From The Principal's Desk

Dear parents and caregivers

This term is flying by; we hope that you and your family are able to stay warm and well in this colder and wet weather. With Queen's Birthday being last Monday, the children should all now be in their official winter uniform. Thank you for supporting this by having them wear our winter uniform correctly. Obviously, we want our children to be warm and layer up but we also need them to be proud of who they are and of the fabulous school they belong to. We want to ensure we are proud of who we are and where we come from. So thank you for supporting the school colours and correct items.

Just a note that school jackets can be worn outside the classroom and to and from school but are not to be worn inside the classroom or in the hall. The school jumpers now have a cotton lining to prevent itching and there will be new jackets coming out that are polar fleece and will help on these cold mornings.

The Mellons Bay Way

In response to our school survey in 2017, we began our school journey which has led us to developing the Mellons Bay Way. One of the few focus areas identified at the time was responding to behaviour situations. Positive behaviour for learning (PB4L) was the start of this journey as behaviour is a learning process too. Learning what respect and responsibility looks like, what people say and what they do, when they show these things. Alongside this is the explicit teaching of these concepts and breaking it down so children understand the implications and how it affects others as well as themselves.

Every two weeks we will teach and model a concept (based upon the Mellons Bay Way matrix that we sent home to you). The first week is breaking it down so we all have a shared understanding, starting from assembly, what it means in the class, what it means in the playground or even when we are out on trips. The second week we celebrate the focus in action.

This week our focus is RESPECT – we give others space to enter and exit. We hope that in sharing this, you will be able to reinforce this at home.

Strike

I personally would like to thank you for your support of our strike. This is one of the hardest concepts; that we are in crisis, we do not have relievers available or good people to recruit, we need to improve our situation for the future of teaching to ensure it gets better and we realise that striking affects our valued families and our children; but our message needs to be addressed. With the PPTA, we hope any day this week to have an update of the negotiations with the government.

Environment

As you may have noticed our new building is progressing well and is on track for completion at the end of Term 3. It is a two story building with two classes upstairs in a shared space and two below. The children have been fantastic with the builders and we look forward to the progress.

We are looking at ways we can make this visual in our school. "What we stand for. " To enable this to happen we will be creating an art trail. Each class will create a piece of art or an installation to represent an aspect of the Mellons Bay Way.

We had a great staff trip to Brick Bay and the Sculptureum for installation inspiration so please watch this space! If you think you would be able to help in any way with ideas, materials, time and labour please let us know and there will be more communication out about this later this term.

Communication

We know that every family is busy and there are lots of events happening in your daily lives. To help with organisation, we have created the Friday Flier as a way of collating these messages into one spot, so you are able to track what's happening and mark it in your diary or on your calendar. All notices that require a tear off reply will be sent home in a hard copy. We hope you find this helpful.

 Learning

This term, our children have been focusing on navigation. Room 4 presented their thoughts on being explorers, comparing the past to how it relates to them in their world today. Here are some thoughts:

I am an explorer because I look inside and outside of the box to solve a problem. (Jayden)

I am an explorer because I find different things on devices and I teach other people how to do it. (Maddie)

I am an explorer when I decide what order I do my work in. (Ruben)

I am an explorer because I like to find new words to hook my reader into my writing. (Grace)

Student Led Sharing

We are looking forward to our student led sharing at the end of this term, when your child can share with you, the progress they have made in their learning. An information sheet will be out next week along with the booking sheet. We would like to let you know that this will be an opportunity for you and your child to spend more time talking about their learning and things that they are doing well.

We believe that you, your child and the teacher are all critical parts of the learning triangle. The teacher will be available to talk with you, however primarily this sharing will be led by your child, as they share with you what they are focusing on, ways they learn, their strengths and their goals.

As the children lead the learning, they will show you things in the room that they are involved in. At the same time, two other student led sharings will be conducted in the room.

The children are aware of this and keen to share their learning with you. The information sheet will tell you more and we will be holding two parent sessions before the sharing if you would like more information.

Community

• Thanks to our PTA parents who organised our bake sale and parents who provided the yummy goodies. We raised $1600 which means each class is able to spend $80 on games and puzzles for winter breaks and lunchtimes

• A reminder about our neighbours; they need to access their driveways too. We appreciate parking can be tricky at our school but can we please be conscious of not parking over driveways, even in Seymour Road, as well as on the main roads. If we show respect, responsibility and resilience too and model it to our children, it will make things easier for all.

Ngā Mihi

Colleen Margison

Principal 

News Bites

Kindo is here!!

This is a cashless and simple payment system designed for schools.  Going forward we will be putting all school related costs on Kindo to make life easier for all.  School donations, uniform shop purchases and all school events and activities.  We invite you to see it in action and register.

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