DECEMBER

Thursday 7th BoT Meeting 6.30pm

Tuesday 12th End of Year Disco’s 9.30-2.30pm Moa Year 8 Dinner & Social

Thursday 14th End of Year Carols 5pm

Monday 18th Final Whole School Assembly

Tuesday 19th Year 8 Final Assembly 11am SCHOOL FINISHES 12.30PM

FEBRUARY 2018

Thursday 1st SCHOOL STARTS

Newsletter No 19 6 December 2017

KEY DATES

Our language group

had a visit from the

Brooklyn Fire Station

last week

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa

The end of the school year is approaching and there is a hive of activity around the school. The

Kiwi syndicate held their annual long lunch today, there are some photos later in this newsletter of

this celebration.

On Monday night we held a cybersafety Information evening. This was run by Netsafe. This was a

really interesting evening and the Netsafe website is a really useful tool for us all. Some key

messages were:

Check in with your child how they are going, including their online activity

Keep the technology in open spaces and keep the technology out of bedrooms at night

Avoid over-reacting by taking the technology away- talk it through with your child and

teach them how to be safe online

Contact Netsafe as they can get online content removed

Today we farewell Ma Beibei who has been our Mandarin Language Assistant. Ma Beibei has

been with us for the year and she is heading home to China for the holidays. We look forward to

seeing here in February as she is joining us again in 2018. We have been sharing Ma Beibei with

Ridgway School, St Bernard’s and Cardinal McKeefry schools.

At the end of this term we farewell Lisa Stratford from the Kiwi Syndicate. Lisa has been teaching in

Room 15 and we have really enjoyed having her at our school. Thank you Lisa and we wish you

well in your future.

We would like to invite you to our End of Year Festive

Celebration on 14th December 5-7pm on the top

playground. There will be coffee, ice-creams, flavoured

water and sausages available for purchase from 4.30pm.

Calling all bakers out there we would love to be able to

offer some baking with the coffee. If you can provide

some baking please could you RSVP via

office@brooklynprimary.school.nz. Baking can be

dropped off at the school office on the day. We are also

pursuing getting food truck here as well. The aim of the evening is to bring along your family,

something to sit on, money to buy some food (or bring your own), connect with others and have a

sing along. A bit like the old Christmas in the Park celebrations except with a Brooklyn School

flavour! Food will be available from 4.30pm.

We would like to congratulate Hannah Prior, a former Brooklyn school student who this year was

named Dux of Wellington Girls College. A wonderful achievement, well done Hannah.

Last week Seven Sharp interviewed an education expert Nathan Wallis about children starting

school at the age of 5. Click here for the link, it is 4 minutes long and is really worth watching.

We would like to thank you all for making our school fair an amazing

success. We have raised $30,000. This money will go towards

developing our tree area. I have received some amazing letters from

some of our children regarding their ideas for this area.

From Liz Rhodes, Principal

Syndicate discos are being held next Tuesday and on Tuesday night the Year 8 students are going

out for their leaving dinner. This will be followed by the Moa dance in the school hall.

Next Friday your child’s report will be coming home. Included in the brown envelope will be their

2018 class list, 2018 Stationery list, 2018 term dates magnet and our Annual Report Summary. I

encourage you to click on the link provided in this Annual Report as it includes our Chairperson’s

Report and Staffing for 2018.

A reminder: School will be finishing for the 2017 academic year on Tuesday 19th December at

12.30pm. Please could you make sure you make provision for picking up your child at lunchtime.

We would like to wish you all a safe and happy holiday and we look forward to seeing you all

back here at Brooklyn School on 1 February 2018.

Ka kite

We like to feature children involved in our Moa Mentor Programme. The programme takes place every week

during lunchtimes on a Tuesday. The purpose of the initiative is to pair up a younger child with an older student

mentor from Year 7 and 8. The role of the mentor is to help the younger students in a range of different ways

relating to the needs of the child. This could involve sharing a common interest, playing games, helping them

adapt in social situations or generally being a good role model.

This week we are featuring Casey- James and his mentor Louis. They both enjoy playing creative and imaginary games like ‘Aliens’ where Louis acts as CJ’s body guard or ‘Don’t go in the shade’. Louis really enjoys CJ’s company as he finds him really funny and creative. CJ likes hanging out with ‘a big kid’ and also thinks Louis is funny and caring.

Moa Mentor of The Week

Tui Syndicate

Room 1: Millie Howard –is a delight to teach. She is a

motivated & enthusiastic learner who always does her best

Room 2: Evie Skaler-Howe – fabulous effort in reading

Room 3: Alice Willcocks – for the thought & persistence that

she applies to all her learning

Room 4: Michael Tandecki – enthusiasm he shows for all his

learning

Room 5: Max Bartle – showing a lot of manahi (focus) in

class & producing some great work.

Room 19: Liam Wakefield – for his excellent learning

attitude. He gives everything 100% & is making amazing

progress as a result.

Kiwi Syndicate

Room 14: Natalya Bromley-Ralph – for showing lots of

enthusiasm for her science learning & is sharing what she has

learned with others

Room 15: Luke Cheney – for consistency in being positive &

reflective in his learning

Room 16: Saul McCawe – completing a brilliant DO project.

For designing & inquiring into a solution to help more kaka

come into his garden & the community. What an amazing

presentation!

Room 18: Jemima Hampton – always putting 100% effort

into her learning

Takahe Syndicate

Room 6: Te Koha Tahere – demonstrating great

perseverance during our cricket session. Great bowling TK

Room 7: Sylvie Alsop - for her positive approach to all areas

of school & being an excellent role-model

Room 8: Georgia Wilson – has persisted in putting her

personality into her speeches on pugs

Room 13: Ashley Cole – showing great persistence &

determination in her learning

Moa Syndicate

Room 9: Luc Liu – demonstrating tapatahi in his running of

the “bucket throw” at the fair

Room 10: Kaiyu Gurney – showing great tapatahi in always

making sure he knows what is going on & what needs to be

done. Great time management Kaiyu

Room 11: Josh Dee – using his algebra skills to create an

amazing maths project on Scratch

Room 12: Lucas Kisby – an outstanding effort & result in the

Central Zone athletics

PRINCIPAL AWARDS - FRIDAY

Lexia & TARP students enjoyed a

morning tea this week with their

tutors Julia, Deb, Nicole & Margaret

Moa & Takahe students in the cycling elective enjoyed

their cycling on a beautiful

Fair Photos

The first season of the Brooklyn Sharks Waterpolo team saw the team make a huge improvement over

the season. Many goals were scored by us (and against us). The whole team enjoyed it and while we will

lose a couple of players to secondary school next year - we are hoping to enter the team again in the

Term 1 competition. If your child (Year 5 and above) is interested in playing then please let Sam know -

bridgmans@gmail.com

Yesterday the Regional Athletics Competition was held in Masterton. We had 6 students from Brooklyn School qualify for this - Kayli Watson, Ryan Tsourgas, Riley Willis, Alopoto Tiatia, Will Julian and Lucas Kisby. Four of our competitors were able to attend the event and came away with amazing results. Just getting to this stage is a remarkable feat in itself. The regional event is for schools from Wellington, Wairarapa, Porirua, Upper and Lower Hutt and Kapiti. From this Alopoto Tiatia came 4th in the year 8 boys 100m sprint with a time of 12.81 secs, Riley Willis came 3rd in the year 8 boys Long Jump with a distance of 4.88m, Will Julian came 4th in the year 7 boys high jump with a clearing height of 1.4m and Lucas Kisby also cleared 1.4m in the year 8 boys high jump before he had to pull out due to injury. Congratulations to all of the competitors who made it through and well done to those who competed. We are very proud of you all.

Library stocktake – next week

Please ensure that all your child’s library books are returned by this Friday. Thank you. Students are

welcome to take books home for the holidays. They will be able to issue from next Thursday. Wellington

City Libraries are running a Summer Reading Challenge in the holidays – details at the end of this

newsletter

2017 was another busy year for our very well-used library

A very successful Book Week was held recently. Visits by author, Brian Falkner, and ex-pupil, illustrator Phoebe Morris, competitions in the library, a classroom door decorating competition, teachers reading to different classes and a fantastic book character parade all made for a fun week.

Re-organisation of the library

For two terms Robyn and I have been working on “genrefying” the general fiction books. Now instead organising the fiction alphabetically, we have reclassified each book into a particular genre, such as fantasy, adventure, animals, sport etc. The smaller sections will make it easier for students to browse and find books.

Student librarians Thanks to the Year 7/8 students who helped in the library at lunchtimes. They worked hard to ensure the library operated smoothly at lunchtimes.

Fun in the library: R4 enjoying my collection of pop-up books

School Library News

Message from Wellington City Libraries

Wild about Reading: Summer Reading Challenge

Yes it's time to Slip, Slop, Slap and read, relax and rummage through some fantabulous books!

In other words Summer Reading Challenge is upon us, so come down to your local Wellington City Library and pick up our Summer Reading Challenge booklet. It's packed full of great books to read and better still once you have read a book, head to the kids' page on our website, write a review for our kids club and win prizes! There is something for everyone on the book list with an easy to follow key to help you choose what to read.

Don't have time to pick up a booklet? Then head the kids' page on our website: wcl.govt.nz/kids/ and download a copy. The Summer Reading Challenge runs from 1st of December to 31st of January 2018 and with over 60 titles to read, there'll be no time to get bored this summer!

Kiwi

Long

Lunch

Today we had the installation of the bus stop mural that the kids have been working on. This was part of the SVA project that was begun last term. The students came up with the idea and did all of the sketching out of their concept. It is a picture of the intersection at the Brooklyn shops 100 years ago, merging into what it is like today. The bus stop is the one located near the Helen St, Ohiro Rd corner. Raymond Malcolm from the council helped to get the resources for making this and getting the installation sorted and really got the wheels in motion for us, and we are very grateful for all of his help. These pictures show the mural, the team that worked on organising it and also the children that did the artwork. We are so proud of everyone who was involved. It's a fantastic contribution back to Brooklyn and for years to come they'll be able to look back on the work that they did when they drive