Newsletter Issue 5

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

Ni Hao and welcome to Chinese Language Week! This page has useful phrases you may like to try and ideas for beginners in Chinese. We have many Chinese families and this is a great opportunity to learn a little more about their language and culture.

A Myriad of Learning Experiences

The last two weeks have raced by in a flurry of exciting experiences for our tamariki. Amongst all the usual end of term activities such as our leaders morning tea, preparing for tomorrow's celebration and wrapping up our term's learning there have been a number of 'education outside the classroom' events.

These have included; Hub 3's trip to Zealandia, a visit from Elgregoe the magician with his amazing animals, student council's Onesie Day for Wellington Free Ambulance, the Highnotes Choir's wonderful performance at the Michael Fowler Centre, the Circus Challenge show and workshops, the Road Patrollers' Orange Day Parade in Wellington.... It is no wonder everyone is a wee bit tired!

Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori

In the midst of all the we also celebrated Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, by stepping up our existing daily use of te reo across the school through Kahoots in te reo (online quizzes), action songs, learning a new phrase or sentence each morning and introducing a new waiata to our pōwhiri thanks to our kapa haka rōpū. Some hubs also participated in the Māori language moment.

Whole school Emergency Evacuation and Reunification Practice

Thank you to our community for your support with our whole school practice last Friday.

As mentioned on our Facebook page, we successfully evacuated 280 students in just over an hour. This is an important part of our school's emergency preparedness so we appreciate your willingess to work with us to make this so successful. Thanks also to Anne Smith, our Health & Safety Officer for the massive amount of organisation that goes into this each year. The second information letter includes a section to provide your feedback to the school should you wish to. This helps us to refine processes year on year.

Correcting Error in Last Newsletter

Our last newsletter thanked the Johnsonville Community Trust in error. The trust that funded our new Nudle Kart is in fact called the Johnsonville Charitable Trust.

Swimming in Term 4

Notices about swimming for individual hubs are coming home ready for this to kick off in Term 4. Due to some unforseen changes with buses and grants this year, we have found ourselves in the situation where some hubs are paying a little more for swimming than others. We are aware of this and will work to avoid being in this situation again next year.

Thank You To Our Terrific Team!

While fantastic on the learning front, this term has been a challenging one for our school staff with the ongoing building project, much sickness and the teacher shortage. I would like to take a moment to thank this professional and positive team of people who give 100% of their Aroha to keeping our school going, no matter the odds. Thank you also to you, our community for the endless support your provide both in and out of school that makes the Bellevue community such a partnership.

Reminders:

Learning Celebration Open Evening - TOMORROW 3-4.30pm / 5.30 - 7pm

A reminder to join us for the second of our 'Learning Celebrations' for the year. This is an opportunity to come into the classes and take a look at all the rich learning your child has been involved in. The classrooms are looking great and the students are nexcited to share their learning with you.

Please visit classes across the school. We are aiming for richness and diversity in our celebration of the student's learning - what is important to them as individuals - rather than consistency.

School Organisation for 2024

A reminder to let us know of anything you wish us to consider anything for your child’s class placement for 2024.

Other places to find information about our school:

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.

End of Term 3 - Friday 22 September

We hope you can get some quality family time over the coming term break. If you are out an about around the school grounds, please look out for our special kura.

We look forward to welcoming our tamariki back refreshed and ready for learning on Monday 9 October.

Xià cì jiàn

Annette

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

Rehansa Herath - room 2

Harvey Richardson - room 4

Xiaoting Ruan - room 2

Yating Ruan - room 5

Danting Ruan - room 13

The Bellevue Board would like to extend their thanks again to the 36 respondents to our Growing Community Conversations Survey.

Congratulations also to the family of Amelia who won our prize draw for the Samsung Galaxy Tablet - as shared on our Facebook page on 8 September.

At the close of the survey the Board worked to identify themes which we include below for your feedback. We are sharing these back with our community to check that we have 'heard' you.

Please provide any feedback either to boardchair@bellevue-newlands.school.nz or principal@bellevue-newlands.school.nz before Friday 13 October. Following this, these themes will be used to inform our strategic planning for the coming two years.

Celebrations -

Bellevue received a 100% positive feedback on the statement 'My child feels safe at school'.

Overall responses were 88% positive rating across all questions

The lowest scoring response was still 74% positive (I know how to access the guiding documents for Bellevue School.)

Where to next - (Themes are based on lowest positive (below 80%) and the comments)

1. More honest, detailed information on student achievement and progress, including opportunities to talk with teachers one to one.

2. More events to involve community - more reminders for these events through all the channels

3. Targeted (concise) comms

4. Two way communication opportunities i.e. Seesaw and Facebook

5. The Board to be more communicative with community

We welcome your feedback before Friday 13 October.

Our wonderful High Notes Choir performed impressively at the Michael Fowler center on Monday, 11 September. The children were very excited to be part of this great experience and it was a real celebration of musical talent. Our students made us proud!

Many thanks to Anne Smith, Rene Senekal and Jane McCauley who gave up many lunchtimes to prepare the choir so well and also to Cassie Woodhouse and our parent volunteers for supporting the tamariki throughout the rehearsal day.

On Thursday 7 September we had a visit from Mr Circus. He showed us some amazing tricks, like spinning plates and juggling on a giant unicycle! Tamariki then had workshops with him throughout the day, where they were taught basic juggling and plate spinning skills. Everyone had heaps of fun, and it was a fantastic real-life application of our value of resilience… As Mr Circus kept saying, 'If you drop it, just pick it up and try again!’

Congratulations to Scarlet, Maddison and Icazia who have achieved their Bronze Peer Mediator Service Awards. Throughout the year Peer Mediators can work their way through Bronze, Silver and Gold awards by doing things such as being role models in the playground, handing out Values Vouchers, successfully mediating conflict, and much more. Ka rawe kōtiro mā!

We are pleased to report we have very little lost property this term so this will not be displayed until the end of Term 4 for families to check for their child's belongings. If you are missing an item in the meantime, you are always welcome to pop by our office who will direct you to where this is stored.

By Kate, Sofia, Caitlin

Typed by Grayson

On Friday the 15th of September, all of the Road Patrollers came to Room 15 to get dressed in our orange tutus, sashes and lots of orange tape. Then we traveled on a bus with Newlands School to the Road Patrol parade. We arrived and waited around for around 20 mins at Civic Square, then paraded down Lambton Quay screaming our chant “Wind, rain, sunny day road patrol shows the way,” and holding our amazing banner. We got a lot of strange looks from onlookers, and then we sat down on Parliament lawn and then the mayor Tory Whanau dished out awards. Unfortunately, the rain arrived and we finished up early. We had a great time. It was nice to acknowledge the hard work we do keeping everyone safe when they are crossing the road. Thank you so much to Teresa and Harriet for coming along as parent helpers.

A reminder that, in accordance with our sunsmart policy, all our children are asked to wear a sun hat out doors every day in Term 4 to protect them. Please support your child by providing a named sunhat for the beginning of the new term. If our tamariki do not have a sunhat, they are asked to work and play in the shaded areas of the school.

Sunscreen is also a vital ingredient for a healthy Term 4, so please either apply to your child before school or pop some into your child's bag so they can apply it during the day.

Thank you for supporting us to take care of our tamariki in the sun.

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.

Term 4 is a short term and always busy! At this time of year we begin looking at the number of students we anticipate in each year level to make decisions about class organisation and placement for the following year.

At Bellevue, providing the best environment for learning is at the forefront of our decisions. The number of classes we start the year with is dependent on the staffing entitlement received from the Ministry of Education. This is based on the number of students in the school.

Our teachers are capable of teaching at all levels of the school and so we can allocate teachers to classes no matter the structure of the school or where they were teaching the previous year.

When looking at class composition, we aim to meet each child's needs regardless of the whānau class or mix of year groups. Our team of skilled educators takes the following factors into account when considering class placement for students -

• Individual needs and achievement

• Peer relationships

• Learning groups and friendship groups

• Age and year group

• Gender balance and number of students

• Siblings in other classes and year groups

Students are asked for the people they work/play well with. We are committed to making the most appropriate placement, considering all the information.

If there are any factors we may not be aware of that you believe are important for us to take into account please contact the school over the coming month - by Friday 13 October at the latest. There will be reminders in the final newsletter before the term break.

You can talk with your child's teacher or a member of the leadership team or email us at

Anne Smith (Deputy Principal Year 0-3) annes@bellevue-newlands.school.nz,

Cassie Woodhouse (Hub Coach Year 3/4) cassie@bellevue-newlands.school.nz

Deeann Daniels (Deputy Principal Year 4-6) deeann@bellevue-newlands.school.nz,

Annette Borgonje (Principal) annette@bellevue-newlands.school.nz.

Once again, please make sure that you have contacted us before 13 October (end of the first week back) so we can take this into consideration when planning classes early next term.

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. 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.

Coughing and Sneezing (Information supplied by Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand)

Here are some important points to teach your tamariki about

coughing and sneezing:

Use a clean tissue to cover your mouth and nose every single time you cough or sneeze.

Always turn your face away from people when you cough or sneeze.

Place used tissues in the rubbish bin.

Wash your hands with soap and water, or use hand sanitiser after you cough or sneeze.

If you don’t have a tissue, cough or sneeze into your elbow.

At Bellevue School our classrooms are equipped with tissues and hand sanitiser to help our tamariki develop good hygiene habits.

Families, who else feels that Term 3 went “just like that”??

For those that missed the update last week, we are delighted to share with you all just how amazing our community and our very small FUNdraisers team have been in achieving some FUNdraising goals.

To-date for 2023, we have raised a total profit of: $5191.81, with approx. $3000 spent on sports and outdoor play equipment for the school.

As mentioned also later in this update, our wish list and goals are reviewed regularly for priority and are available to view on our school website via: https://www.bellevue-newlands.school.nz/fundraisers

The school board have recently confirmed priority of investment into the senior school areas. Areas of the school that each of our children will move into and enjoy using. So please, if you have the time to spare to help our FUNdraisers team achieve getting the funding for these upcoming projects, please join our team! It takes a village (or in our case a community) to achieve these goals.

Have you joined our Facebook Group? https://www.facebook.com/groups/FUNdraisersBellevueNewlands/

Now onto the updates on our confirmed current events as below -

End of Term Pizza – Term 3, 22 September

A staggering 271 pizzas have been ordered this term! We look forward to bringing the pizza lunch to the students (and teachers) hungry tummies on Friday!!

Kids Art Work (Calendar Art)

We have put up some posters regarding the products and prices around Hub 1 and 2 already, and further going into the other Hubs this week.

At the Learning Celebrations evening, in Room 1, we will have the product samples available to view.

Order forms and product information will be coming home with your children this week, with delivery of the products in Term 4 in time for Christmas (yeah, I said it… Christmas!)

Online orders will also be available, and the link will be shared on our Facebook page and our website later this week.

Also, keep in mind that if you want to, there is an option to submit online pictures that are not what your child has created at school. So if you have, for example, a family portrait that you wait to put onto cards to send out for Christmas, you can do that through our Kids Art Work orders.

Or alternately, if you child has done some amazing art at home, and you want products with that artwork, again, you can upload that and put it through our ordering system.

One trick that I (Rebecca) have really appreciated with the Kids Art Work orders, is that the cards packs come in under $2 a card! So I always order at least one pack for my daughter to use. It sure guarantees that she is never giving out the ‘same ol’ card as everyone else’ to her friends and family!!

Alana Estate Wine

We are delighted to confirm that the following varieties of wine will be available for order this year. Tasting notes and prices will be on the order form, which will be released early in Term 4, in time to order your Christmas (I said it again) and Summer supply!

Estate Pinot Gris, 2022. Estate Sauvignon Blanc, 2022. Estate Riesling, 2021. Estate Chardonnay, 2022. Estate Rosé, Marlborough 2022. Estate Merlot, 2021. Rapture Pinot Noir, 2022. Lumiere Pinot Noir, 2022. Estate Pinot Noir, 2021. Limited Release Pinot Noir, 2020. Alana Estate NV Blanc de Blanc. Alana Late Harvest 2017

Bake Sale 2023

It’s confirmed, the Bellevue end of year Bake Sale is back! This event took a hiatus thanks to that nasty pandemic, but we look forward to bringing it back to the children for 2023!

The Bellevue Bake Sale will be on Friday the 8th December at 3pm, outside of Hub 1.

For this event, we kindly ask that our families donate baked 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 practising their baking and decorating skills 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!

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 12th October 2023, location TBC due to the school building works.

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 reviewed 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 – 2024 Focus

We have set the last of our 2023 events and will be considering our 2024 events at our next FUNdraisers committee meeting.

Kids can take our Clue Hunt Challenge these school holidays and get a free kid's meal on us from the Staglands Cafe!

To take The Challenge simply download the Challenge Sheet from our website or collect from the Ticket Office when you visit. Then complete the challenge correctly and head to the Cafe to claim your meal!

Make sure you enter our bonus draw also to be in with a chance to win a Staglander Annual Family Pass valued at $220.

Terms & Conditions Apply.

Registration is now open for our junior Athletics season. Check out www.olympicjuniors.nz for information on what we offer, times, dates and membership fees. Athletics is a great sport for developing running, jumping and throwing for all ages.

Wellington Hockey’s Junior Summer programme is a great opportunity for young players to try the sport for the first time or for existing players to grow their skills in a fun and inclusive environment.

This programme is led by WHA Coaches and involves a combination of skill development, and small games suitable for the age and stage of the players.

We are aiming for the programme to run the in following locations, however, the exact locations will be registration-dependent.

Elsdon, Porirua

TBC, Karori/Kelburn

National Hockey Stadium, Newtown

Fraser Park, Lower Hutt

Maidstone Upper Hutt

The 6-week programme starts on Monday 30th October/Tuesday 31st October, with the last session the week of 4th December 2023. The hour-long sessions start at 4pm.

An individual registration fee of $45 is due at registration.

https://www.playhq.com/hockey-new-zealand/register/b9182c

Entries close: Tuesday 24th October

Thursday 21 September 3-4.30pm / 5.30 - 7pm

Learning Celebrations Open Evening

Friday 22 September

FUNdraiser Pizza Lunch

Last day of Term 3

Monday 9 October

First day of Term 4

Friday 20 October

Te Korowai ō Horokiwi Kapa Haka Festival - NIS

Monday 23 October

Labour Day - School closed

Tuesday 24 October

Teacher Only Day for NZC Refresh - School closed