Bayfield School Newsletter - Wednesday 10 June 2020

Bayfield School Newsletter - Wednesday 10 June

Inspired Today - Prepared for Tomorrow 

Dates to remember

Cross Country -Thursday 25 June (Save day 2 July)

End of term - Friday 3 July

Term 3
Learning Conferences Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 July


It is certainly quite a surreal feeling to look back over the term and remember that we were locked down as a country, spent weeks planning for varied alert levels and taught our learners from home.

Countless Zoom meetings and online connections were had, and overall it has created some very positive outcomes. We have learned so much about each other, from our family dynamics, our pets and how resilient and creative we can be. It has been fascinating to hear from the children, their thoughts and feelings about learning at home and as a school we are trying to build on the positives and make adjustments to our programmes.

Recently Claire, Tina and Annette interviewed some of the children for a Kahui Ako (Our community of learning) project, reflecting and gathering feedback on the children’s wellbeing and agency over the lockdown.

Some of the main positives that the children have fed back to us are:

• Choice and control about when they learned and how - designing their own timetables, ability to complete tasks without having to move onto the next one
• Being active - opportunities to get outside and move more often
• Eating when they were hungry - snacking throughout the day
• Connecting and spending time with family

Obviously there were many children who could not wait to get back to school, to see friends, see their teachers and get back into learning as they do at school. But some of our learners really did enjoy the different structure and were more engaged over this period, than they had been at school. We are certainly looking at the reason behind this increased engagement and trying to find ways to recreate some of the enjoyable aspects into our school day.

Here is an interesting article looking at why some children really thrived over this period.

Communication and online learning review
Our survey is on its way, and we are looking forward to gathering as much feedback about our school, communications and our online learning as we can. Please keep an eye out for the survey being sent out to your emails, we really need as many parents as possible to complete the survey.

BCG relaunch - Fundraising Brainstorming Group
Thank you to all the parents who attended the BCG relaunch and the fundraising group last night, it was fantastic to reform the BCG and we gathered some excellent fundraising ideas
for 2020 and beyond.

Please let Kerri or Sarah Taverna know if you have ideas, would be interested in being a part of the BCG or helping with future community or fundraising events.

Value this week - Excellence- Huhuatanga

We look forward to seeing our children striving to do their best over the coming weeks.

Sport

Basketball, netball and hockey will all resume in Term 3. Please contact the following teachers if you have any questions about these sports.

Netball - Natalie Hayes

Hockey - Michaela Bartholomew

Basketball - Sarah Vile