Newsletter Term 1 Week 4

NEWSLETTER TERM FOUR 2024

Kia ora koutou, 

Looking ahead a lot is going on next week, so today will have some quick reminders to keep everyone on track:

Monday 26th February – see the poster below inviting everyone to come along to our Whānau Picnic in the Playground. Kaiako/Teachers will be mixing and mingling and getting to know the whānau who are championing their children.  For health & safety purposes students must be here with their caregiver/s. We will be focused on getting to know you better so we will not be free to supervise students.  Hint: activewear is a good idea if you are keen to join in on a game of Ki o Rahi.  

Tuesday 27th February – Teachers Only Day.  School is closed and staff will be onsite working with an outstanding professional Angeline McDonald from Waikato University. Being able to have a full day with Angeline facilitating and sharing her knowledge around the Mana Potential Framework (which she co-designed) and supporting us with engaging and motivating your tamariki is a win/win. We appreciate your support with this.  

Later in the term, our Aspiration Conversations will take place.   There is a fuller explanation below.  We will set up a booking link over the coming days and share this with you via the app and Facebook page. We do close the school early on these two dates; Tuesday 12th March and Thursday 14th March, to allow us time to fit all of the bookings in. 

Swimming Carnival 9.30-11am Tuesday 5th March @ Sanson Pool  – Students from Tuarongo and Tokomanawa will be taking part in a showcase of different water activities skills. We welcome spectators and will be seeking support with transport. If you know you could help please let the office know. A notice will go out on the app very soon – keep an eye out for it.  NB: It will be vital that we have confidence and knowledge of your child’s swimming skills for them to be able to participate.  

Swimming Pool:  You may have heard that over the past few weeks, we have had a few operating issues with the pool.  We have been super focused on fixing things ASAP because these swimming days are so precious. If your child has missed an opportunity to swim, we are sorry, but we must know that the pool is safe and running well is a priority.  

Continuing our update re: Communication Review in our last pānui this newsletter informs you about how to access our School Policies and Proceedures information, how to follow a Concerns and Complaints process while also reminding you about the ‘old fashioned ways of communication’ such as email, phone and face to face.  We hope these updates help you to make the most of the communication tools available to you as we try our utmost to keep our community in the loop at all times.  

Ngā manaakitanga, Kim Gordon, Tumuaki.  

ASPIRATIONAL CONVERSATIONS TUESDAY 12TH MARCH AND THURSDAY 14TH MARCH SCHOOL WILL CLOSE AT 1PM     

A LINK TO MAKE BOOKINGS WILL BE OUT SOON  

As mentioned above, Aspiration Conversations will take place on Tuesday 12th and Thursday 14th March. 

Teachers come to these hui with insights shared by your child into what makes them and their whānau tick.

We use Sir Mason Durie’s model of Te Whare Tapa Wha (you can easily google this for more information) which in the simplest form is related to checking in on the wellbeing of a person to support their growth and development.

We trialed this last year and it was really successful in supporting the connection between home and school the feedback at the time was super positive.

The feedback we received from our Community Consultation also rated these interactions highly. 

We hope to see 100% of our whānau over these two days.

Bulls School Policies & Procedures

http://bulls.schooldocs.co.nz/

 (note that there’s no “www”!). 

Our username is bulls and password pride

SUBSCRIBE TO APP GROUPS 

Di has refreshed this and named each group with 2024 so you know it’s relevant and up to date. You will all need to join the groups specific to your tamariki.

This has important notices for either the whole school or specific groups eg: Bus Students, Sports, Cultural, Hubs, etc that you can join according to what your child’s involved in.

Many notices or reminders go out via the APP so it is an important tool for parents to be aware of what is due eg: permission slips and dates for events offsite, transport required etc. This is also an efficient way to provide absence notices.

In many cases, parental permission may be given via the app as well.

UNIFORM EXPECTATIONS

Our uniform and the way we wear it is connected to our PRIDE values. Taking PRIDE in our kura and our appearance as well as acknowledging the necessity to be sunsafe sits behind our decision to introduce a Bulls School Bucket Hat as a part of our regulation uniform. This has been an expectation since the beginning of 2023. Hats are available online or in-store for $20 and they come in 2 different sizes. Once you have yours PLEASE clearly name/label it. Matching 175 potae to 175 heads is much simpler when they are clearly named. 

Kapata Manaaki – we have had a big clean out and there will be some school resources going into the Kapata Manaaki over the next few days such as dictionaries and atlas’s. Please take what you need.