events included long jump, high jump, shotput, discus, running and a relay event. All the learners gave it their all and did a fantastic job of showing great sportsmanship, with the Year 5 boys – Gabe Ah Ling, Emeliano Vi, Matt Alcantara and Makarios Jumma – coming second in their relay race, and Lara Tamani coming 3rd in the 200m. The rain kept learners cool after each of their events, and everyone stood on the sidelines cheering each other on. Our learners showed great resilience as many were entered into more than one event that ran one after another. Well done to all our learners who represented HTCPS!
Outdoor Education Day
Last Tuesday, Learning Community Moana enjoyed a hands-on Outdoor Education Day. Our learners cooked potatoes over a campfire and added delicious cheese and sour cream toppings. This activity helped us reinforce our learning about fire safety, as well as explore healthy eating using resources from the Heart Foundation.
As part of our term focus on actively serving our wider community, the children shared their cooked potatoes with school whānau waiting to pick up their tamariki after school. Our learners were proud to prepare food for others and show kindness through this simple act of service. It was a wonderful day of teamwork, learning, and living out our school values.
Year 6 Leaver’s T-Shirts
It has become a special tradition at Holy Trinity for our Year 6 leavers to receive a t-shirt to remember their years at our school. Due to the generous support of our PTFA, the cost of this year’s leavers’ t-shirts was subsidised. Thank you PTFA from LC Moana!
The t-shirts will be handed out to our learners in the next couple of weeks, and they are welcome to wear them to school on the last Friday of Term 4. We look forward to celebrating this milestone with our Year 6 students as they prepare for the next step in their learning journey.
Hauora/WellBeing News
Awhi Team/Peer Mediation
This has been a very exciting week for our peer mediators. On Monday, we had six mediators receive their silver service award certificates and badges, and Elsa received her gold service award certificate and badge. We are very proud of the contributions these tamariki make towards our school, and how they willingly and enthusiastically serve our school by supporting their fellow tamariki to make good decisions when faced with conflict.This week the Awhi Team also ran a colouring contest to decorate a “peace hand”. Congratulations to everyone who entered. The winners were Mikayla from LC Whenua and Victoria from LC Maunga.
Travel-wise News …
This week our Travel-wise student leaders attended Rainbow’s End to acknowledge all their mahi around raising awareness about road safety this year. From presentations, competitions, visiting learning communities, making themselves seen after school, and all their other in-class learning activities, it was a much deserved trip organised by Auckland Transport.
Upon arriving, our leaders received a Travel-wise water bottle, and then at the celebration they received the Silver Award out of all the Auckland schools! Our leaders then had plenty of time to enjoy the rides. “Well Done Travel-wise team” for all the effort you have put into raising our school’s awareness around road safety.
2026 Attendance Dues Information
Attendance Dues
2025 Attendance Dues statements have been sent electronically to families this week.
These statements will reflect remaining payments for some families to complete. Please ensure ALL Attendance Dues are paid in full by 1st December as required by the Catholic Diocese of Auckland. We are a collection point only and must send all monies to the Diocese by 1st December.
Please note that there are 3 options for payment of the Attendance Dues and Catholic Special Character Contribution
- Full amount paid by Internet Banking to ASB school account – details for payment are on the statement.
- Automatic Payment to be set up via internet banking to ASB school account
- Payment can be made at the school office – cash or Eftpos
Please see Carmel Stewart (Office Administrator) or Peta Lindstrom (Principal) in the strictest confidence if you have any concerns or questions regarding the payment of Attendance Dues.
Holiday HQ at sKids!
Holiday HQ at sKids is the ultimate destination for kids looking for an unforgettable break from the school routine. Each holiday period focuses on a different theme, with a range of exciting activities happening each day!
Holiday HQ offers different experience types such as Make and Take days where children craft their own unique creations to take home with them, Special Events where children can experience performances, games or activities delivered right onsite, and Excursions where awesome educators take the kids to amazing locations like the cinema, museum or wildlife centres to name but a few.
They also ensure that every child’s holiday is not just entertaining but an opportunity for growth. Kids build new friendships, explore their interests, and return to school with unforgettable memories.
sKids are thrilled to announce their summer Holiday HQ themes, Festive Celebrations in December & Summer Camp in January where children can embark on a thrilling adventure everyday right in service.
Visit the sKids website to learn more about Holiday HQ
Upcoming School Events
Students’ Religious Education Books Going Home
From Monday 24th November
Monthly PTFA Meeting – planning for School Colour Fun Run
Tuesday 25th November @ 7pm in the school staffroom
Monthly School Board Meeting
Thursday 27th November @ 6pm in the school staffroom
Praise-giving Awards Celebration
Friday 28th November 12:00pm @ school in Taamaua/school hall
PTFA School Colour Fun Run
Friday 28th November 5:00pm – 7:00pm @ school
Liturgy and Assembly for Other Leavers and Service/Leadership Awards
Monday 1st December @ 9:00am in Taamaua/school hall
2025 Student Achievement Online Reporting published on HERO
From Monday 1st December
Whole School End of Year School Mass/Acknowledgement and Blessing of 2025 Year 6 Leavers
Wednesday 3rd December 1:00pm @ St Mary’s Parish Church, Papakura
followed by afternoon tea for Year 6 leavers/families back at school
School Supporters and Helpers Morning Tea
Thursday 4th December 10:30am @ school
Sailing Day programme for Year 6 Students
Monday 8th December @ Okahu Bay, Mission Bay
Whānau/Family Picnic and Nativity Liturgy celebrations
Wednesday 10th December 5:00pm-7:00pm at school
Term 4 Concludes for the 2025 year at 1:00pm
Tuesday 16th December
Term 1 Commences for the 2026 year
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 @ 8:50am
Upcoming Community Events
ARTZ ON SHOW
