It has been quite a week in NZ and in the World. As the daily news shows scenes of violence and disruption, it is a comfort to work in a community where I get to see the best of humanity. Our students show us each day that they are dedicated to making the world a better place for future generations.

This week we held elections for House Captains and we heard inspiring speeches from year 8 students who shared their leadership goals for our school. Congratulations to those who were chosen to represent their houses as captains and vice captains for 2022.

Many of our enrichment programmes started this week. Students involved in the WaiCare group and those in the Enviro Group are showing a strong commitment to caring for our environment and improving the natural environment that surrounds our school.

Our art extension groups are creating outdoor murals to add colour to our school. Those involved in the maths and literacy extension groups are showing passion towards learning new skills that are outside the curriculum and involve higher level thinking skills.

I have also seen engagement across all subject areas this week and lots of students applying themselves to tasks that involve complex thinking and problem solving skills. I particularly enjoyed watching the hands-on science lesson where students were asked to experiment to find out how much energy is inside a peanut.

Mrs Dalton has been at school working with our students who love performing arts. We are excited to see what their ShowQuest performance will look like when they get the opportunity to perform in front of us. We learnt this week that APPA Choir will not be happening in 2022. While this is disappointing, it is also an opportunity for our wider school community to plan a more local choir festival. We are hopeful that we will have a choir who will get to perform in front of a live audience at some stage this year.

Sports teams have started training and it is great to see events being planned for the upcoming sporting seasons. Whaea Rachel has been busy organising a school fun run event that will be held at school on 1 April. This will give all students a chance to participate in a fun run and earn their fun run badge. As outside organisations cancel events, we are trying to come up with ways to ensure our students still get opportunities to participate while still being mindful of keeping students safe from covid.

We are choosing to promote the positives and look forward. We acknowledge that there is a lot of sickness in the community and we wish those with covid a speedy recovery. It is a tough time for many at the moment and we ask you to contact us if you need additional support. Please take care of each other.

Kia kaha,

JoAnne

JoAnne Sutton (she/her)

Principal / Tumuaki

This week we have had a lot of students away. Thank you for being mindful of keeping unwell students at home. This has kept our school relatively free from some of the covid outbreaks that we are seeing at other schools.

Currently, we are aware of approximately 20 confirmed positive cases of covid amongst students at our school. All of these cases were identified early and the students have been away from school and in isolation. We are grateful to the whānau who have been so incredible at getting themselves tested, notifying us of any cases and staying home when unwell.

We are continuing to be extra vigilant with our health practices. This includes mask wearing inside, hand washing and sanitising, social distancing and using our own stationery and equipment.

Below is a flow chart outlining when to stay home and when to attend school. We hope that this is helpful.

Starting next week, students who are in self isolation will be able to access google classroom lessons 3x per day. As we currently do not have any teachers in self isolation, the teachers will change each day and we cannot guarantee what lessons will be taught at each time but we are aiming to teach a lesson each day at 10am, 12.15pm and 2pm.

Nemanja Jovanovic ,whānau 17 & Fleur Perez ,whānau 25

Vice Captains: Sosi'Ana Taukava, whānau 7 & Alex Litsenko whānau 20

Matai House Captains:

Zya Mead ,whānau 22 & Finn McCallum, whānau 1

Vice Captains:

Sylvie Waddingham, whānau 3 & Seb Dunning, whānau 1

Rata House Captains:

Hadley Pethybridge, Ngā Hua & Peyton Seu, whānau 12

Vice Captains:

Teina Thompson, Ngā Hua & Kaia Jamieson, whānau 19

Rimu House Captains:

Frankie Wilson Deller, whānau 22 & Nikau Corbin-Beazley, whānau 19

Vice Captains:

Annabelle Breen, whānau 14 & Matty Price, whānau 3

Thank you for your time Louise and congratulations to the newest members of the team.

If your child was absent and would still like to participate, please email Whaea Jodi jwensor@bis.school.nz so that we can arrange this next term.

Our school uniform includes a hat. We recently changed from a bucket hat to a cap to encourage more students to wear their hat in the summer months. The Warehouse in Glenfield has lots of hats in stock.

Teachers are trying to do more teaching outdoors and to give frequent breaks from mask wearing. To do this in a way that is sunsmart we need to reinforce the message that sun hats must be worn in terms one and four.

Students not wearing a sunhat will be directed to be in the shade when outdoors.

15-16 March - Rocky Shore Trips for Science - Cancelled!

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