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
We hope you enjoyed the long weekend and wish to thank you for supporting our Staff Professional Learning day on Tuesday this week.
We had a very successful day of learning from one another in our Te Korowai ō Horokiwi Cluster schools. All teaching and support staff from the four local primary schools and Newlands Intermediate spent the day learning more about neurodiversity, strategies for supporting diverse needs and useful, practical tools for the teaching and learning. There were workshops about autism, ADHD, sensory friendly classrooms, language development, self-regulating behaviour and emotions, structured literacy and AI with a total of 130 people attending from our schools.
Thank you also for supporting us with the smooth running of a very successful disco last Thursday. The students had a wonderful time. We appreciate the families who waited in Rooms 2 and 3 to give them space to enjoy themselves and helped with a swift and safe pick up. Our thanks also goes to the Student Council who worked so hard to organise this event guided by Megan Walters - we appreciate all the mahi (work) that goes in behind the scenes!
Staff and Student Sickness
Over the past few weeks, Bellevue has experienced a run of high staff sickness. Though this is not uncommon in Term 2 and 3, the increasing shortage of relieving teachers means that we are not always able to find teachers to replace our team.
Of course, this is our first choice, however when we are unable to fill a position for the day we manage this by:
Postponing other scheduled teacher release or cancelling professional development
Splitting a class or classes
Moving a teacher to cover a vacancy in another team
Moving to an alternative programme to reduce disruption for families
As during Covid times, we are currently looking at our planning for when a number of staff are away at once, or when a few staff are away for a sustained period. The safety, wellbeing and learning of our students remains our top priority in this planning alongside taking care of our teaching team so that they are able to sustain this.
As a last resort, if a part of the school is not able to operate safely due to an extremely high number of teachers absent on the same day, we will notify parents using a text alert, Facebook and email. While we do our utmost to minimise disruption for families, you will understand that this is something we have to plan for in the current teacher shortage.
One way parents and whānau can help at this time is to keep children who are sick at home to minimise the chance of illness spreading to others at school. Along with an increase in staff sickness, there is a surge in students being unwell with several types of sickness being reported, such sore throats, upset tummies and of course in line with reports in the media, an increase in positive student cases of Covid.
Effective Pedagogy in Literacy
At the beginning of this year families gave feedback that they would like to know more about ‘How we do things at Bellevue’ in regard to Literacy and Mathematics. Following this there has been much media coverage about the government's initiatives for Structured Literacy, One Hour a Day and the Science of Learning. Already identified in our Annual Planning for 2024 was a review of existing practice in Literacy and Mathematics at Bellevue, alongside developing our understanding of the NZC refresh and continuing our journey with the Better Start Literacy Approach. Our staff have begun work on Literacy - aligning our practice to our school values and philosophies, developing consistency across the school and considering what needs to be strengthened to align with the NZC refresh. Following this, we will look at Mathematics. In early 2025 we will hold community information sessions to share with our families the why, what and how of teaching and learning at Bellevue in Literacy and Mathematics so that we can work together to support our students learning most effectively.
Advance Notice - Important Date for Your Diary
We have teamed up with our Newlands - Paparangi cluster schools (Te Korowai ō Horokiwi Cluster) to bring John Parsons from Citizen 21 to Newlands on Thursday 29 August. John speaks about safeguarding children and adults online. He will do an after school session for our collective staff, followed by a session for families from 6 -7.30pm. John is a highly engaging speaker whose presentations usually include some challenging statistics and plenty of good common sense about what we can do to keep our young people safe. Please mark this in your diary as an important event to attend. We hope that you will be able to join us at Newlands Intermediate for this event.
Also Coming Up
We have a busy second half of the term lined up with our new reporting style Three Way Conferences in the final week of the term and our Matariki Community evening the week before. Please do mark these dates in your diary. More information about both of these events below.
Three Way Conferences - 2 & 3 July
Our six month trial of a new approach to reporting to families concludes at the end of this term with our Three Way Conferences. The purpose of these meetings is:
For families to hear from/talk with the whānau teacher directly, honestly and in plain language about their child’s progress both academically and socially/emotionally.
To provide a foundation for school and whānau to work as a partnership to support each student to develop as an active, connected, life-long learner.
This face to face opportunity is focused on giving families the overall picture of their child’s progress / achievement at mid-year in key curriculum areas, rather than the detail around a ‘moment in time’ demonstration of their learning as you will have seen in their Seesaw posts. Please note that, depending on the timing of the posts (and what is required to achieve a next step in learning) some next steps for your child may be similar/the same. This is also an opportunity for families to ask questions or share information about anything specific in relation to their child’s academic or social/emotional progress.
For more information about what to expect from these meeting please follow THIS LINK.
If your child’s attendance is below 90%, in line with our procedures, it is our responsibility to remind you of this. Your child’s teacher will provide you with information about this and a letter outlining the impact of reduced attendance over time.
Following this meeting, and for the final two weeks of the term, we will be gathering your feedback about our reporting trial to inform our approach for the second half of the year.
To book a time to speak with your child’s teacher between 3.15pm - 8pm on Tuesday 2 July or 3.15pm and 6.30pm on Wednesday 3 July please follow this link to School Interviews look for the ‘Make a Booking’ button top right, and enter the code vm95x.
2023 Annual Reports now available online
Last year's Annual Report (Analysis of Variance) and financial statement have been published on the school website. The report contains information about last year's annual goals and the school's end of year financial position. Please go to the Board page of our website to view these if you are interested.
ICAS Writing - change of date
Please note in the information below that there has been a change to the date for the Year 4-6 ICAS writing assessment due to the juggling of multiple events happening in the school. This will now be held on Wednesday 7 August (the day before that originally published).
Reminders
Please do take some time over the next couple of weeks to share your thoughts with us in the Health & PE Biannual Survey included later in our newsletter. We use this information to plan our approach to our Health & PE curriculum for the coming couple of years.
Ngā mihi nui
Annette
Remember to take a look at the Bellevue Website for longer term information (Parent Portal) or follow our closed group Facebook Page for quick updates or reminders.
