Dear Baverstock Oaks School Community,

Kia ora, Tenā koutou, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Bula vinaka, Malo e lelei, Talofa lava, Taloha, Kia orana, Ni hao, Buenos días, Chao, Malo ni, Habari dobar dan, Namaste, Salam.

2025 has started on a positive note with our teachers working hard to implement the new curriculum.  This requires a number of Professional Development opportunities to ensure we are delivering the best education in both Literacy and Mathematics.  Our first Teacher Only Day will occur this Friday.  We have two facilitators from the Ministry of Education who will be working with our staff to unpack in more depth the English curriculum.  We are well on our journey with Literacy as we introduced the structured literacy model three years ago.   

We are focusing on the types of assessment that are being recommended to ensure we get effective feedback on not only our students’ achievement but also on how effective our teachers are delivering the curriculum so it meets the needs of our students.

A reminder we have a Teacher Only day scheduled each term to provide these Professional Development opportunities for our staff.  

Term 1 - Friday 21 March

Term 2 - Monday 23 June

Term 3 - Friday 15 August

Term 4 - Tuesday 28 October

We warmly welcome our new staff member Rochelle McCormick who will be starting at the beginning of Term 2.  Rochelle will be taking our 5 year old roll growth class in Room 19.  

A reminder if you have a child turning 5 this year, please make sure you enrol them early so we can ensure we have quality teachers appointed to teach the numbers we have enrolled.  Click here to enrol your child online.  

You will have noticed it is a bit chillier in the mornings now.  If you would like your child to wear shoes and socks now please make sure you follow the Baverstock Oaks School Uniform guidelines.  

  

A reminder we also have a second-hand uniform shop open fortnightly on a Thursday.  The next dates for this term are Thursday 27 March & Thursday 10 April from 8.30am - 9.00am in Room 9.  

Thank you to all the teachers and parents who joined us for our recent Year 6 camp. The students who participated gained valuable new skills, built resilience, and forged strong connections with their teachers and peers.

A special thank you goes out to our dedicated parents who embraced this experience with positivity and collaborated effectively with our staff. Your support made a significant difference.

Events like our Year 6 camp wouldn't be possible without the meticulous planning and organization of our Year 6 teachers. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our Year 6 Whānau Leader Catherine Hornsby and the Year 6 teachers, Melissa Bond, Laurel Webber, Liz Stone, and La-Rochelle Bernstein, for their thorough preparation ensuring a safe and impactful experience for our students. The memories created during this exciting EOTC event will be a highlight for all who attended.

I look forward to catching up with you over the next few weeks. A reminder we have our Parent Interview Evening tomorrow.  Bookings have now closed for this but you can still email your child’s classroom teacher to make an appointment.  

Noho ora mai,
Genee Crowley
Principal/Tumuaki

Each Wednesday, we look forward to our Te Reo Māori sessions with Whaea Lisa.  She brings learning to life through interactive games, waiata, and a rich variety of Māori vocabulary.  Our students are developing their ability to greet others in Te Reo, say a karakia, follow simple classroom instructions, and count with confidence.  Every session is an opportunity to expand our knowledge in a fun and engaging way, and we always enjoy the time we spend learning with Whaea Lisa in Room 17.

Room 18 have had a great start to the school year. We have really been embracing all that school has to offer us, both in and out of the classroom! We have been enjoying participating in the Perceptual Motor Programme on Wednesday afternoons where we have been developing our gross motor skills, balance and hand eye coordination. We love our Tuesday visits to Mrs de Leeuw in the library where we choose our own book to borrow and listen to a story. We are learning the rules of the library, how to look after books, and how to look after our belongings during these visits.

This term, we've been learning more about one another by sharing items that hold special meaning to us.  Each of us received an "All About Me" bag and chose 3-5 items that are important to us. Our goal was to prepare and deliver short, confident presentations on a selected topic.  It has been wonderful getting to know each other better and discovering both the similarities and unique differences that make us all special!

This year has started off with a bang in Year 3, Room 32.  We have all settled in well together and have worked hard at creating a sense of belonging and a sense of family.  

The highlight of Year 3 so far is being able to go swimming every week. This has been so much fun, from the bus ride to the pools, the swimming sessions and then coming back to school on the bus again.

We have learnt that being in Year 3 means we are a lot more responsible for ourselves and for our learning. This has been challenging, however, we are working together and learning and growing together.

This term we have been focusing on learning about our place at home, school, community as well as our country. Many of us come from different places in the world, and it has been interesting learning about each other's cultures.   We look forward to what the rest of the term holds.

For Sea Week we read about plastic litter in our oceans, so we went on a school-wide litter hunt and picked up as much rubbish as we could find. We painted beautiful seascapes with fascinating sea creatures swimming throughout, and then we glued the litter we’d picked up all over our art to represent the fate of our oceans if we are not careful.

Room 6 has been having lots of fun this term. In our class, we recently worked together on a collaborative art project centered around our focus word, Resilience. Each student contributed their unique perspective and creativity to the artwork, showcasing their strength and perseverance.  The final piece, gloriously displayed high up in our classroom, is a beautiful representation of how working together can amplify individual efforts. It serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of resilience in our daily lives. In addition to the art project, we also took part in voting on key points for our class treaty, ensuring that everyone's voice was heard in shaping the positive and respectful environment we strive to create. Both activities have helped us foster teamwork, reflection, and a deeper understanding of how we can support one another in our learning journey. These skills have also been helping us to improve and enjoy our very first year of community swim lessons. 

Our ESOL Classroom which is run by Mrs Finnigan and Ms Young is operating at full swing now and the children are having so much fun learning English in a fun and structured setting.  We have been learning words to help us start sentences and topic words about food and our families.  We even got a chance to make sandwiches one week and this helped us learn some of our ordinal numbers and names of different foods.

Click on the link to view our full calendar:  https://www.baverstock.school.nz/8/embedded_items/1-calendar

The 2nd hand uniform shop is open fortnightly on a Thursday from 8.30am - 9.00am.  
Open days:  Term 1:  27 March, 10 April
                      Term 2:  1 May, 15 May, 29 May, 12 June, 26 June

Tidy uniform donations are welcome to be dropped off at the school office (no socks or hats please).  
For any enquiries please email Mrs McLoughlan on [email protected]