Newsletter Week 5 Term 2
St Brigid's School 31 May 2022
Upcoming Events
- Rooms 5, 6 & 7 Swimming - Wednesday 1 June
- School Mass - Friday 3 June 1.45pm - 2.15pm St Peter & Paul's Church
- Queen's Birthday - Monday 6 June
- Staff Only Day (School Closed) - Tuesday 7 June
- Rooms 5, 6 & 7 Swimming Wednesday 8 June
Staff Only Day Tuesday 7 June - School Closed
Fiona's Message
Talofa lava Parents and Caregivers
Afio mai/Welcome to Samoan Language Week.
Each week we have a Pasifika group who meet to learn more about their culture and heritage, learn songs and strengthen our welcome protocols.
Here are some phrases you could practise this week with your family and friends:
Tālofa lava - Greetings/Hello
Tōfā - Goodbye
Fa’amolemole - Please
Fa’afetai - Thank you
Thank You
Thank you so much for your support for our unexpected school closure last week. The Wellington City Council is investigating the issue and will hopefully resolve it soon. It is pleasing that our processes for safe evacuation of students were clear and that messages were received. Feedback from parents also appreciated the mahi/work teachers were able to share to allow students to ‘work from home’ too.
Schoolwide Focus - Innovation and Enterprise
Our schoolwide focus - Technology and devices used for design and communication is coming to an end over the next couple of weeks. We are encouraging parents to look out for your child’s seesaw post where work will be shared about this topic. This will give you insight into the learning your child has been doing. We encourage parents to comment on their child’s thinking and work.
We are also focusing this term on subsidiarity which means ensuring decision-making happens at the most appropriate level, so all those affected can contribute. Larger organisations such as governments or international agencies should not abandon their responsibilities but must work in partnership with local communities and groups with an attitude of humility. Local groups have important insights into what is best for their communities. They need to have a say and to influence the outcome.
Ngā mihi
Fiona Kearns
Acting Principal
Friendly reminder!
Teachers are always looking for opportunities to help students make connections at the beginning of each day. This is just a friendly reminder that our school day starts at 8.55am. This is the time when teachers’ outline for the class what is happening for the day. When children arrive to school late, they are sometimes unsettled as they don’t know what is happening as they have missed that part. It would be great if your children could be at school by 8.45am as this gives them time to get ready for the day, unpack their bag and connect with their friends.
School Policy and Procedures - We Need Parent Feedback
As part of our term review we have a focus on Bullying and Online Bullying. We take bullying behaviours seriously and want to ensure our policy and procedures are thorough.
Our St Brigid’s School definition of bullying is the deliberate, harmful behaviour that is repeated, or continues over a period of time. It often involves a power imbalance and it is difficult for those being bullied to defend themselves.
It is important that you as parents. have a look at our St Brigid’s School policy and procedures about Bullying and Online Bullying and offer feedback on these documents. The link for this is below:
To access you need to type in St Brigid's School Johnsonville and then in the next screen enter username: StBrigids, password: respect.
What is Pentecost?
This is a very special time when the disciples received the Holy Spirit. Read the story together from Acts 2: 1-13. God sent the Holy Spirit to the disciples. The Holy Spirit could have come with healing, or walking on water, but it came with language: language that allowed all the listeners to hear about Jesus in a way they would understand. On that day God was not only fulfilling his promise from Jesus to the disciples, he was fulfilling a much older plan to unit all the different people of the world. God used language to bring people together as he started his Church. God knew words are powerful
How do your words affect others?
Do they divide people or bring them together?
The Holy Spirit helped the disciples to point others to Jesus. How can you use your words to the do the same?
You are most welcome to join us to celebrate Pentecost on Friday 2 June at 1.45pm at St Peter and Paul’s Church.
This is our first whole school celebration of Eucharist since moving to “Orange”.
Parish celebration of Pentecost and acknowledging Linda Birch
You and your family are most welcome to attend the Pentecost Mass on Sunday, 4 June at 10.30am at St Peter and Paul’s Church where the Parish of St Francis of Assisi - Ohariu will acknowledge and bless our retired principal Linda Birch. All are welcome to join us for this!
Saints Peter and Paul's Church, Johnsonville - 100 Year Celebration
Saints Peter & Paul’s Johnsonville
1922 – 2022
LET’S CELEBRATE
26th June 2022, 2pm
Saints Peter & Paul’s Church, Johnsonville
37 Dr Taylor Terrace
Johnsonville
Cardinal John Dew Presiding
You are all welcome to come and celebrate.
Mass will be followed by light refreshments.
We look forward to seeing you all.
For any enquires please contact the Parish Office
Ph: 04 478 7137 or Email: office@stfrancisohariu.nz
School Reports
As part of our commitment to keeping parents informed and updated about the Term 2 School Reports we want to share what is happening for each of the teams at St Brigid’s School.
- Last year we began the process of trying to use Seesaw as a reporting tool. The purpose of this was to enable us to engage parents by using a tool we use to capture student learning. This was successfully used by Team Tahi (Yr 0-2) last year and as a result it was decided to trial it with Team Wha (Yr 7 and 8) for the mid year reports.
- In the coming weeks both Team Tahi/Wha students will be sharing with parents samples of their work which have been assessed, moderated and then captioned/commented by the student and/or teacher. You will notice that it has a heading of 2022 Reporting Post, this lets you know that this piece of work is reflective of your child’s achievement. Please take the time to have a look at what has been posted and offer feedback to your child. These seesaw comments replace our usual mid term written report. We will be gathering parent feedback about this form of reporting. All seesaw reporting posts will be followed up with Learning Conversations early in Term 3.
- Team Rua (Rm 8, 9, 10) and Team Toru (Rm 5, 6, 7) will be reporting using our usual mid-year written report. These reports will be crafted in coming weeks and will be shared with parents in Week 10. These will be followed up with Learning Conversations early in Term 3.
We will be gathering parent and student feedback from the posts this term across Team Tahi and Wha once we have had learning conversations. This information will help inform us of our next steps.
St Brigid's School Board
SchooI Board Parent Election 2022
Nomination round
Our school will be undertaking a parent election for 5 School Board vacancies. This process will start with the issuing of nomination papers to our caregiver community by Friday 15th July 2022.
We have employed CES to undertake the election process on our behalf. This year with legislative change, our nomination form and full instruction on how to place your nomination into our own School’s Election website will be emailed to you if we have your email address in our database or you will receive it by post if we don’t have your email in our database.
Nomination papers will also be available at the school office. The school will send those on to CES for processing upon receipt from candidates.
Nominations close on Friday 5th August at 12 noon.
We look forward to your participation in this process.
Chess Club
Next week weekly chess club will commence at lunchtimes in Room 11
Years 3 & 4 Mondays
Years 5 – 8 Tuesdays
Chat to your child and get them to register if they are interested by emailing fiona@stbrigids.school.nz.
If there are any adults who have a few chess skills and are available to support on either day you would be very welcome.
Scholastic Lucky Book Club - Issue 4
A copy of Issue 4 of the Lucky Book Club brochure will be sent home this week with students. To purchase any books just note the 3-digit code next to the title.
Visit https://mybookclub.scholastic.co.nz/Parent/ClubManagement.aspx, type in the postcode 6037 and find St Brigid's School on the dropdown list, then follow the instructions from there. Orders are to be made by Wednesday 8 June.
Contact Us
Email: lynne@stbrigids.school.nz
Website: https://stbrigids.school.nz/
Location: 9 Phillip St, Johnsonville, Wellington 6037, New Zealand
Phone: +64 478 6516
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1428952763904874