Newsletter – 18 September 2024

2025 Enrolments

 If your child is turning 5 in 2025 and you have not yet completed an enrolment form, please do so now. Knowing student numbers is crucial for effective school planning and the allocation of resources (classrooms, teachers, and other essentials). Forms can be collected from the school office or downloaded from the school website.

 Principal’s Message

Dear Parents and Whānau

Policies

Cockle Bay School is guided by its school policies, which are regularly reviewed by parents, the Board, and staff. Policies can be found on School Docs (Username: cocklebay Password: sandspit). This inofrmation is located under “Our School” on our school’s website. It is not too late to participate in reviewing this term’s policies (Concerns and Complaints, Media, Performance Management, Professional Development, Protected Disclosure, Staff Conduct, Staff Leave) if you wish.

One of our policies relates to parents taking photos of other children at school. It says “no one may record photos/video/audio in circumstances where any individual could reasonably expect privacy “. So please, before taking photos at school, think about privacy. It might be useful to read our ‘Recording Photos, Video and Sound Policy’ if unsure.

School Closed

Cockle Bay School is open for the required days, and has the following days planned for staff professional development. Please diary them now.

2024 Teacher Only Day: Friday 25 October (see below)

2025 Teachers only Days 

Friday 30 May (King’s Birthday)

Friday 24 October (Labour Weekend)

MoE Curriculum Days

Friday 7 February (after Waitangi Day)

Thursday 19 June (before Matariki)

Thank you for your understanding. We will be asking Bizzy Bodz to operate on these days.

Please also diary our Maths Open Morning – Wednesday 25 September  8.45am (see below)

Measles and the MMR Vaccine

New Zealand is at very high risk of a measles outbreak and not enough of us are immune. To be immune, you must have had measles before OR at least two doses of a measles vaccine after the age of 12 months. Local childhood immunisation rates are declining. Low immunity and the close contact nature of education settings means one infected person could quickly expose and spread measles to many others, starting an outbreak that could be hard to control.  People can be infectious before they develop measles symptoms and know they’re sick.

Measles, Mumps and Rubella

• 简体中文 | Chinese (Simplified) – voiceover in Mandarin
• 繁體中文 | Chinese (Traditional) – voiceover in Cantonese
• हिन्दी | Hindi

Ngā Mihi

Dorothy Bigwood

 Financial Literacy Week

In response to parent feedback in our health and wellbeing survey last year we will be teaching a financial literacy unit in the last week of this term, 23-27 September. Our students will learn about how they can be responsible, confident, and independent managers of money.

• Maths Open Morning – Wednesday 25 September

On Wednesday, 25 September, classes will offer a maths open morning. This is an opportunity for you to see what mathematics looks like at Cockle Bay School. 

8.45am – 9.15am: 

Parent meeting in the hall. This will be an overview of our maths programme, as well as covering the new curriculum and how students at our school are achieving in maths.

9.15 – 10.15am:

Open classroom. This will be an opportunity for you to join your child in their classroom and participate in a typical maths lesson.  

• Class Councillor Stalls – Friday 27 September

On Friday 27 September our Class Councillors will host a stalls day where they will be selling items like food, toys and games. Students across the school will be encouraged to bring some coins from home to purchase an item from the stalls. More information to come.

 2025 Carnival

Books & Toys Collection
Do you have any good quality used books, games, or toys that you’ve been thinking of donating? The school holiday is the perfect time to get that organised! The PTN will begin collecting in term 4 for our popular Books & Toys room for Carnival 2025.

 Health & Safety

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)

RSV is a highly contagious and common virus that can cause respiratory tract infections.

Symptoms:

If you or your child has RSV, the most common symptoms are:  a runny nose  coughing or sneezing, fever, wheezing and difficulty breathing, and loss of appetite.

 Uniform Shop

Next opening date Monday, 14 October – 8:15am-9:00am and 2:30pm-3:15pm.

 Teacher Only Day

2024 Dates for your Diary

Quick links to our school website:

School Calendar

2024 Term Dates (website home page)

School events

2025 Term Dates:

Term One – Monday 3 February – Friday 11 April

Term Two – Monday 28 April – Friday 27 June

Term Three – Monday 14 July – Friday 19 September

Term Four – Monday 6 October – Thursday 18 December

Teacher Only Day – Friday 24 October

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