Dear Parents

We are very happy with the way our delightful students are settling into their new classes and showing enthusiasm and interest in learning programmes planned by teachers who are full of ideas for the year ahead. Parents who are actively involved in what their child / children are learning are influential in their success so it has been great to see most parents come along to “Getting to Know Your Child’ conferences. A few parents couldn’t make the times offered, and I encourage you to take the initiative and ask the teacher for an alternative 10 minutes over the next week or two, so you can goal set together with the teacher. Please feel welcome whenever you are in the school. Thanks to parents/whanau of our Maori children who attended a marae with staff this week. It was a memorable event. Thanks also to many parents who attended our Official Opening of the Library / Information Centre. It proved a happy celebration and your presence  helped to make it special. The next celebration is the Official Opening of the Multi Purpose Sports Surface, a P.T.A. initiative, and I look forward to catching up with everyone at this event. It kicks off at 5.30pm so don’t be late!

Special greetings to new children and their families who are joining us this past month:    Li-En Downs, Sofia Hiley, Harvey Flynn, Max Tollenaar, Allen Illustrisimo, Stephanie Zhu,Thisuri Gunasekara, Jalise Appleton and Jamie Zhu. The roll is 420.

Board of Trustees News

We wish to announce that Peter Wilson has retired from the Board of Trustees.  We extend our thanks to Peter for the strong contribution he has made to the school during his time as a trustee.

Upcoming Board Elections – Friday 3 June

This year  Board of Trustee Elections will be held and details of the process and qualities & attributes needed to make the best contribution will be shared later on . If you could be interested in considering putting your name forward for election, you are welcome to find out more about the role by contacting the office, current board members or me.  Nominations for this year’s elections will close on Friday 20 May.

BBPS Charter

BBPS planning and reporting documents for 2015 have been submitted to the Ministry of Education as required.

They are:

• BBPS Charter (including Strategic Plan, Annual Plan, School Target)
• Analysis of Variance against our 2015 Target
• National Standards Achievement 2015 reporting and analysis.

Our BBPS website will soon share some of this and a hard copy is available for reading at the office. We are continuing to build capacity as a school in learning with digital technologies, Science, Mathematics and Literacy. and are reviewing our Effective Teaching and Learning statement as well as cultural responsiveness. Staff and students are learning to use the new website to share learning and we hope to support parents use this new resource more too.

PTA News

The official opening of our multi purpose sports surface will be on Friday 11 March at 5.30 p.m.   Our local MP, The Right Honourable Maurice Williamson will be an official guest.  This will be followed by our Family Fun Night that was postponed from last year.  All families are warmly invited to this special event.  We hope to see you all there.

The P.T.A. are planning a working bee, with options of contributing at a time that suits you and/or at a specified time. It will be great if families can commit to giving us a hand to make our school look even tidier and help make some new dreams come true! The P.T.A. will share more about this soon.

Education Outside the Classroom & Curriculum Events

Already this year there have been school trips for learning about Watercare (Seniors), The Estuary (Middle School) and senior sports events (e.g. swimming, cricket). A parent meeting for Year 6 about the proposed school camp was well attended and the Camp will go ahead. A Book Character Parade (Junior, Middle) and Pet Day (Juniors) have made learning fun. 

The Whanau Leader Day (a student report by Lexie & Chloe):   Last Wednesday, the Whanau leaders of BBPS went to Willow Park camp to develop our leadership skills. We learned about the 7 great habits of life. For example, Habit number 1 was ‘Be Proactive not Reactive’. Habit number 2 was ‘Begin with the End in Mind’ and Habit number 3 was ‘Put First things First’ etc. Our life coach, Garth Collings, aka Mr. G, helped us to realise the true meaning of the habits. Ms Crompton walked us from the school to Willow Park camp and when we were there she sat at the back and took her time to sit through the lessons.

During our morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea time we could play mini golf, tennis, soccer if you brought a ball, go on the trampolines and the playground. At the end, in front of the parents, we all had each written a speech, and performed them in front of our parents. The Whanau leaders would like to thank Ms Crompton, Mr. G and our parents for their support.

Thanks parents for all your support of these events.

 Teacher Only Day

There will be a teacher only day on Wednesday 30 March 2016 (the day after the Easter Break).

The school will be closed and no students can come to school on this day.  Supervision can be provided by SKIDS. Simply contact Wayne by email bucklandsbeach@skids.co.nz to book in advance. The Teacher Only Day provides a further opportunity for professional development (teachers participated in 5 days during January). Thanks for your co-operation with this.

Health & Safety

• Emergency Drill

BBPS has procedures in place for evacuation and lock down if needed, and practises regularly. I can assure you we take the recent bomb threats to schools seriously and have talked about our specific response to such an emergency. In the first instance we would contact the police and evacuate to the bottom field and if necessary walk to another local green space. As soon as possible our website would communicate with the community and of course parents would be asked to stay away from the school.

• To & From School

Children are encouraged to walk to and from school as this encourages independence, is a social time, promotes health and helps with road congestion. They are advised to walk in groups if possible, and join a walking bus if it goes their way (you might consider starting a new one if it doesn’t. Please contact the school office if interested). Parents are advised to talk with their children about what to do if they feel unsafe while walking. Students MUST go straight home after school. They MAY NOT play on the adventure playground unless supervised by a parent. Students waiting for car collection are asked to congregate at the school hall rather than wait out by the fence.

• Road Safety

At both entrances, students and parents are asked to use the crossings provided, rather than cross in other places. Thanks adults for your patient waiting while monitors perform a challenging and important task.

The Clovelly Turnaround is well used by drivers.

I am impressed with the considerate and patient driving behaviours I constantly observe. Thanks for the ‘kiss and go’, for getting your child / children out on the school side of the car, for watching for pedestrians on the path and for queuing carefully. It is also impressive to see how well adult and child pedestrians are using the school pedestrian crossing inside the carpark. Even on wet days, the turnaround has been a safe place!

May I offer a few suggested tips:

1. If ALL CAR DRIVERS drove as FAR FORWARD as possible before stopping in the turnaround, there would be less congestion on the road behind you.
2. It is against the law to queue over the pedestrian crossing.
3. Stopping before the lollipops go out can block up the road behind you. Consider proceeding slowly to form a double lane in the turnaround (but check your child/children get out safely as they could cross in front of moving cars), or go around the block and try again.
4. Cars waiting to turn right into the turnaround can block the road to through traffic. Please consider going around the block.

Enviro News

BBPS’s first Green Day was successful as everyone made an effort to consider their personal enviro actions and the footprints they take to make us a cleaner and greener school. The school is looking tidier and more locally themed environmental artworks are going up on display. At assembly we enjoyed learning about the Three R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle (Room 1) and we all hope to pledge making a difference with our daily habits at home and at school.

The school Enviro Council would love some parent or family helpers to support us anytime, but we meet every Monday and Friday lunchtimes. Please contact Kerri Riach in Room 1.

Mandarin Language Learning

Chen Yi, a new Mandarin Language Assistant, has begun teaching Mandarin to all classes. She is joined by Siming from Macleans College, to extend the first language of Year 5 & 6 Mandarin speakers once a week. BBPS is fortunate for the support of the Confucius Institute and Macleans College. After school Mandarin classes are also offered user-pays.

Sports News

The Senior Swimming Sports were held at Howick Intermediate pool on Friday 26 February. We had a great day and all students participated in a variety of events. A list of the final placings for the competition events is on the school web site. We will be entering a team into the Howick and Pakuranga interschool swimming competition held at Lloyd Elsmore Pool on Wednesday 23 March.

Swim Safe New Zealand enabled us to have Kay West from Swim Safe NZ take all classes for structured swimming lessons and provide professional development for teachers.

The school was well represented at the recent Weetbix Tryathlon. Thanks Jillian Redpath for organising this event.

BBPS will be defending its grip on the Crawford Medical Cup at the upcoming Howick Rotary Fun Run and Walk. Names are being collected by Mr Chamberlain for all those who wish to take part as we attempt to recreate our success from last year when we won the event and kept a beautiful shiny silver cup for a year! Non-competitive runners (walkers) are encouraged to join us as we tackle the shortened junior course on Sunday March 20th.

New Sports Uniform

Our new sports uniform is available NOW from John Russell Menswear.   The shirt is available in sizes 6-14 $49.50 and the shorts (which can be used at BBI) $20.00.  This uniform will be used as our playing uniform for all interschool activities.    We look forward to seeing all of our children wearing the new smart, uniform. It is time for children to stop wearing mufti tops and shorts although whanau shirts are still an acceptable alternative.  New hats/caps will soon be available.

Again, thank you to everyone who supported us at the recent opening of our new Library/Information Centre.  It was a special occasion for us all.  Congratulations to our 2016 Librarians: Alanna Marais, Alessandra Illustrisimo, Ben Rush, Caitlyn Benson, Cayleigh McNabb, Cici Wu, Dante Anderson, Devon Sutherland, Georgia Yan, Hana Rose, Holly Hughes, Jayson Kim, Jennifer Maartens, Kaylene Hayson, Kelli-Ann Baker, Kendal Penney, Lucy Bramwell, Maddie Barnett, Manon Frearson, Max Carter, Paige Bremer, Rachel Chen and Sophia Pascoe.

Cans for Fiji

Thank you to all our community that supported the Student Council in the collection of canned food for Fiji, it was really appreciated.

Kind regards

Dorothy Bigwood

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