Newsletter Term 4, Week 3

Term 4, Week 3 – Friday 5 November 2021

CANCELLATION – School Production – Juke Box Drama

Principal’s Chat

Kia ora koutou Long Bay Whanāu

I hope all is going as well as can be as we navigate the lockdown. As yet I haven’t been informed by the Ministry of Education about what any partial reopening of the school may look like, but I do anticipate a notice coming out next week with some detail. I find out about dates from the press conference at the same time as the general population, but please know that I will keep you informed.

At the start of this term we reviewed the school online learning programme. At the start of home learning the decision was made to stick to a timetable that we had developed so that siblings in the same household didn’t have to be online at the same time, this was to try and make it easier for parents. We also did not anticipate then how long the lockdown would be. At the review, our teachers were keen to provide more online learning so we now have greater timetable flexibility and your children are likely to be invited to online learning at different times. Please do encourage your children to attend the online learning as much as your family can manage – and please make sure they keep their camera on during online learning with their teacher so the teacher can see that they are actually there, and can check that they look like they understand and are connecting with the learning.
Running online learning is a great deal of work for our teachers – as well as planning and teaching the whole class and group sessions, considerable time is taken with responding to Seesaw and email messages and making connection with families. Our teacher aides are also running sessions and preparing resources for the future, and we have staff at school for the bubble class and to continue with the usual commitments of our school in terms of administration and property (a special shout out from me to Lorna from our school office who is running online Storytime for our juniors).
I am so proud of our staff, students and community. These are busy times – and we miss our community being together.

We have also begun our planning for 2022. It was a pleasure this week to announce the newly appointed Principal from 2022. I would like to thank the Board of Trustees (Kylie, Autumn, Ellis, Dave, Harushini and James), and their consultant Dave, for their work on the principal’s appointment.
Please see Rob’s profile below. I look forward to working with him as he transitions into the Principal role at Long Bay.

We have had a number of changes in dates as we have postponed or cancelled events, including the school production. You will see that the school calendar is looking quite bare until we know more about possible reopening. We are continuing with the Teacher Only day which was postponed to Friday 12 November. School will be closed on the 12th and there will be no online learning sessions.

Lastly, I attended an educators forum this week to discuss the lockdown. We were able to learn a bit about the New South Wales experience. They did have a lower community vaccination rate than us when they reopened, but one thing that did stand out for me was that cases rose in the community as children brought the virus home and infected their household – so my plea is that everyone who is eligible for a vaccination in your family does get vaccinated as soon as possible, if they haven’t already. Vaccination has been shown to provide protection from serious illness and death. Also primary school students cannot be vaccinated at this stage and they are vulnerable to catching the Delta virus. Our children are reliant on the adults around them being vaccinated to protect them.

We have had a bit of trouble with the KiwiSchools notification app for mobile devices, and this has just been redesigned. Please read the section about the notification app below and update this on your phone so you can receive the school messages (this would be particularly important if we ever had a school lockdown).

Thank you all again.

Linda

New Principal Announcement

2021 Upcoming Events – Subject to Government Alert Levels

2021 Term Dates

2022 Term Dates

New Long Bay Primary School App

Welcome New Students

A warm welcome to the new students who have joined Long Bay Primary since our last newsletter:

In-Zone Enrolments for 2022

If you have a younger sibling who is going to be turning 5 next year and you are wishing to enrol them at Long Bay Primary, can you please email the Office at enrolments@longbayprimary.ac.nz to make sure that we have the child’s information and birth date to help with our planning for 2022.

Sports Buzz – Term 4, Week 3

Touch Rugy & Flippaball

Touch Rugby has been cancelled for the season – we will arrange refunds for all those who registered. We are still waiting for an update from the Flippaball organisers. Thank you for your patience.

Scholastic Lucky Book Club

To view the catalogue please visit https://www.scholastic.co.nz/media/5721/book-club-student-issue-7-2021.pdf

Order online at https://mybookclub.scholastic.co.nz/Parent/Login.aspx – orders close Monday 15 November.

Home Learning Fun

Farewell for Dianne Mayall

In week one of this term our school said farewell to Dianne Mayall, who has been such a wonderful teacher at Long Bay. As part of her farewell Dianne was presented with a produce basket to say thank you from Team Green, and our staff did a contactless drive-bye round the cul-de-sac to wish her all the best.

Maths Teacher Award

Congratulations to Amber Hobbs (who is teaching in Room 9 this year) for being awarded a prize for excellence in mathematics teaching from the Margaret and John Kalman Trust. Amber encourages her students to have a positive growth set and develop maths skills for problem solving.

PTA News

Summer Raffle

Due to uncertainty with the reopening of school, the PTA have made the decision to postpone the raffle until 2022.

PTA Colouring Competition Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Colouring Competition: Lanah Room 25, Emily Room 1, Rory Room 22, Sarah Room 5, Emma Room 18, Olivia Room 6, Henry Room 19, Tyler Room 9. Thank you to Jo Clark for organising this fun competition.

Community Local Events and Sports

MERC Long Bay Steps for Change – combining conservation with keeping fit

MERC in Long Bay has created a Steps for Change website that students can log into and either on their own or with their family, log activities and conservation activities they have completed (this could be as simple as picking up rubbish on the walk).

1.) It’s simple, for the month of November, make it your intention to go for a walk, jog, run (or any other fitness-based activity of your choice) every day, the duration can be as short or as long as you’d like.

2.) Choose a conservation action to do along the way. This does not need to be complicated, you could pick up some rubbish, take out weeds or even walk the recycling bin down the driveway. For more ideas and info can be found on the website. 

3.) Finally, record your distances and conservation actions by entering them through the website. There is no limit to how many times you can submit, so make the most of it!”

https://www.mercstepsforchange.com/