Bayfield School Newsletter - Wednesday 22nd of July

Bayfield School Newsletter - Wednesday 22nd of July

Inspired Today-Prepared for Tomorrow

Term 3 Dates to remember:

Learning Conferences Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th of July

BCG meeting Monday 27th of July 6:45pm

Y6 Camp and Y5 EOTC week 31 August - 4th of September

Value this week

Diversity- Kanorau

We appreciate the individual uniqueness and differences, by being inclusive 

and treating everyone kindly.

A Word from Kerri

A warm welcome back to Term 3. It is an exciting term and we are looking forward to having, hopefully, a “normal” uninterrupted school term.

As we return to school, we are continually aware of the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on our country and our community. We are yet to see the full economic impact and know that many businesses and families will be facing closure and unemployment as the year progresses. 

As a school we are making sure that children and staff are supported with their well being and Claire Turner, has been working closely on a well being initiative with the Resource Teachers of Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) and other Associate Principals across our Kahui Ako (Community of Schools) to develop resources and tools to ensure the following is included into our recovery plans:

• Relationships
• 
  
• Reassurance
• 
  
• Routines
• 
  
• Regulation

Though we may not be as directly impacted by COVID-19 as other countries around the world, many of us may have relatives overseas that are impacted, perhaps sick and/or unable to come back to New Zealand. Please let us know if you, your family or your child needs any support as we move through this challenging time.

On a final note, our new speed bump at the top of Clifton road, will hopefully slow traffic down as they enter Clifton road and help our families to cross safely.

We do still have issues with parents entering the driveway and reversing back onto Clifton Road (or vice versa). We are going to have to put cones out to prevent this happening, as we have had accidents occur and this does prevent cars and pedestrians from being able to see oncoming cars.

Communication and online learning review

We are not far from sharing the results and next steps from the communication survey. You may have already noticed some small changes, like our new fridge list. We hope that these changes have made it clearer and easier for parents.

   Learning Conferences at Bayfield School

Next week we have our learning conferences. Our conferences are designed to empower our children to share their learning with their parents, children share their goals, evidence of their learning and most importantly celebrate their successes.

Below are some helpful links that explain the Learning Conferences process, an assessment guide ( expectations for time at school and expected curriculum level) and a guide for parents around what to expect for reading, writing and mathematics for each year level. We look forward to seeing you all here next week. 

Our Learning Conferences - Parent Guide

Expected Levels of Achievement Guide

Reading, writing,mathematics explanation for parents

Curriculum and Assessment at Bayfield

Each newsletter over the next two terms will share and explain the different processes we have for teaching and assessing your children as they move up through the year levels and curriculum levels at Bayfield School.

All learning at New Zealand Schools is guided by the New Zealand Curriculum and we are tasked as a school to ensure we provide a broad range of learning experiences that help to teach knowledge and skills and that prepares our children for their futures.  In the next newsletter, we will explain how reading is taught and assessed across the school.

Helpful Links

New Zealand Curriculum Guide for parents

Art Exhibition 

HELP Needed to collect cardboard

Do you have a car/van/truck?

Are you able to collect some donated cardboard for us from Great South Road in Penrose? Please contact Linda at the office if you are able to help us out.

Please also let teachers know if you are interested in helping during our art weeks, or know of any artists who would be able to come and help our children complete their collaborative canvases.

Email communications 

As part of our commitment to being positive online citizens, the teaching staff have been looking at the use of emails to communicate with parents (teachers-teams to parents) and looking at our protocols and processes around this.  Through our conversations we have looked at the purpose of emails and how to respond to challenging or difficult emails. 

As a staff we looked at the work of David Rock, Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work (2007). In this book it examines digital communications and looks at rules about how to use email to communicate, especially in a time, where we don’t have time to read through pages and pages of information and are receiving hundreds of emails a day.  Rock, also talks about the time we spend ruminating over a very difficult or emotive email.

At times, in schools, businesses and through our personal emails, we can find it difficult to interpret the tone of an email, and often emails can be misinterpreted and cause unnecessary stress. The common misunderstanding is that by sending an email, we can avoid emotionally charged issues, when in fact the opposite is the case.

So as staff, we are taking the following advice from David Rock:

• Emails should contain as few words as possible. (If is takes up the whole screen - don't send it, make a time for a call)
• Make it easy to see your central point at a glance.
• Never send an email that could emotionally affect another person unless it’s pure positive feedback.
• Emotional issues must be discussed by phone; email is used to book a time to call.
• If you accidentally break rule number 4, phone the person immediately, apologize, and discuss the issue by phone

As many of our parent community work in businesses and the corporate world, we are interested in hearing what your email protocols are and how we can co construct email etiquette with you.

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