Dear Families,

Welcome to our first newsletter of Term 3 2021.

Tonight we are very proud of many of our students who are beginning a weekend of celebration. They are receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation this evening at 7 pm in our Parish Church and then, throughout the weekend, receiving their First Communion at the various weekend Masses. We congratulate all of our students who are undergoing these Sacraments completing their full initiation into the Church. In doing so they are embodying our school vision of Confidently living, learning and serving with Jesus as our guide. We pray for them and their families over this weekend in particular as they celebrate. Please follow this link to Sunday’s readings.

TERM 3 LEARNING CONCEPT This term, our learning is driven through the exploration of Creativity, where students are innovators and creators of something new to inspire joy as Jesus did. Our aim is that our learners develop the understanding that when we create it is a way of expressing ourselves and it helps to bring us and others joy. This was exemplified at our school assembly this morning where Room 20 and Room 13 shared the Good Samaritan story in four ways; through spoken word, through stop motion technology, through dance and drama and through visual art.  Each creative ‘telling’ of the story was unique and resonated in different ways across all in attendance at our assembly. Room 2o also shared the psalms they have written which are a true testament to their understanding of the joy brought by creative prayer.

MID YEAR LEARNING REVIEW (REPORTS) Our Term began with a busy first week at school. We hosted Parent, Teacher, Student Conferences over two days where families talked through the content of the mid-year report and reshaped goals for the next 6 months as necessary. Thank you to all families who attended and for the positive feedback on the detail and content of the mid-year reports this year.

STRATEGIC DIRECTION / STUDENT SAFETY ONLINE CONSULTATION Thank you also to over 120 parents who set aside time to attend our strategic direction consultation in the Information Centre around keeping children safe online and contributing your thoughts to our 4 strategic goals last week. As you will know, these strategic goals were embedded through extensive consultation with our community in 2019 and this was a golden opportunity for us to share the evidence of the work we have been undertaking towards these goals and to hear from families how you think we are progressing. Please follow this link to read the parent responses from our Strategic Direction Consultation 2021 Mid Year Community Consultation Review  We are due to re-look at the relevancy of these goals as part of our cyclical internal review process in the middle of next year as a community, so gathering your thoughts at this point in our journey has been very beneficial for us – thank you once again for sharing your thoughts with us.

STUDENT SAFETY ONLINE – CONTINUING THE JOURNEY Part of our strategy to support the well-being of our students this year is to engage both home and school in ensuring our students are safe and supported online.  Following the recent parent consultation opportunity at the mid-year conferences, we would like to gain a better understanding of our student’s knowledge when using devices and digital technology in school and at home, so we are up to date and proactive in addressing issues that are relevant for our young people and their families.  To do this, we would like to anonymously survey our Year 4-6 students about their knowledge of how they use their devices and the social media they interact with.    This survey will take place next week.  If you do not wish your child to participate in the survey please contact; Andrea Begunk ([email protected]) or Heather Collins ([email protected]) by MONDAY 9th  August.  Later in the week we will be sending out a similar anonymous survey for parents/caregivers to complete.  We can then compare the findings which will assist us in planning a cyber smart programme to support the digital wellbeing of our school community.  This could include a Netsafe parent information evening  and specific cybersmart/digital citizenship lessons.    Thank you.

ONLINE SCHOOL LUNCHES We are excited to let you know that we are close to rolling out a new school lunch programme.  We are in the final stages of evaluating the Dollar for Schools platform to bring you a selection of lunch options for your children. We are planning on starting this service the week of August 16th with lunches available Tuesday – Friday. There are a couple of reasons that we have made this decision

BOOK WEEK Our librarian, Bronwyn Bell and teacher Rebecca Sench did such a fabulous job planning an exciting and engaging book week to begin our Term last week. It was great to see our students love of books take flight at the book fair as well as through author visits, listening to different staff sharing their favorite books, and of course, our book character dress-up day on Friday which began with our book character parade. Such a lot of effort went into costumes for the parade with a lot of fun had by all, not only on Friday, but throughout the week. Thank you to all who participated enthusiastically and to Bronwyn and Rebecca for their organisation of a week to celebrate our love of literature. See later in the newsletter for photos and more book week news.

GALA COMMITTEE UPDATE The Gala Committee continues to meet regularly to plan for this world-famous-in-East-Auckland event! Thank you to families for supporting the chocolate mufti day this week – a great start to our gala collection campaign. Look out for our flyers reminding you of each weeks collection items. Working together in small ways now will help support a fabulous day.  We have created an Event Page – follow this link and share widely. https://fb.me/e/1uj7VoUQM

LOOKING BACK  As well as celebrating book week and hosting parent, teacher, student conferences and our strategic goals parent consultation in the first week of this term, our Liturgy Leaders attended the Catholic Caring Foundation Mass, we had senior classes visiting the Matariki Marae as part of their learning programeme and the HPPA football round-robin matches over the last two weeks. This week, alongside beginning our gala collections with the chocolate mufti day, we also hosted our school Mandarin and Cantonese Speech Competition, with congratulations to Tino Wu who won the Mandarin category. and to Marcus Pang who won the Cantonese category. Both will represent our school in the APPA speech competition. We have been hosting our Star Idol heats as we prepare for the celebration of our Feast Day next week. We made a valiant effort with our school cross country today, managing to run our competitive Year 3 to 6 races in preparation for the zone cross country being held next week. Our students, staff and brave parents coped with the rain as it passed through, giving our children a true, authentic cross country experience complete with rain and mud!  With the long range forecast for next week looking bleak, and other school activities in our calendar, we look further ahead to Thursday 26th August to host our Year 1 and 2 cross country and our Year 3 to 6 non competitive races. More information will come out closer to the time.

LOOKING AHEAD Next week we have World of Maths visiting, sharing their love of all things Mathematics to inspire our learners. We have the ‘Clean Plate’ crew working with students in the creation of litterless lunches recipes over the next two weeks. the next round of HPPA rugby matches,  and we work towards the celebration of our school Feast Day, The Feast of the Assumption of Mary. This special Feast Day is on Friday 13th August, where we celebrate Mass together at 11.15 am in our hall and celebrate this special day with our Star Idol Finals. The following week, OLSOS is hosting the HPPA Dance Festival on Monday and Tuesday Evening with an excited crew from OLSOS contributing to items each night. We send our top runners to represent us at the HPPA Cross Country, send our chess players off to a local tournament, participate in a further HPPA girls soccer event, an interschool netball competition, host the Auckland Primary Principal Association’s Mandarin Speech Finals and enjoy our PTA American hot dog day Thursday – whew! there is such a lot on offer to enrich the lives of our learners on top of our robust teaching and learning programmes.

SEEKING AN OLSOS BOARD SECRETARY The OLSOS Board is seeking to appoint a new Board Secretary. This is a paid position requiring the compilation of board papers before each board meeting, minute taking at meetings and the circulation of these. If you are interested please contact our Board Chairperson Vaughan Fraser through the school office.

SEEKING CASUAL LEARNING ASSISTANTS  At times when our Learning Assistants are unable to be in the classroom, we require confident, compassionate adults to work alongside the classroom teacher supporting an individual student.  This adult would be available “on call” on a casual basis and generally work from 8.45 am – 12.30 pm.  Guidance and support will be provided to those wishing to add their name to our relieving list.  If you are interested please contact Detta Fairweather or Karen Noble-Campbell through the school office.

I wish you all a happy, safe and blessed fortnight ahead and look forward to sharing more school and community news in our next fortnightly newsletter.

Ngā mihi nui and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

Let us love God always and let us love one another, always in God

Euphraise Barbier

Last week the Liturgy Team attended the Caring Foundation Mass celebrated by Bishop Michael. The team was acknowledged by the Bishop for leading outreach initiatives within the school. 

A number of other students have recently received the sacraments at other neighbouring parishes. 

Tonight, Friday 6 August a large number of our students will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation and then over the usual weekend parish Masses, will receive their 1st Holy Communion. We congratulate them and welcome them into the church as fully participating members. 

Please continue to pray for them.

The Feast of the Assumption is our school and parish Patronal Feast. It is the day we honour Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Mother of us all, as we remember how she was assumed into heaven, body and soul. Pope John Paul II presented Mary as a model of what it means to be a faithful disciple. She heard the word of God and acted on it. We too are called to do this as followers of Jesus. Her life would not have been an easy one. Like many today she knew hardship, poverty and heartbreak. Yet she also knew love, joy and peace. Her life story is a model for us of maia, manaaki, tika, awhina, and ngawari. We will reflect on the many aspects of Mary’s life at our school mass, Friday 13 August, 11:15am in the school hall. Join us if you can.  

Parish Feast Day Celebrations

The Feast of the Assumption is also our parish Feast Day. At 7pm Sunday 15 August Benediction will be celebrated followed by Father Merv Duffy sharing with us his insights into what the Assumption of Our Lady means for us today. The evening will end with a shared supper in the parish centre. Please bring a plate of finger food to share. Come along to celebrate with your parish family.

Prayer intention:    We pray for the young people in our parish who are receiving the Sacraments of Confirmation and 1st Holy Communion this weekend; that they are filled with Joy and share their love for God with all they meet.

Seek God with Simplicity and Love      –   Euphraise Barbier

Deputy Principal / Director of Religious Studies

Daffodil Day 2021

We are supporting Daffodil Day 2021 by having ribbons available at reception.  Pop by during the week of 16 August to get your ribbon in exchange for a donation to the Cancer Society.

Nicole Kelly

PTA Chairperson

ROOMS 20, 22  and 23 MARAE VISIT   ….

Matariki Short Story Writing Competition

Congratulations to Jevon Mascarenhas in Room 22 who recently entered into a Matariki short story writing competition run by Lingogo. Jevon loves to write and is already a published author in our school library.

Jevon wrote about how the stars of Matariki helped cure the earth of Covid. He combined both his knowledge of Covid and Matariki with his imagination to come up with a great short story.

While Jevon was not amongst the winners he did receive a special mention from the judge, Stacey Morrison. Well done Jevon – we are very proud of you.

Jevon’s story is displayed in the Information Centre if you would like to read it.

Auckland Library Bookmark Competition

Congratulations to Lia Kim (Rm 17) who was one of 6 winners in the Auckland library Bookmark competition in June. Well done Lia.

Speech Competitions

Congratulations to the following children for participating in the Star of the Sea Mandarin and Cantonese Speech Competition.

Tino Wu, Max Zhang, Selina Liu, Nathan Lo, William Chen, Daphne Lai and Marcus Pang.

All of these children showed tremendous courage in presenting their speeches on the topic of Diversity.

Congratulations to Tino Wu – 1st in Mandarin and Marcus Pang – 1st in Cantonese.

Well done to all our participants.

A special thank you to our judges – Mrs Lily Dreaver and Mrs Angela Lim.

Book Week 2021

We loved celebrating books, authors, reading and writing in a fun, action packed week of activities! 

Many thanks to everyone who visited and supported the Scholastic book fair – your purchases will contribute to more books and resources for our school. A big thank you also to the many parents who helped out by selling books. Congratulations to Eva-Luella Fidow in Room 4 who won the basket of books.

The week ended on a high with our book character costume parade.

Please note : TEACHER ONLY DAYS

Wednesday 7 April 2021

Tuesday 8 June 2021

Friday 25 June 2021

Friday 17 September 2021

Friday 19 November 2021

TEACHER ONLY DAY FRIDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2021 – BIZZY BODZ CHILDCARE

Bizzy Bodz will run a special programme in our school hall from 7.30am – 6pm on Teacher Only Day, Friday 17 September 2021.

  New Website for Te Ara a Maria  :  Mary’s Way project

A website has been created to help promote the bishops’ renewal of the dedication of the country to Our Lady Assumed into Heaven.  The renewal project has the title Te Ara a Maria: Mary’s Way and runs for 12 months from 15 August.

Go here for the website: www.tearaamaria.nz

The website contains details of the project. It will be updated regularly to include the schedule of the nationwide hikoi of the artwork created for the project. The hikoi starts on August 18 in Invercargill.

ALONE AGAIN?   Widowed, Separated or Divorced? The Beginning Experience is a non-profit organization with the motto a “Weekend Away for a Lifetime of Change” for adults. The retreat will help you work through your painful loss. The participants find new hope, increased emotional health and renewed energy. Date Friday evening to Sunday afternoon 13-15 August. Cost $350 or early bird price of $325 if paid by 2 July.  Includes accommodation, meals and materials. Contact Lynda 0274898003 and (09)478-9742 or Kelly 027-686-4416 www.beginningexperience.org.nz