Newsletter Issue 2

Term 3 - 9 August 2023

Principal’s Update

Kia ora, Nameste, Talofa, Konnichiwa, Guten Tag, Gidday, Vannakkam, ni Hao, Kia orana, Hola, Salam, Sa wat deekha, Dia Dhuit, Goeie Dag, Bonjour, Καλημέρα, Greetings everyone

We have had a great deal of new families join us since the beginning of term and from all around the globe.

We have new families from India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Samoa, Fiji, Ireland and of course NZ! We would like to welcome you all to our Bellevue community and we look forward to connecting with you and your children.

National Maths Week 2023

This week is Maths Week - a week-long celebration of all things maths! The Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Association of Mathematics support kura by providing additional maths resources for school years 1 to 11. We have a number of fun activities planned in class to encourage all our students to engage with maths learning. Don’t forget to ask your tamariki what they have been doing at school, and support maths at home with baking, dominoes, card games, and puzzles. The image below provides a snapshot of the broad and balanced Maths diet that we aim to provide at Bellevue because we know this works for our learners. This page also has some useful ideas for how you can support children with their Maths (and Reading and Writing) learning at home organised into year levels.

Growing Community Conversations - Three weeks to go!

Sadly we still only have 10 survey responses.

Although we know that some families have made the most of the alternative opportunities to share feedback - through other meetings or informal conversations, we are still hoping to hear from more of you - what is working well, what is not, and what our community would like to see next for their school.

Please take 15 minutes to complete the form https://forms.gle/5aEorianaYjGtkBf9 (hard copies also available at the school office) before Friday 1 September OR have a kōrero with one of our team (please let them know that you wish your thoughts to be captured) OR catch us in the playground or drop an email. Whatever you choose, we look forward to hearing your thinking - equally, if there is a better way to seek your voice, please let us know.

Mental Health Guidelines

At the end of 2022 the Ministry released new guidelines for Mental Health education. Mental health and wellbeing forms an important part of our Health Education Curriculum at Bellevue. In reviewing the guidelines, we were pleased to find that many aspects are already an established part of our practice, either through our emotional literacy work, Navigating the Journey (the programme we use for Health and Sexuality Education), existing priorities for responding to students learning and wellbeing needs, or our policies and procedures. Individual hubs are also looking at their curriculum areas to identify any areas for growth.

Taking Photos on School Grounds

Our students safety is our top priority. We have many students who, for good reason do not have permission for having photographs taken. We expect that anyone taking photographs of students will ask permission. Please consider this when taking photographs on school grounds of your own child - it is important to ensure that no other student is in the picture. Ideally, please refrain from taking photographs of any children on the grounds during school time unless it is a sporting or other special event. Thanks for supporting us to keep our tamariki safe.

Planned Absences

We appreciate the way our families are keeping us informed of any times their child will not be at school.

Please take a look at our 'Attendance' procedures, using the School Docs button below (password 'grow'), if your child will be away from school for a holiday, family event or other event that the Ministry of Education sees as an unjustified absence.

These procedures state:

If there is a justified reason for absence (e.g. due to illness, a funeral or tangihanga, or other approved reason at the discretion of the school), the principal may allow a student to be absent from school for up to five days (Education and Training Act 2020, s 45). In the case of planned absences, requests must be made to the principal at least one week before the planned event. The principal has discretion to approve or deny requests, based on criteria including:

the benefit to education for the student (including qualifications and experience of course providers as relevant)
the length of time away from regular school programmes that the activity will require.

Please email the office and Annette the Principal in this instance, not the classroom teacher. Apart from the fact that teachers cannot always see emails during the day, this is an absence that we are required to keep a record of. We will notify the classroom teacher.

PB4L Information Evening

You will see an invite (with RSVP) below for our community information evening on 30 August. This is an opportunity to hear about our journey as a school in supporting positive behaviour and therefore a settled learning environment. Of course, this is always a 'work in progress' but we are looking closely at our behaviour incident data across the school and can see improvements! We are often asked how we manage and respond to behaviour, so please take advantage of this opportunity to come along and hear the thinking behind the documents that will be released following this evening to make this process transparent to all families. You could even combine this with an opportunity to share your thoughts on our school direction as this will be the last chance!

Importance of Good Sleep

I was fortunate last week to attend a session with John Parsons from Citizen 21. John works with education, health and private sectors, providing specialist advice and direction on the safe and ethical use of Digital Communication Technology. Unlike what I was expecting - perhaps advice on good digital citizenship or supporting positive interactions online, John spoke about our charge to raise 'successful humans'. He emphasized the need to do the basics well - thinking about taking care of diet, exercise, positive role modeling and getting enough sleep, which he returned to numerous times. This got me thinking about what we see when our young people have not had enough sleep... I was suprised to see the amount of sleep required for children as they grow. This site has some good advice about the importance of, and recommended amount of sleep based on age that may be helpful in supporting our children to attend school ready for learning.

Whakawhanaungatanga Fridays

It was so lovely to see a few families joining us for this event last Friday and really getting involved.

If you couldn't make it, more information about the next one is below!

Just a reminder for our families that this event is held in place of school assemblies as an alternative way to celebrate learning, practice our values and learning dispositions, support tuakana teina across the school and involve our families in school life. Our hall is no longer big enough to accommodate the entire school community with families safely so we bring the school together in this way instead.

Student Teacher

From next week we have Christy Robinson joining us in Hub 2 as a student teacher on her teaching placement. If you see Christy about the place please make her feel welcome.

Newlands Intermediate Enrolments Closing Soon

For our whānau with students moving on to the intermediate school next year, a reminder that the closing date to enrol is 31 August.

Finally a reminder that our fortnightly newsletters can also be found on our Bellevue Website - scroll down to view 'previous Bellevue Newsletters' - and for more timely updates, you could follow our closed group Bellevue Facebook Page, if you are not already.

Ngā mihi mui

Annette

Reporting an absence

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Welcome

Haere mai ki te kura o Bellevue. Welcome to the following students and their whānau. It is great to have you in our Bellevue Learning Community.

Room 2 - Charlie

Room 4 - Elayna

Room 8 - Cynthia

Room 14 - Manvi

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Thank you

Thank you to all the families who came along (or have done so previously) to our Whakawhanaungatanga Friday last week - it is awesome for our children to see all ages engaged in their learning activities and really helps to rebuild our sense of community.

Bellevue School - School Docs Policies & Procedures

Netsafe Whānau Webinar

As you know, we are a Netsafe School. In July Netsafe held their annual Netsafety week and they have provided schools with a recorded webinar to share with our communities using this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/LQ7o3lybCMY

The webinar, which was delivered to the National Council of Home Educators NZ in July 2023 covers the following topics:

04:25 Understand some of our children's activities online
14:50 Learning about our children's activities online
18:45 Exploring technologies
22:45 Agreeing and setting expectations
28:43 Teaching online safety essentials
33:14 Modelling online safety
37:10 Making a safety plan
42:23 How Netsafe can support

They also provide a popular TikTok Family Safety Toolkit resource available to download from their website.

New Entrants—Enrol Now!

We encourage you to enrol your preschoolers as soon as they turn 4. This assists with future planning for our kura and classes. Out of zone enrolment applications close approximately six months prior to commencement date so it is important to submit these early to ensure you are in the ballot. We accept up to five out of zone new entrant applications per term.

Important Information about the Bellevue School enrolment scheme (zone)

Important information about the Bellevue School enrolment scheme (zone)

If you have preschoolers at home that you are planning to enrol at Bellevue School in the future, here are a few important things to know and put into action:

1. If you are living outside of the Bellevue School enrolment zone, then your preschooler(s) will need to be processed as an out of zone application. Please let us know, if you haven’t already, of any future enrolments at Bellevue School from your family. It helps greatly with our planning to know well in advance. And if we know then we can also prompt you as to when you need to get your out of zone application in.

2. It is very important that out of zone applications are received by the application deadline of Friday 22 September 2023, for enrolment for term 1 2024, from Saturday 16 December 2023 to Friday 12 April 2024. We cannot accept any out of zone applications if they are not received by the deadline advertised for the enrolment period your child is due to start school in. The deadline can sometimes be up to six months prior to your child actually starting school.

3. Even if your preschooler(s) are in zone, please get your enrolment in to us as soon as possible to enable us to plan ahead. We need this information to be able to work out how many out of zone applications we can accept in each enrolment period.

If you have any questions or are unsure about anything, please call the school office and talk to Amanda.

PB4L Whaanau Evening

You are invited to our PB4L Whānau Evening - Please RSVP using this Google Form: https://forms.gle/2Ruf58iuaHgrMDdKA

Whakawhanaungatanga Friday

We warmly invite whānau to come along and play, explore and learn alongside your child/ren during our Whakawhanaungatanga Friday sessions this term. The next session is on 25 August. Please note that there will be no Whakawhanaungatanga Friday on 15 September due to our Evacuation Day.

There is no need to commit in advance and you are welcome to stay for as little or as long as you are able. We would love to see you. Sessions run from 1:30pm - 2.30pm on any of these afternoons. On arrival, please head to the office and you will be able to find where your child/ren will be for the afternoon.

Dental Van Visit

The Bee Healthy Dental Van was due to visit our school in Term 4, but due to a number of School Events happening in Term 4 this has been postponed until Term 1 2024. A date has yet to be confirmed. If you have any concerns about your child's dental health or need to make an appointment please contact the Dental Hub on 0800 825583.

Sports News

Miniball Results:

21 July - 1 August

Thunder lost 20-26 against Westpark Rockets. Jack was Player of the Day

Hurricanes lost 16-18 against Ngaio Stingrays. Lara was Player of the Day

Storm Won 34-21 against Khandallah Kestrels. Lillian was Player of the Day

Lightning won 48-47 against St Bridgids Breakers. Arlie was Player of the Day

7 - 8 August

Thunder won 34-15 against Newlands Vultures. Hunter was Player of the Day

Hurricanes lost 24-16 against Paparangi Pacers. Rosa and Omkar

were Players of the Day.

Lightnings lost 46-54 against Wadestown Wizards. Jerry was Player of the Day

Storm had a bye

Sports Notices - Website

Bellevue Writer's Corner

This link is currently to the Hub 5 Writer's Corner. This year we will be using this as a platform to publish great writing from students across the school. Currently you can view a collection of speeches from our 2022 Hub 5 students here.

Kia Ora Bellevue Whanau! But crikey what a wintery week it is this week.

Coming up on 12 August is International Youth Day, the UN have themed it as ‘Green Skills for Youth’. I’ve chosen to interpret this as – It’s time to get our tamariki out into the garden to start prepping for Spring! August is a great time to start clearing out the garden, ready to plant veges, etc. for eating through the later part of this year. If as part of your clear out, you find that you have spare lemons on your trees… please see a request further down!!

We had a successful FUNdraisers committee meeting last week, concluding that we have a reasonably quiet Term 3 ahead for fundraising initiatives. So, we are looking into what dates there may be an opportunity for a sausage sizzle this term.

We are also looking to lock in a date for a Bake Sale in Term 4.

The Bellevue Bake Sale usually happens on a Friday at 3pm, toward the end of Term 4 and we kindly ask that our families provide some goods for the bake sale. The items are sold on an individual basis (ie a single cookie or piece of slice or cupcake). So, get your kids practicing their baking and decorating skills over the next wee while ahead of this highly anticipated event!

You may have seen on our Facebook Group, some keen beans have already started prepping lemon

cordial for the event!! If you have spare lemons growing at your property and would like to pass them on, your FUNdraisers team will gladly accept them for the making of the lemon cordial!

Updates on our confirmed current events as below -

Kids Art Work (Calendar Art)

If you attended the Matariki Evening at the end of Term 2, you may have seen your child’s artwork on display. If not, or you need a closer look, keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks!

We will be finalising the details of the ordering process for the artwork shortly, and order forms etc will be coming home to you toward the end of the term.

Alana Estate Wine

The FUNdraiser of the year that the parents get to really enjoy!!

Yes, we will be running this wine fundraiser again this year! They have released 3 further varieties this time including bubbles, rose and late harvest. I think now there is a wine option in there for all wine consumers! Order forms will be coming home to you toward the end of term, for delivery in Term 4.

End of Term Pizza

Will be on offer again on the last Friday of Term 3. Further details to come later.

Can you help us? FUNdraisers Committee Meetings

Our little team of 5 need more support – WE NEED YOU!

Gosh do we LOVE to bring the FUN to our kids with events through the year, and we have some really interesting ideas we would like to bring to the school. We however don’t have quite enough resources to make it all work. Do you have some of that elusive ‘spare time’ and would you like to give back to our cool school? If so…

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for 7pm on 24 August 2023, location TBC.

We hope to see you there! Or get in touch with Rebecca: fundraisers@bellevue-newlands.school.nz

What’s all this fun and FUNdraising for you ask?

What are we fundraising for? What have we spent our funds raised on?

Our wish list is updated often, and is linked via our FUNdraisers webpage:

https://www.bellevue-newlands.school.nz/fundraisers

If you work for a company that may be interested in supporting our school with any of these targets, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our principal Annette with details :)

Upcoming Events or Activities for Term 4

More information to come as and when it is available.