Newsletter – Week 9, Term 1, 2022

Kia ora koutou BDS whānau,                                                                Week 9, Term 1, 2022

Thank you to all our parents and caregivers for attending our virtual parent interviews.  When we are talking to the teachers they were so appreciative of your efforts to make connections.  We would also like to thank our teachers for being so dedicated and working so capably with our new system.

Last week was our final week of swimming.  Our tamariki have not only improved their water skills but have really enjoyed the energetic and entertaining swimming lessons by Wayne and Chanelle.  

We are working towards making a few minor changes from April 4 which we will have in our next newsletter. Until then there will be a continuation of our health and safety protocols that we have established to manage COVID. Once again we have had very few COVID cases at BDS. 

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Ngā mihi nui,

Vicki Parkins Principal vickip@botanydowns.school.nz
Mark Insley marki@botanydowns.school.nz
Joanne Hughson joanneh@botanydowns.school.nz 

Coming up @ BDS…

Fri 1 Apr – ‘Go Crazy’ Non Uniform Day
Wed 13 Apr – ANZAC assembly
Thurs 14 Apr – Teacher Only Day
Thurs 14 Apr – Last day of Term 1
Fri 15 Apr – Good Friday (public holiday)
Mon 2 May – First day of Term 2

SCHOOL NEWS

Botany Best & Values Awards

Well done to the following children who will receive their awards on Friday:

Botany Best: Hanro Stoltz, Julius Ming Peterson, Sebastian Zuo, Emma Kamakorewa, Zahara Williams, Sherry Yang, Lexi Tsai, Lily Hodgson, Jurgens Lewis, Eric Li, Lune’ Nell, Logan Baker, Harley Tye, Naya Abou Hassan, Liam Andrew, Jade Lundgren, Grayson Lincoln, Lene Moll, Jeremiah Valentine, Phillipa Ormrod, Qiqi Zhao.

Values Award: Varya Govender, Benjamin Duckworth, Daniel Bayani, Hoor Laghari, Ethan Symons, Charlie Pirie, Jia Zhang, Marcus Ismail, Dayton Huggins, Zainab Ali, Samantha-Nicole Tokai, Harley Key, Damian Roberts, Richie Lewis, Shana Chen, Kayla Fegen, Stella McHardy, Landon Bishton, Ruby Chen, John Tokai, Shivika Narang.

Senior Swimming Sports

Awesome work to our amazing Year 5 and 6 students who competed in our Senior Swimming Sports even this week! They showed great sportsmanship and swam hard! Congratulations to our Winners who got first place in the following events:

Year 5 swimmers

Year 6 swimmers

Lost Property

After school on Thursday and Friday ( March 31, April 1) all lost property items will be laid out on the deck of the front room of the hall. Whanau are invited to come in, view and claim any of your child’s lost property. Any items that are not collected will be donated to the school.

Footwear at School 

During Term One students can wear sandals or black shoes with either the BDS boys socks or the black girls socks. 

We are very proud of our uniform and multi-colored socks and coloured running shoes are not part of our BDS uniform.

Student Leadership Opportunities

At Botany Downs School there are opportunities for Year 5 and 6 students to become student leaders. To become a student leader students need to apply and go through our student leader process, beginning with completing an application form. We are currently in the final stages of selecting our student leaders. Please see below for more information.

Student Leadership Process

1. Teachers discuss student leadership opportunities with their class and watch leadership videos.
2. Teachers explain and hand out application forms. 
3. Students return applications to class teachers.
4. Class teachers give feedback on applicants.
5. Students complete team building activities to help identify and display leadership qualities.
6. Student group interviews are completed.
7. Teachers in charge of student leader groups meet to select student leaders.
8. Students leaders are confirmed with our school Principal-Mrs Parkins.
9. Student leaders are announced in Week 10, this term.

House Leaders

The House Leaders role is to lead the school-wide House programme supported by Mr Sojung Yoon (sojungy@botanydowns.school.nz) . Our four Houses are Batten, Blake, Hillary and Sheppard. House Leaders will be good at communicating, inspiring and supervising. As a role model, a House Leader will consistently display the Botany Downs School Values and assist in running the school assemblies and House Days.

School Councillors

The role of a Student Councillor is to give feedback and opinions in relation to school events, issues and process; and to feed-back the views of their classmates to the Council and the Deputy Principal, (Mark Insley marki@botanydowns.school.nz)  The student council also helps share the students’ ideas, interests, and concerns with teachers, deputy principal and school principal.

Ambassadors

The Ambassadors role is to work throughout the year to support our English Language Learners who are new to our school and may be from overseas. These students will be reliable, empathetic, organised, kind, mature, social, confident, cooperative and good at communicating supported by Kate Keenan (katek@botanydowns.school.nz).

Peer Mediators

Peer mediation is problem solving by youth with youth. It is a process by which two or more students involved in a dispute meet in a private, safe and confidential setting to work out problems with the assistance of a trained student mediator. A Peer Mediator is a trained student facilitator of conflict resolution dialogue supported by Kirsten Thomson (kirstent@botanydowns.school.nz).

BDS Learning and Fun

Room 9 love reading our big book each week. One of our favourites was Greedy Cat. We made our own Greedy Cat and wrote a sentence to describe him.

In Room 12 we have been working on a collaborative piece of art. Each child created their own alien or astronaut using pastels. To create our background we started by working in pairs to sponge the colours of space.

We looked at pictures of space and used colours such as blue, black and purple to make it look more realistic. Using collage we finished the piece by decorating it with a moon and planets.

It was lots of fun exploring different skills and working with different mediums.

Year 5 – Room 17 spent some time learning about Vincent van Gogh, and recreating his painting  “The Starry Night”.

LIBRARY NEWS

ANZAC Day is coming up and our students will be learning more about why this day is important in New Zealand and Australia. Our library supports learning with a range of engaging books for students to borrow.

Returning Library Books

Books are usually returned during the weekly class library visit.

If your child has not been at school but has overdue library books, these may be dropped off at the school office during school hours.

However, if you or your household are self-isolating, please hold on to the books until your isolation is complete. 

COMMUNITY NOTICES

Pay the kindo way: https://botanydowns.school.nz/kindo/