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MBAS Newsletter, Term 4, Week 4


 
Term 4, Week 4, 6th November 2020
Our students are very lucky to be able to participate in such a wide variety of events... even if they are muddy!
Please remember to text your child/children's absences to us on
021 025 56802

 

Kia Ora tatou – Greetings to you all

Upcoming Professional Learning (Teacher Only Day)
Wednesday November 25

During the negotiation of the Collective Agreement for Area School Teachers, an Accord was developed between the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Educational Institute and the Post-Primary Teachers Associations (the unions) that provided for a number of Professional Learning (Teacher Only Days), so that our staff could engage in the significant changes and developments in two major areas – The “Local Curriculum” development and the pending developments/changes of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). These have been noted as considerable pieces of work and development by the Ministry and hence the dedicated time for staff to work in these areas.

Across the Waikato on 25 November for Area and Secondary Schools (and some primary schools), a Professional Learning Day (ToD) for all our staff will be held; 8:30-4:00 on site.

This means the school will be “closed” on that day – there will be no classes running and students will not be at school: buses will be running for Y11-13 MBAS students so that they can sit their examinations. All Y9 students will be on camp on that week. There will be no child-care options at school – all staff, including Teachers’ Aides will be engaged in Professional Learning.

I know this is a significant matter, right in the middle of the working week for you all. This day has been mandated by the Ministry – we have tried to negotiate an alternative, without success. School will start again as usual on Thursday 26 November.

During 2021 there will be several of these PL days too and I will alert you all to these as we get closer to them. As an aside some were due to be held earlier this year, however Covid- 19 got in the way!

Kia kaha
Kia manawanui

John Wright

Principal
John.wright@mbas.ac.nz
Middle Years Update
Every term we say "this is going to be a busy one!" and this term is certainly no different.  Our year 10 Leaders went away on their camp in the first week, Te hā o Hei went tramping to the Waitawheta hut, we've had immunisations, getting ourselves prepared for Yr 7 & 8 athletics and Year 9 camp planning, to name a few things that have been going on so far in the middle years.

All of our middle years students have been working hard on their upcoming Portfolio Presentations. 

What is a Portfolio?
It's a collection of student work, gathered over time, exhibiting the student's efforts, progress and achievement across a range of learning areas.
   
What is the objective of a Portfolio? 
To enable students to present to others, their learning, their challenges and their progress.

Why is it important for each student to present their Portfolio?
The greatest value of portfolios is that, in building them, students become active participants in the learning process. Portfolios are student-centered and collaborative. Students select their pieces of work in collaboration with their teachers. It teaches students to be reflective. Thinking about, and looking back at what they have done over the year will help them to define their interests and strengths and to come up with new goals that are aligned with their learning journeys. 

So please speak to your children about their upcoming portfolio presentations. These will occur over the next three weeks. They will be talking to their prospective teachers. This is great for their confidence and great for us as teachers to understand each one as a learner.  Please don't let them opt out by staying home on the day of their scheduled Portfolio presentation. Encourage them and ask them to share their portfolios with you at home. 

Our other big event that's happening on the 19th of November is our Kauri day. This will be a day for our year 6's to have a day experiencing what it's going to be like in year 7 and for our Year 8's to experience what it will be like moving into year 9. The day will be filled with different activities and visits to new areas of the school they have not yet experienced. Contributing school's year 8's have also been invited to join us for the day. 

We still have lots of exciting learning ahead! 


Ngā mihi 

Jenny Bloom

Deputy Principal 
Middle Years
BoT Elections
Voting Forms for the Board of Trustees Election have been mailed out to all parents of students at our school. You will receive a letter explaining the process, a voting form with a photograph and statement from each candidate.

We have three candidates: Dan Asquith, Teresa Kereopa and Alan Hopping. 
Candidate Statements

Please return all voting forms in the envelope provided to the front office before 12 noon on the 27th November. Thank You.
Seaside Carnival
Kayak Raffle Tickets
All Middle Years students have been given a book of raffle ticket to sell for the Kayak Raffle sponsored by Dive Zone. 

If you do not have any students in the middle years and would like to sell raffle tickets for the school please come and collect a book from the front office.
 
Quick Fire Raffle Items
If you would like to donate items/vouchers to the quick fire raffles please drop them into the school office.

Thank you for your continuing support.
Vaping
Our school site is a Vapefree, Smokefree, Alcohol free, drug free educational institution. This is the universal platform for all schools – there is, and has been no deviation from this stance in our kura.
Full Resolutions on Vaping can be read here
Senior Prize-Giving (Y11-13)
We warmly invite parents, caregivers and whanau to attend our Senior School Prize-Giving on Wednesday 11th November 2020 at 10:00am. The annual event is a great opportunity to celebrate the amazing successes our young people have achieved throughout the year, across academic, sporting and cultural pursuits. 

We would love to see you there!

Mercury Bay Area School Senior Prize-Giving

Date: Wednesday 11th November 2020
Time: Doors open: 9:30am for a 10:00am start 
Location: School Gymnasium, Mercury Bay Area School

Primary and Middle Years Prize-Givings are held later in the year.  
Community Cybersafety Forum
Each year we like to hold a Cybersafety evening for parents/caregivers to share the latest information we have around cybersafety - not only at school, but at home and in our community too. These forums are run by Netsafe Ltd or Network for Learning (N4L) - the leaders in NZ Cybersafety information and forums.

The purpose of this survey is to invite you to an information (questions/answers) forum and additionally to find out from you what areas of interest you may have, so that we can be highly purposeful in the forum - please note these in the form below. It may well be we will run several break out areas to try to cater for the matters folks want to have covered.  You can complete the survey here.

If you are interested in attending this forum please complete this form by 4:00pm Monday 23rd November, 2020.
 
Date: Tuesday 24 November, 2020
Venue: School Library
Time: 7pm

If you have any queries please ensure you note these in the survey too.

We have included the link to Netsafe here (https://www.netsafe.org.nz) so you can check out the website and the topics they are able to share with us. Especially interesting is the "Toolkit" Netsafe provides for parents - have a look at this link https://www.netsafe.org.nz/advice/parenting.

Thanks
John Wright
2021 Class Planning
Please let us know if your children will not be attending MBAS next year.  This helps us plan our 2021 classes.
Thank You.
Primary News - Market Day 2020
Final Day for Primary Market Day Orders is now 13th November 2020.
Market Day has been a feature of Term 4 for our Primary students for the last few years. With the possibility of Covid levels changing, we did not want to run the risk of our students doing a whole lot of awesome mahi and not being able to get their goods out to their loyal customers....so this year we've gone online!

Have a look at the amazing products our students have designed and applied their market research skills to. Place your order by 13th November and pay through your Kindo account and your products will be available for delivery on Friday December 4th.

https://sites.google.com/mbas.ac.nz/2020marketday/home  

Make sure you check out their business plans on their pages as well...there is a LOT of great thinking that has gone into this!
Y3-6 Athletics
Room 19 - Foundation Class
Our first go at athletics, run/jump/throw today. First up... relays!
Room 21 - Foundation Class
We have had a few emotions in the class this week...happy, sad, anger, frustration, energised - all part of being a human and totally acceptable!

Today we read a book called “The Colour Monster” which discussed different emotions and links them to various colours. This gave us an opportunity to discuss our feelings and the emotions that we were feeling at that time. We then put these on paper through an art activity. We cut out the pieces of paper relating to the different emotions, beginning with the one we were feeling the most. We then carried on cutting until we got to our smallest feeling/emotion.

This was a great opportunity for Miss Mac to check in with everyone. If anger or fear was a big emotion, it was to do with either their dog doing something “naughty” in the morning, or bad dreams and Halloween making these emotions on top.

It was lovely to see that happiness, love and calm were what the children were feeling the most.
Some absolute ⭐️’s in our tuhituhi (writing) time today.

⭐️ Zac, Cooper and Poppy wrote their first EVER sentence with a conjunction (the word and). They are learning to join two ideas together with the word ‘and.’

⭐️ Archer, Zac and Ava had a go with the new Talking Tins that Miss Mac has bought for the classroom. We can record ourselves saying our sentence and then we can replay it to ensure we don’t forget any words. They also encourage us to re-read our sentence.
Room 22 - Maths
One day this week for Maths room 22 used the Bee-Bot to work on direction - it was a challenge getting our left and right correct. But we learnt a lot and had fun doing it.
M8 - Spring Poetry
M8 has been writing some lovely poems about Spring this week, they have been doing a lot of Spring things, including garden planning and planting.
Spring has started

Quivering lakes, swaying leaves, flowers in blossom,
Spring is here.

The sun lean's down and touches cold,
everything is awoken by the hot touch of his shimmering fingers.
His beams spray across the clear blue lakes,
bouncing back off
making a sparkling reflection.

Birds are chirping
making new nests
among the lush green leaves. 
Buzzing bees are collecting pollen for new honey.

A howl of wind dashes through the forest
leaving a cold breeze behind.

By Chanel Clothier, Year 6

 
Yellow, pink, blue, purple, green,
surrounding me making me feel relaxed.
The sun stands up and takes a longer look at the world than before.

Rainbows appear like magic
warning us the rain is near.
As it showers I can imagine the cornfields growing,
stretching their vibrant green fingers
and touching the blue sky.

The wind takes over and pushes the rain away.
She spins and twirls in the paddocks
then grabs hold of the trees
and shakes them frantically.

Birds and bees are being pushed around
while trying to collect food and pollinate flowers. 
Water droplets glisten making colourful reflections.

By Mia Jamieson, Year 6
M10 - Garden Harvest
Friday was the day that we turned our harvest into food! Earlier in the week we had stripped, washed and chopped the silverbeet ready to cook. On Friday we made silverbeet fritters and silverbeet pies - what a wonderful and delicious success M10!
Hei 5/6 - Aquaculture

This week in Hei 5/6  we have been learning about Aquaculture. Our class has been doing activities to do with Oceans, Rivers, Estuaries and other water sources. At the Estuary our class investigated different creatures and plants. We had groups of 6 and we were given a booklet with different things you can see at the Estuary and we had to see how many of the things we could find.

Our class has a Science investigation day on Wednesday every week. The teachers created 4 different science experiments to help with our learning. The experiments were: Mussel filtration and dissection, Pollution and sedimentation, Marine ecosystem food webs, and Over-fishing and net use. These are some photos of Hei 5/6 doing the experiments this week.

Y9 Japanese
Y9's Try Out Sumō Wrestling (Kind of)

Our Year Nine Japanese class found out all about sumō wrestling today, Japan’s national sport. Students learnt the rules of sumō and discovered how the wrestlers live, eat and train together. We tracked the efforts of Toshi-no-shin, a wrestler from Georgia, who was attempting to win back his ōzeki ranking. Then we all created our own origami sumō wrestlers and had a quick tournament!
Piano Recital
Thursday night was our annual Evening of Piano concert hosted in the Mercury Bay Area School Library.

This event is an opportunity to showcase our most experienced and talented piano students. Each student performed technical and extended works to a high standard in front of a lively audience.

It was a particularly special occasion for Head Boy Floyd Ross performing in his last ever Evening of Piano. He, alongside his brother Sebastian and Mr. Roberts performed an excerpt from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. 
The performers did a stunning job.

I am so very proud of all of you.

Mr Roberts
Food Tech
There has been a lot of lasagne making going on in the food room! Yum!
Y12 Honey Business
As part of the honey competition that the Year 12 Business class ran in Term 3 we had three winners and today we presented the class prizes including the teacher prizes! The class winner was M2 with Mr Jowsey as the teacher and the student winner Pheonix Newson. 2nd place was Libby Van de Ven from and 3rd place Milley Pepper was from. Congratulations everyone and thanks for participating!
Next Steps for the Y12 Honey
For the next steps in our honey project, we have asked local businesses in the community if we would be able to promote our business and sell honey on our behalf in their stores. Thank you to all the businesses that have helped support us with this project. In return, we would love it if the school community would help support these businesses the same way they did to us! 
You can now purchase our Honey from the amazing businesses listed below.
Health and Wellbeing
Well-Being Whispers
A weekly parenting tip or quote provided by the Rangimarie well-being team.
Notes from the Nurse
Dear parents/guardians/caregivers and students, 

MBAS has an agreement with Pinnacle Midlands Health Network and the Waikato District Health Board to provide free nursing services on site.

The health and wellbeing of students at the school is important to us. The main aim of the clinic is to improve the health of our students, so they come to school well and able to learn. 

As part of the service all Year 9 students are usually routinely offered a comprehensive health review that covers the below.
 
This provides an opportunity for our students to discuss their:  
  • health/social concerns
  • medical history 
  • emotional strengths and whanau and community supports 
  • vision and hearing testing 
  • height and weight  
  • nutrition and physical activity

Due to the Mercury Bay School Clinic starting in July 2020 and Covid-19 this year we unfortunately may not be able to see all Years 9s before the end of 2020. 

If your young person would like to be prioritised and seen this year please get in touch with the school nurse on below number to advise.

RN Shaz Iseli and Kate Sedon | Mercury Bay Area School Nurse | Pinnacle Midlands Health Network 
sharon.iseli@pinnacle.health.nz
kate.sedon@pinnacle.health.nz
| Mobile  0273273945 | Website www.midlandshn.health.nz 
Community Notices
Karate
Mercury Bay Boars Basketball Prizegiving
MERCURY BAY BOARS BASKETBALLPRIZEGIVING
FRIDAY 6TH NOVEMBER
MBAS SCHOOL GYM
6PM
Whitianga Touch Club
Copyright © 2020 Mercury Bay Area School, All rights reserved.


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