Balmoral School Newsletter - 14 June 2024
Acting Principal
Kia ora e te whānau
This term, we have been continuing to audit and develop our attendance procedures.
In April 2024, the Government announced a National attendance target of 80 per cent of students to be present for more than 90% of the term by 2030. Regular attendance is 90% and equates to no more than 5 days of absence each term.
It is now a requirement that each week, the school’s, anonymised, attendance data is sent to the Ministry of Education (MoE) and this data is then analysed. Last term, 79% of our students had regular attendance of 90% or above, just short of the 2030 target.
Alongside this, schools are also required to intervene if students have 5 days of Unjustified absence in a term. We will make contact with you if your child falls into this category of 5 days of Unjustified absences or if we are concerned about your child’s attendance overall.
There are clear criteria for schools to follow and Unjustified absences are:
- Holidays during term time (Marked as G)
- Unexplained absences - no reason is given for the absence. This will be marked as Truant. (T)
- Unknown (?) - these will eventually be marked as Truant (T)
- Explained (E) - the explanation for the absence is accepted by the school (explained) but the reason is not justifiable e.g. a family event, birthday, extra curricular activity.
You will be able to see these codes on your child’s attendance record through the Edge portal.
Our community’s response to improving communication when your child is away from school has been great. Using the ‘Edge app’ to notify us daily of absences and responding to messages from the office has meant that we have seen a huge decrease in the number of Unknown absences. Thank you for your continued support with this.
We know that regularly attending school is crucial for children’s learning, social and emotional development and building life-long habits. Regular attendance also ensures that students remain connected with their peers and teachers, fostering a sense of belonging and support. We do understand that illnesses, particularly as we head into the winter months, can impact your child’s attendance, but it can be easy for odd days of absence, whether justified or not, to add up.
Thank you for your ongoing partnership in this regard.
Nāku noa, nā
Katy
Save the date
Matariki dawn celebration - Wednesday 26th June 7am
A google form inviting you to this event has been emailed to all whānau.
Jumping June
The Jumping June Event Day last week was a real success across the whole school, with all children participating and learning either how to skip or learning a new jump. Please note that the prize opening date has been changed to Monday 17th June 2024 and closes on Sunday 30th June 2024. This means you have two weeks to order prizes on the Jumping June website which corresponds with your fundraising.
Thank you to those who have raised such generous donations.
Measles
We have been advised that Aotearoa is at a high risk of measles outbreak. Please follow advice from Te Whatu Ora, particularly that the best protection against an outbreak of measles is vaccination.
Starting school - Year 0 2024
If you have a child starting school this year, please enrol them now. This just helps us to plan more effectively for your children and have a better idea of when we will open our next New entrant classroom.
Primary School News
Inquiry in Whānau Koru
Exploring our orchard this year has provided an incredibly rich and ever changing context for Koru’s inquiry. Weekly Field School has strengthened the children’s ties to their environment- their sense of belonging is strong. This is their place.Their instinctive empathy towards the trees and school creatures has allowed us to begin exploring the huge concept of kaitiakitanga.
What can the Koru tamariki do to protect our trees?
The orchard is also the perfect place to develop slow, close looking. We should be very proud of the observational skills of our 5 and 6 year olds. They never stop noticing and questioning. It’s when we slow down to listen to them that teachers can then make intentional, purposeful planning decisions to meet individual learning goals.
Winter has arrived and the children are trying to understand what the orchard trees are doing at this time of the year. This week we have been working on drama and dance to try to experience what the trees might be feeling. Descriptions of the winter trees included lonely, cold, sad, waiting, skeleton branches, hibernating, sleepy, stashing energy, no friends,no leaves, empty.
Have you ever thought about how the trees might be feeling? Our children do, all the time. Their own world is never very far removed from other worlds as they try to make sense of experiences.
Eden Albert Football
A few weeks ago we had the Eden Albert Football Tournament which got moved to Thursday due to the weather on Tuesday of that week. We couldn't have asked for a better day and all the players can be extremely proud of the way they represented the school. It was so great seeing all the teams supporting each other when they could and to also see the level of camaraderie within each team. They all kept motivating each other and never gave up.
We had some excellent results over the day with the year 6 boys taking out the Boys A division which they were absolutely over the moon about. Special mention in that team to Josh Moates who scored 17 goals on the day and to Nathan Plumridge who only let in two goals. A great result to be the new EA boys champions.
The year 5 Boys finished in second place in the Boys B division and again had some great gameplay throughout the day. Their final was against the defending champions and they gave it their all in the match. Special mention goes to their keeper Elliot Homes who kept a clean sheet for all pool play, Henry Richmond for scoring a number of goals and Taj Singh for solid defense.
The mixed girls team played with great passion and can be proud of how they played in the tough Girls A division. The team consisted of some regular players and girls new to football. It was great to see the new players giving football a try which is what the Eden Albert sports are great for. They finished in the top 6 of the area out of 13 girls teams represented. All the girls put in great effort on the day.
A great tournament and hopefully this motivates others to take up the opportunities with the various Eden Albert sports we offer.
Jumping June
Last Friday, the Primary and Intermediate launched Jumping June. This was a real success across the school with all children participating and learning either how to skip or learning a new jump. As a school we are fundraising for the Heart Foundation. Thank you to those who have already started their fundraising. If you have not yet then please remember to create an online account with your child at www.jumpingjune.co.nz. I just wanted to let you know that I have changed the prize opening date to Monday 17th June 2024 and to close on Sunday 30th June 2024. This means you have two weeks to order prizes on the Jumping June website which correspond with your fundraising. Thank you to those who have raised such generous donations.
Intermediate School News
Hub 3 Learning
This term, one of the things that we have been working on is studying about seabirds.
We researched and collected information about them, such as their habitats, diet, and lifespan. There was a huge variety of different birds that we could choose to draw and research about. Most of the ones that we chose were endemic to New Zealand, and it was really interesting to learn about them and how similar/different they were from each other.
We put everything we learned into a fact file and wrote a story about a part of their life, for example; hatching, early flying, stages of their life, parenting, anything we felt like choosing.
We then did some sketches of them and made sure that they were looking really good, colouring and outlining them, and in the end, they all looked amazing! After writing our bird stories and doing sketches, we got the chance to make trading cards based on our birds!
Next we designed trading cards of our birds with stats, like height, weight, lifespan, diet, facts & more. On the trading card we had to include a drawing of the bird in full bursting colour!
All in all, this term's inquiry was super fun to do, and we learnt so many new things about seabirds, as well as an opportunity to do some art along the way!
Written by - Eddie Waspe and Shanaya Sharma
THE CHICKS
“The chicks have arrived” The teachers said as we all got very excited and happy.
Then Lily came back with the eggs. There was a lady named Jo and she was with Lily.
She gave us a little bit of information and showed us how to use the incubator and to wash our hands after and before touching the chicks.
There was a water source and a feeder with the incubator that we needed to refill once in the morning and one in the afternoon. It also came with a little box with food, a lightbulb, and water for the chicks once they had hatched and were fully able to stand up by themselves. This is called a brooder.
We could not help the chicks out of their shells because they may not have taken in enough yolk. The way the little chicks get out of their shells is by doing something called piping.
Piping is where the little chick starts to break the shell with their beak and all around the shell, this could take 24 hours for them to fully come out of their shells.
Keep in mind that they will look a little bit alien looking after they come out of their shells because they will not have very much fur and will also be moist and wet from the inside of the shell.
We decided to do this experience in order to get some hands on learning surrounding life cycles and what natural processes happen around us that we wouldn’t normally see. After our trip to Maungatautari last term, we were really excited about birds and eggs. We also wanted to learn more about how animals grow, what they need to survive and how we can look after and care for them.
This was all provided by Jo who works at Living Eggs. If you would like to adopt some for yourself or get some fertilized eggs with chicks in them for yourself then go to Living Eggs!
By Sammy and Fletcher
Eden Park Schools’ Sprint ORIENTEERING
LACHIE: On wednesday the 5th of June roughly 40 Balmoral students attended the Eden Park School’s Sprint Orienteering event at Eden Park. It was an awesome experience for all involved as we completed a very interesting and engaging experience of orienteering.
This is the first time I have ever done anything like this and I would highly recommend it. Our day started off with a 20 minute walk to Eden park. When we got there we were given a thorough briefing on how the day would be run. The person who briefed us then handed out small trackers/scanners to everyone that we would use to scan each station to prove we had been there.
OLIVER: How the day went? The day was very tiring, but awesome. From all the running to the jaw dropping ALL BLACKS Jerseys in the locker room. It was a brilliant experience checking out places that only players and staff would get to use. My favourite part of the day was the home team locker room, I especially enjoyed the fancy equipment such as the hot and cold spa pools that the international teams use for recovery. I found it amazing that I was able to experience the same facilities as the New Zealand teams before me.
AIMS Fundraising
Community News
