This week is Tokelau Language Week and some of our students have been celebrating this in interesting ways across the school - you may like to ask your child about this.
As we come to the end of ADHD awareness week, we would like to share with you a resource created by one of our teaching team Emma Cummings - Understanding ADHD for kids intended to support children with their questions about ADHD. Feel free to use this to support discussions at home.
Northern Zone Athletics
Huge congratulations to Mataio (High Jump) and Harvie (100m Sprint) who have both qualified for Inter Zone Athletics at the Northern Zone event on Monday 20 October. We are SO proud of you! Also our congratulations to all the students who attended this event - as always the teachers were impressed by the way in which you represented our school.
Principal, Teachers and Support Staff Strike Action
Thank you for your amazing support with the closure of the school for the NZEI strike last Thursday. We truly appreciated the positive messages that were received. Although the Wellington Rally was cancelled due to the wild weather, Bellevue staff showed their support through social media.
If you are interested in understanding more about some of the motivations behind the strike action, THIS LETTER by Dr Sarah Aiono articulates well what schools are facing.
Mathematics Professional Learning Day - Teachers at Work!
Thank you for supporting our staff only day on Tuesday. Although we work to attach these days to a weekend in the hopes that this will provide less interruption to the week for our families, our school staff are definitely not just enjoying a long weekend! Yesterday was spent looking at the most recent round of changes to the Mathematics Curriculum Learning area and exploring how we might plan to integrate these in 2026. We have included some photos of the day below so our tamariki can see that the teachers learn at school too!
Te Korowai ō Horokiwi Kapa Haka Festival
A massive congratulations to our tamariki who performed at the Horokiwi Kapa Haka festival. You were outstanding, your beautiful, enthusiastic singing and waiata made us all incredibly proud - tumeke! Ngā mihi nui to the parents who came along to support us and to our kaiako - Whaea Jayjay, Nadine and Jane for all their preparation for, and role in organising, the festival.
Photographs and Videos taken at School Events
If you’ve been at one of our school events recently, we kindly remind you of the school’s guidelines for sharing photos of children.
Bellevue School has guidelines in place to protect students' privacy and safety at school. This includes sharing photos or videos of our students. We encourage parents and visitors to also consider privacy issues when sharing photos and videos taken at school events.
We are happy for parents to take photos/videos of their own children at public school events. If parents want to share photos/videos on social media, they should consider the following:
Show the images to your children and discuss them before posting them on social media. This will help your children understand that they should always think about what goes out to the public on the internet.
Some families at our school do not give permission for images of their children to be posted online. If the images have pictures of other students, think about editing to remove them.
Make sure that students are not named in any online posts.
Parents are reminded that posting photos of other people without permission can amount to harassment and they should take care to ensure photos are fair to other people. This ensures everyone can enjoy school events without worrying what will end up on social media.
A New Playhouse For Our Junior Playspace
There was great excitement in the Junior Playground on Friday afternoon when the four students who have been building our Junior Playhouse at Newlands College arrived with their Tech teacher Claire Humphries and a trailer full of pieces of the playhouse! They put this together onsite in less than an hour and a half (with quite the audience for the second part of second break!). Several of our older students commented on how good it was to have a replacement after our old ‘whare’ burnt down three years ago!
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of the team at Newlands College who supported this to happen and especially to the students who took on this challenge to support our school:
- Liam Serafica
- Eli Ikurere
- Cole Schwartfeger
- Tatau Tauafiafi-Muagututi'a
The College Principal, Deb Mills even came along to check out the action - you may see her hiding a little in one of the photos!
The house has already been primed to protect it a little until we can organise student painting in time and a weathertight roof is also yet to come but I have seen many happy little faces looking out of the window from my office already! If you know of anyone who can help us with blackboard paint or reasonable roofing material, please do get in touch.
Wellington Free Ambulance Visit
Today we have been having sirens go off around school for all the right reasons. Our students across the whole school have a slot booked with Wellington Free Ambulance to learn about what they do, to explore the ambulance and, of course, to get hear the siren working. There has been much excitement and we are grateful to WFA for the opportunity.
Stationery Costs for 2026 - advance warning
As you know, the Bellevue Board works hard to keep costs down for our families. The stationery “payable to school” costs (for items like tissues, whiteboard markers, jovis, etc) have not increased in more than 5 years.
The changes in the way that Literacy is taught mean there is an increased need for whiteboard pens/rubbers and the overall costs of everything have been increasing steadily. To balance this, for 2026 the “payable to school” items on the stationery lists across the school will increase by $5 per student - overall costs being $50. Thank you for your support in covering our school costs.
Three Way Conferences - advance warning.
These will be held over the evenings of Wednesday 3 December (3.15 - 8.15pm) and Thursday 4 December (3.15 - 6.15pm).
Bookings for these conferences will be able to be made from 12 November - the link will be in the next newsletter.
A reminder that these meetings, together with the Reading, Writing and Mathematics posts, replace our end of year written report, so we encourage all families to attend.
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 the end of 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.
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.
Preparing for Transition
On Tuesday last week, our colleagues from the intermediate visited to run through the Year 6 students that will be joining them from Bellevue (sharing strengths, needs and any other important information) so that they have all they need to support our learners from the beginning of the year. These students have an orientation visit to the intermediate on 14 November, but those students who require more time are being taken for regular visits already. Within our school we support students with their transition as needed. Students with additional or diverse learning needs have a 'transition profile' completed to assist them to have the most successful start possible and there is also an opportunity for all children to meet their new teacher for 2026 before the end of the school year.
Reminders Only -
Reporting to Families - Term four marks the final term for our reporting of Reading, Writing, Mathematics and a learning story for your child via Seesaw. Keep an eye on your child’s Seesaw page for these important updates. Our final face to face meetings with the teacher will then be held on 3 & 4 December for you to discuss your child’s progress with the teacher.
Swimming Payments - A reminder if you have forgotten to pay for your child’s swimming, please do contact the office to organise this.
