Newsletter Term 1 Week 8

NEWSLETTER

TERM 1 WEEK 8 2024

Kia ora koutou, Welcome to Week 8.

Last weeks Aspirational Conversations Statistics:

• 80% Attended or rebooked
• 8% Explained (Illness or away)
• 12% We didn’t hear back from whānau.

I really want to say a huge mihi to those who attended the Aspirational Conversations last week. There was such a great buzz across the hubs as students, kaiako and whānau were equally involved in sharing learning conversations that will impact positively on the home and school connections. We certainly believe that good communication and a visible connectedness builds positive attitudes to school and learning and we appreciate our whānau prioritising these hui. If you were unable to make it please contact your child’s whānau teacher to make alternative arrangements, we will do everything we can to make it work. The feedback from the two afternoons was encouraging. Thank you again for investing in your tamariki.

Year 4-8 Athletics Carnival:

Yesterday our Year 4-8 students had their Athletics Carnival. The main focus of the day was fun and participation. The conditions were perfect and the tamariki had a great time. It is important that we communicate that yesterday was only a part of the information-gathering process that determines invitations to the Inter-School event at Hunterville. Hunterville has standards for each event. Each teacher kept a record of students who may have reached those standards and they also have their class data to go from. Today our senior teachers will be verifying standards with students they have identified as potentials. We regularly remind our students that showing PRIDE values is also a part of the expectation to attend events outside of school. An invite will come home with your child on Wednesday if they have qualified and we will be relying on offers of transport to get our team to Hunterville next Thursday 28th March.

Year 1-3 Junior Athletics

Next week we are debuting our Junior Athletics Day. With the help and support of Sport Whanganui and our Healthy Active Learning team, we will run this from 11.30am – 2pm. Our recently trained PAL’s will play an important role in helping out on the day. Joining us will be Clifton, South Makirikiri, and Turakina schools. We are super excited about this and hope it becomes an annual event.

Green Day:

Students had a great time last Friday getting involved in all the activities organised by our Enviro Groups. Huge thank you to everyone who helped make this such a fun day!

Easter Raffle:

Once again we have been overwhelmed with the support for the Easter Raffle. Both the amazing contributions and the ticket sales have superseded all expectations. These are on sale until Wednesday 27th March when they are all due back to the office.

Good luck!

SENIOR ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

BSSG UPDATE

For some of our senior students, Footsteps has already been part of their learning programme, but our juniors were wondering – ‘Hey, what about us?’ We can happily report that our fabulous Support Group (BSSG) recently handed over $4000 to allow the whole school to have Footsteps Lessons, which began last week. Footsteps is described as an innovative high-tech approach to getting kids active. You can read more on their website: www.footsteps.org.nz. BSSG has met and planned a great year of fundraising ideas and the funds raised go straight back into our tamariki. We are very lucky to have such a dedicated group leading the way.

At the moment the Easter Raffle is selling like Hot X Buns! If you need more tickets, just pop into the office.

Currently, they are working on setting a date for a Disco before the end of term, we are just waiting to hear back from our DJ to be able to lock this in.

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.