Newsletter 7 June Term 2 - 2022
St Brendan's Catholic School
Welcome, nau mai, afio mai, namaste, konnichiwa, nĭ hăo, talofa, komosta, vanakkam, auybowan,
Dear Whānau & Parishioners,
We have reached the midpoint of our busy term. Our Adventurers took social action out and about in our local streets during week 4 as they picked up rubbish. They were surprised at the amount and range of rubbish found. This made me reflect on Mother Teresa’s quote: “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot, together we can do great things.” With each individual contributing we can certainly make a difference in our school and wider community.
Our Year 8 students had the opportunity to attend the St Patrick’s Silverstream and Sacred Heart College open days, these are a significant part of the transition process. Some of our Explorer team, Rooms 1, 2 and 8 enjoyed their trip to Upper Hutt, Te Whirinaki Whare Taonga. While they were there I popped in to visit and caught a glimpse of how engaged our students were with the programme. And, I had the privilege of taking a small group of students to Our Lady of Grace for the birthday celebration for the local Catholic Women’s League. Caleb, Cameron and Rehan entertained with their musical talents, Noah and Amelie shared a reflection as Navigator Student Councilors and the group sang our St Brendan’s school song.
On Wednesday, 25th May St Brendan’s participated in the annual National Simultaneous Storytime. This year’s book, ‘Family Tree' by Josh Pyke is a heartfelt celebration of family, community and the seasons of life to cherish and share. Every year a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is read simultaneously in libraries, schools, pre-schools, childcare centres, family homes, bookshops and many other places across New Zealand and Australia. Now in its 22nd successful year, it is a colourful, vibrant, fun event that aims to promote the value of reading and literacy.
The theme for Samoa Language week was ‘Fa’aāuāu le Folauga i le Va’a o Tautai – Continue the Voyage with Competent Wayfinders of the Ocean’. This year's theme reflects the journey of revitalising and maintaining Gagana Samoa. It also recognises the importance of having the right tools, leadership skills, relationships and va’a that adapt to faring the ocean and its elements.
Our staff team had a very productive Teacher Only Day on Friday. Cath Forster from Waikato University spent the morning with our team focussed on Restorative Practice, a relational approach grounded in beliefs about equality, dignity, mana and the potential of all people. We are a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) school. The PB4L Restorative Practice model focuses on building and maintaining positive, respectful relationships across the school community and offers school staff best-practice tools and techniques to maintain and restore relationships. By building and maintaining positive, respectful relationships within a school, staff to staff, staff to student and student to student, issues are more easily managed. PB4L Restorative Practice is based on a set of best practice tools and techniques to support a consistent and sustainable approach to managing positive, respectful relationships within the school. We also sang waiata, upskilled with poi and planned traditional Maori games for our upcoming Matariki celebration. And, we focussed on prayer at St Brendan’s which culminated in us planning collaboratively.
Life Education We are looking forward to welcoming Andrea and Harold back to St Brendan’s. They use a shared planning approach with our teaching team to create individualised lessons to suit the needs of our tamariki. The teaching strands have been developed based on the four key challenges that tamariki face to their health and wellbeing while growing up. The teaching covers content across five key strands: identity and resilience, relationships and communities, food and nutrition, human biology, and substances. The Healthy Harold programme supports tamariki to:
- Develop life skills relating to their health and wellbeing
- Understand how to make healthy choices
- Gain knowledge about health and their bodies
- Develop self esteem and a positive understanding of themselves
- Develop strategies for relating to others
Staffing Update We have warmly welcomed Miss Frances Reilly to St Brendan’s, she has joined our Adventurer teaching team in Room 9.
Please log into Hero today! This is the second of three learning posts being shared with you this term as part of our new ways of reporting to families in 2022. The first was a Literacy post, today’s post is a Curriculum post. Please email your child/ren’s class teacher if you have not been able to access your Hero account yet and they will be able to help.
Welcome On behalf of our whole school community we extend a warm welcome to Payton and his family. Payton recently joined Room 2.
This week we are looking forward to our Colour Fun Run, the Year 4-6 inter-school swimming event and welcoming Harold and Andrea back to St Brendan’s.
God Bless,
Veronica Sawers,
Principal
REMINDERS
ENROLMENT APPLICATIONS 2023
Enrolments for the 2023 school year at St Brendan's close on 30th June 2022. Please ensure enrolment application forms for all siblings starting school in 2023 are submitted by this date for consideration of a placement.
UNIFORM GUIDELINES - Winter Uniform Terms 2 and 3
- All students must be in full school uniform every day.
- Plain black school shoes are required for winter (no canvas or ballet shoes).
- Year 7-8 students are required to wear covered shoes for health and safety at Technicraft.
- Hair longer than the shoulders must be tied back. Permitted hair accessories must be plain navy, black, or bottle green hair ties, clips, or headbands. No fashion accessories are to be worn (e.g. oversized bows).
- Coloured hair and extreme hairstyles are not permitted.
- Only plain, small stud earrings may be worn with our school uniform.
- Necklaces of religious or cultural significance such as crosses, bone carvings, or greenstones may only be worn under uniform clothing, and must be removed for PE.
- Make-up and nail polish is not permitted.
Family support of correct uniform being worn by students is appreciated, if you have any issues please contact the school for support.
WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE!
ART
We continue to work on our sensory playground at the back of the hall. If you, a family member or friend has time to help students complete this project, please email, office@stbrendans.school.nz
ROAD PATROL
If you, a family member or friend has time to be added to our roster please email Room 11's teacher, Sara Williams s.williams@stbrendans.school.nz
GARDENING
St Brendan’s is an Enviro school and we are very proud of the progress we have made in the last few years, many initiatives have been introduced. If you, a family member or friend has time to help students to maintain our gardens, please pop into Room 7 or email Chris Pullan, c.pullan@stbrendans.school.nz
VERBAL BOUQUETS AND THANK YOU'S
To everyone for supporting our upcoming Colour Fun Run.
To our amazing St Brendan’s community! We managed to collect a generous amount of cans that will be delivered to Orongomai marae this week. There are many whānau who will benefit in our community. Ka rawe!!!
“A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.”
PROVERBS 11:25
WALKING HAND IN HAND WITH CHRIST
ARTWORK ON DISPLAY
On Friday, 27 May examples of the Adventurers art (shown below) about the Holy Spirit and the Ascension were put on display in our Lady of Grace Church, other examples were taken to St Francis Xavier Church at Stokes Valley where they are on display.
PRAYERS FOR UKRAINE
LEARNING ABOUT ST BRENDAN
Rooms 6, 7 and 8 enjoyed celebrating and learning about St Brendan and his journey. The students worked on making a Celtic cross, an origami boat and a stick puppet of St Brendan.
BOARD NEWS
SCHOOL BOARD PARENT ELECTION 2022
Nomination Round
Our school will be undertaking a parent election for five School Board vacancies. This process will start with the issuing of nomination papers to our caregiver community by Friday, 15 July 2022. We have employed CES to undertake the election process on our behalf. This year with legislative change, our nomination form and full instructions 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 Wednesday, 3 August at 12 noon. Election day is Wednesday, 7 September.
We look forward to your participation in this process.
Wayne Jamieson
Returning Officer
CES
SCHOOL NEWS
READING SUPPORT TUTORS 2022
We are looking for adults in our community to be Reading Support Tutors for students in our school who would benefit from additional one-to-one reading to build their confidence and enjoyment of reading as well as practising their developing skills. We have had the pleasure of working with many Reading Support Tutors in previous years and have seen the amazing impact their work has had on the individuals that they have worked with.
There will be training and resources made available and class teachers will keep in contact with volunteers to ensure good support is provided.
You might be available for up to one hour one morning a week (e.g. 9-10am) or for a couple of mornings a week - we are very flexible and will let you know when there are planned changes to our timetable, ahead of time.
Please contact me, Jo Hunter, if you are interested or if you would like to find out more. You could leave a message for me at the office or email me :
Jo Hunter
HELP WITH MALAYALAM AND TAMIL
We are looking for parents to help with translating some of our school communication from English into Malayalam and Tamil.
If you are able to help, or have any questions, please contact our Deputy Principal, Jo Hunter - j.hunter@stbrendan.school.nz or let the school office know.
Thank you
ROOM 7
Room 7 have shared the Gospel story Acts 2: 42- 47 and decided to work together to do more. They have planted a winter garden full of cabbages that once grown they can share with the school community.
REGIONAL CROSS COUNTRY
The following students have been selected to represent St Brendan’s in the Upper Hutt Schools Team for the Regional Cross Country later this term.
Congratulations to Lucinda F and Matthew M from Room 12, and to Thomas L and Iza M from Room 10.
Our best wishes for your ongoing training.
ST BRENDAN’S SCHOOL COLOUR FUN RUN
A reminder that this week we will have the colour run on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. This is a weather dependent event so please remind the tamariki to bring their change of clothes and shoes to school so that they are prepared. These clothes can stay at school until needed.
Thank you to everyone for your outstanding support. We have made a staggering $10,000, a tremendous help for our Navigators to get to camp.
The prize options are now open, so if you want to order your child's prize please log into your account and order by this FRIDAY, 10th JUNE.
NZEI TEACHER PAID UNION MEETINGS
Teachers at St Brendan’s will be attending paid union meetings in the week of June 13th in the run up to the re-negotiation of their collective agreement. The meetings will discuss the teachers’ Time 4 Tamariki | Wāwāhi Tahā campaign, which aims to win smaller class sizes, more support for high needs students, better recognition of cultural skills, greater job security for our essential relievers and to fairly value and recognise teachers’ work.
Our union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, has scheduled online meetings to minimise disruption to teaching and learning and our school will aim to ensure the least disruption to your children’s learning while upholding the right of teachers to participate in their union meeting.
PB4L
PTF News
Thanks for the great support for our pizza lunches this term!
The Pizza Lunch order form will be open again later this week for orders for our final Pizza Lunch for this term which will be held on Wednesday, 29th June.
Please note orders must be placed, and payment made, by 3pm on the FRIDAY before the date of delivery.
COMMUNITY NOTICES
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Location: 56 Palmer Crescent Heretaunga Upper Hutt 5019
Phone: (04) 939 1909