Newsletter Term 4, Week 1

Term 4, Week 1 – Thursday 21 October 2021

Principal’s Chat

Kia ora koutou Long Bay Whanāu

Welcome to term 4 – though still being in lockdown certainly isn’t how we imagined the start of term 4 would be. I’d like to make a special welcome for our new students and their families – including a new class of 5 year olds starting this week online with Helen Fairclough and Dee McGibbon.

As well as our welcomes, we have a farewell to make for a staff member. As she is moving out of the area, our wonderful Dianne Mayall leaves us on Friday. Dianne has been a wonderful teacher and colleague who has supported the learning of so many children in our community and has contributed significantly to our school in her 9 years at Long Bay, including being an initiator and ongoing supporter of the enviro group, running Environmental Specialisation, leading English and other curriculum teams, supporting beginning teachers and leading teaching teams, most recently Rimu, Alongside the rest of the staff, I have loved working with Dianne all these years – she is a much loved member of our school and we will miss her. We wish her all the best.

This week Dianne is working with JoAn Radojkovich, who will be the class teacher for Room 10 for the rest of the school year. A big welcome to JoAn, and a thank you to Fenneke Gingell, who will be the team leader for Rimu in term 4.

With the continuation of the lockdown, there is natural concern across Auckland from parents about their children’s learning. Our teaching teams do look at the programme they are offering online and how this might be adapted to suit their students. Like parents, we are aiming to keep our students motivated to connect with their class and teacher and to give the learning tasks a good go.
The following links provide additional resources parents can tap into:
– Curriculum teaching and learning resources (with guidance for parents) can be found online here for English-medium and here for Māori-medium.
– Home Learning TV can be accessed On Demand here or via the TVNZ App on a device (mobile phone, smart TV or tablet).

In regard to online learning, please consider how safely your internet firewall is set up to protect your children when online.  A suggestion for when your older child is doing research online is to check they are searching within Google, rather than within YouTube (as more likely to get an unwanted pop up on YouTube).
Netsafe has a range of resources available at netsafe.org.nz/digitalparenting that are useful to supporting tamariki (students) of all ages and the latest digital parenting webinar is a must watch.
On the Netsafe site, if you click on the parents section there is a Parent Toolkit which will help you to manage the online environment and teach your child how to respond if they do encounter anything that makes them feel uncomfortable online.
There is also a section on scams – one of the latest I have been warned of is an email which pretends it is NZTA from that tells you your car registration is expiring, then provides a link you can click on to pay – don’t. Always pay via an official website not via an email.

The Government has indicated that they will shortly be outlining a plan for the community about what the next steps will be for us to all return to greater freedom (including schools reopening). Meanwhile, we have been looking at school events in term 4:
-Sadly, the decision was made to cancel the Year 6 camp as it could not proceed at Level 3.
–The Teacher Only Day scheduled for Tuesday 26 October has been postponed as the scheduled PLD cannot occur. So online lessons will continue on the 26^th – however Monday 25 October is a Public Holiday so there will not be any online school that day.
– Please note that the Teacher Only Day on 12 November will go ahead whether we are in lockdown or back at school.

We have a number of other scheduled events that I will be able to confirm as soon as we know more about a return to school date.

At the start of term 4 we also begin our organisation for the following year, including 2022 class placement. Class placement is a carefully considered process. If your child is at Long Bay next year and you feel that you have additional information that would be useful to assist us with class placement please put this into writing and email to Linda by Monday 1 November at lindab@longbayprimary.ac.nz. 

Late correspondence is not able to be accommodated, so please send through on time.
One thing to note as a parent is that it is not possible to request a teacher or for the school to place each child with their best friend, so please do not have an expectation that this will happen. Any information from parents will be carefully considered and weighed against other factors. Teachers look at each child individually, taking into account their academic ability, work habits, learning friendships, relationships with others and behaviour. Please know that the final placement is the result of much thought and care and will be the decision of the school.

Thank you all for your support. My last ask is that parents and family members who have not been vaccinated do seriously consider doing so as soon as possible. As primary school students cannot be vaccinated at this stage they are vulnerable to catching the Delta virus, so they are reliant on the adults around them being vaccinated to protect them.
Thank you.

Linda