Newsletter – 27 March 2024

PAID UNION MEETING: THURSDAY 28 MARCH 2024

CHILDREN GO HOME 12:30PM

Union members are entitled to a paid union meeting on Thursday 28 March, in the afternoon. All students are asked to go home at 12:30pm. We have very few non-union staff to supervise students who cannot go home, so seek your cooperation in finding an alternative for your child/children for the afternoon. Each classroom teacher will have sent out a form so that we can confirm which students have no alternative but to remain at school. Thanks.

Principal’s Message

Dear Parents and Whānau

I hope you all enjoyed the Easter break. Next week the Year 6 Takahe team is at Carey Park Christian Camp and I’m sure we all wish them a wonderful time.

Digital Devices at School

As you will be aware, the government has introduced a policy of “Phones away for the day”.

Schools must ensure students do not use or access a cell phone while they are attending school, including during lunchtime and breaks. At Cockle Bay School phones must be turned off and in bags until after school. This was already our policy so there is no change.

Similar requirements apply to the use of smart watches. They can be worn at our school  to tell the time, but they must be disconnected from wifi until after school. This can be done by putting them onto aeroplane mode or by turning wifi off.

If parents need to contact their child/children during school hours, they can do this via the school office (Ph: 09 5348333). If students need to contact their parent/s, they are asked to seek help from their teacher/office.

Where a policy is breached, the phones/watches will be turned off, locked for safety at the office, and can be collected at the end of the day. The student who breached the policy will then not be allowed a phone/watch at school.

Please refer to SchoolDocs for the Cockle Bay School’s policies around digital devices. 

Each year, during Term 2, our Digital Citizenship Agreements for Students and Parents to sign is sent home. Here is a copy of the agreement now, for your information and interest.

Cockle Bay School Digital Citizenship Agreements for Students and Parents

Sharing Images of Students

Cockle Bay School publishes photos on its Facebook page only with parent permission, using students’ full first name and surname initial. Permission is sought as part of the Term 2 Digital Agreement for Parents to sign.

We encourage our school community to also consider privacy issues when sharing photos and videos taken at school events. Please:

• Show the images to your children and discuss them before posting them on social media. This will help your children understand that they should always think about what goes out to the public on the internet.
• If the images have pictures of other students, think about editing to remove them.
• Make sure that other students are not named in any online posts.
• Ensure photos are fair to other people, not potential harassment

Reminders to Parents

• Toys at school: Teachers ask students not to bring toys to school, as there is always a risk that they become damaged or lost. Even for news, we ask parents to ensure that items brought along are not highly valued, nor valuable. Thank you. If your child wants to bring a named ball to school they may do so, but please be aware that we do have a system of borrowing/returning suitable sports equipment at break times.

• 3:00pm Collection from Classrooms: Parents, please wait for students well away from classrooms. Packing up classrooms is difficult for teachers when students become distracted. Again, thanks for your understanding.

Kind regards.

Dorothy Bigwood

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L)

Your child may have come home over the last few weeks talking about Mahi Pais, well that’s because the school has implemented a new PB4L reward system.

This system is underpinned by the 4C’s (communication, collaboration, continuous improvement, caring). When a student is seen acting in the ‘Cockle Bay Way’ and displaying these 4C’s they are given a Mahi Pai. These Mahi Pai’s go into the students’ year level box and at PB4L assemblies one child from every box is chosen to get a reward. There is also a competition between which year levels will win overall and get the most Mahi Pais in the term, resulting in a reward. This reward system is an integral part of reinforcing positive behaviour and brings attention to those children who demonstrate the 4C’s. 

An integral part of managing our wellbeing is having an understanding of Growth Mindset. A lot of teaching is done around fostering a Growth Mindset and that mistakes are an important part of our learning. Understanding what children are able to control, eg following the 4C’s and our Learner Profile, and understanding there are things out of our control, eg what others say and do. 

In class, children have been brainstorming what a growth mindset looks like and the power of the word ‘YET’ eg I can’t do this YET! At home parents can help their child to create a growth mindset by modelling the positive effect of making mistakes and learning from it, and helping the children change their negative self-talk to positive self-talk. 

Your Kindo Account

School donations and contributions towards excursions, camps, etc, can be made on-line through Kindo. Please note that donations received by the end of this financial year (31 March 2024) are eligible for tax credits.

Each term we review the content and implementation of our school policies and we ask our school community to participate in this process. Please go to our website, and under “Our School”, select “Policies and Procedures”. Here you will find a Push Button that says “Go to Policies” and this will take you through to the SchoolDocs site where you will see a blue button labelled “Reviews”. Select the policy that you wish to review from the list of topics, then select the push button “Start your Review”. Username: cocklebay. Password: sandspit.

This term the policies under review are:

Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Board Responsibility

Parent Involvement

Communicating with Parents

Community Conduct Expectations

School Planning and Reporting

Reporting to parents on school progress and achievement

Dilworth now offering day school option from 2025

Dilworth is an exceptional private school offering an amazing educational experience for boys from Year 7 to Year 13.  Located in Remuera, every Dilworth student receives a fully-funded education with all expenses covered including music tuition, uniforms and school trips.

We want more students to access the benefits of a Dilworth education experience, including small class sizes, specialist teachers and extra-curricular opportunities. From 2025, a day school option is available for Years 7 and 8. This provides the same best in class schooling without the requirement to board.

Register for our upcoming Open Days to find out more.  These are on Sunday 24 March or 19 May.  Find out more about Dilworth Now! Visit dilworth.school.nz or call us on 09 523 3179.

Collect the Yummy cut-out labels from bags (each cut-out label is worth 10 stickers) and individual Yummy apple stickers for your school’s share of the $200,000 free Sport sports gear prize pool. Yummy apples are available from New World, PAK’nSAVE and participating Four Square stores. The more you collect, the more sports gear you get, so get going and start collecting your Yummy cut-out labels and stickers now!

Sticker Collection Sheet