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
Happy World Maths Day!
We include in the image below a little ‘teaser’ to get the family thinking with their ‘Maths brains’ as the children have been this week at school.
Education Outside the Classroom
The last couple of weeks have followed on from our Athletics Day with a flurry of sporting opportunities for our students;
It is wonderful to see the confidence and resilience of our tamariki develop as they have a go, improve their skills and push out of their comfort zone in new sports.
Nīkau (Year 2) enjoyed a trip to Zealandia last week to learn about our native trees following the introduction of the tree names for hubs and Mānuka (Year 1) are off to the Wellington Zoo next Friday - so the teachers are making the most of your activity donations - thank you!
Alongside this, we have our Year 5 and 6 students all signed up for their various leadership roles around the school which include being Librarians, Student Councillors, Road Patrollers, Kapa Haka Leaders, Tech Ninjas and, new for this year, our PALS or Playtime Activity Leaders. It is so exciting to see so many students lining up to provide leadership in taking care of our school and their fellow students.
Home Learning Review
This is now underway with a short timeframe. You have until the end of the term to please share your thoughts on Home Learning with us. Please take 3-5 minutes to do so using the form linked further on in this newsletter.
Dojo Celebration
As part of our Positive Behaviour for Learning approach at Bellevue, the students continue to work as a team to gain ‘Dojo Points’ which are acknowledgements for when they are showing the school values of Empathy, Resilience, Creativity or Integrity. Each student has an avatar on the Class Dojo app which the teacher can click on to allocate a Dojo point with a satisfying ‘ting!’ for when they see students living our values. Once they reach a certain number of points the students earn a schoolwide ‘reward’ - on Friday 14 March all the classes celebrated in their own way; some with games, some with free time and lots of fun was had!
In addition to this, to encourage our tamariki to lead by example, we select a few students from each hub as Hub Leaders each term - with clear reasons why. This is the highlight of my term as these wonderful leaders join me for a special morning tea in the hall in the last week and we eat and talk about what makes a great leader.
Property Update
Our accessible walkway now has the railings going up and is starting to look finished. You would have noticed that the path between our Pou (the values posts beside the hall) is now visible again and we are hopeful this will call be completed prior to the term break. The Year 4/5 block, Room 12 end is just to be painted now and the Room 15 end work will continue until the early part of Term 2.
Board Election
In September this year, we will be holding a Board election. More detail about being on the Board will be included in newsletters between now and then. The role of the Board is extremely important to me as Principal in providing governance guidance and bringing a constructive community perspective to school decisions. We work closely to make our kura the best it can be in regard to governance (Board) and management
(Leadership Team) - and we have fun too! If you have any questions about being on the Board, please don’t hesitate to chat to me.
Holidays and Travel During Term Time
We often receive requests for extended leave from school for travel during term time.
While we appreciate that we have a very culturally diverse school and that many of our students have family overseas, please note that students are legally required to attend school every day, and we cannot give permission for non attendance at school. Taking your child out of school for travel during term time is not considered by the Ministry of Education to be a justifiable absence, this means the absence will therefore be recorded as ‘unjustified’. The decision to take tamariki out of school for extended leave periods is yours, but as a school we are required raise awareness of potential outcomes from this decision. Please find more information about your legal responsibilities HERE.
From a learning perspective, we also remind you that extended absence from school may affect students' overall learning for the year.
Newsletter Sponsorship
A big thank you to Ashton D’Silva for renewing his sponsorship of our school newsletter for another year. We appreciate his generous support, which enables us to provide timely, accessible, and translatable newsletters via email, our website, and the school app. Ashton has been a generous supporter of the school for many, many years and is a Real Estate Agent in Wellington working with Ray White.
Ngā mihi
Annette
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.
