Holy Cross School Miramar eNewsletter

Term 3 Week 8 Newsletter 2020

Filter Content

Term 3 Week 8 Newsletter 2020

Catholic Character
Principal's Message
Whānau check in
KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE ONLINE
Garden to Table
Welcome to school
Happy Birthday
Term 3 ends Friday 25th September Term 4 starts Monday 12th October
Community Notices

Our Feast Day is on Monday September 14 and this day provides a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the cross and who we are called to be.

We would usually celebrate with a special liturgy but with Level 2 Covid restrictions we must think of new ways to celebrate this day.

Many of you will be familiar with the words on Andrew Chinn who wrote the song we often sing here at Holy Cross

This Holy Cross.

This Holy Cross, this tree of life

A sign of love, of sacrifice

This Holy Cross is not the end

New life, new hope, a call to grow again.

This cross it shines for all the world

A ray of hope, of God’s living Word

This light it shines every day

A light of love, showing us the way

and classes will be using this song as part of their prayer reflections on Monday and reflecting on who they are called to be.

We also invite you and your whānau to spend some time reflecting on the people and situations you would also like to hold in prayer before God on this special day.

You may also like to listen to this song at home with this link.

We will be posting a link on our facebook page for next week's zoom prayer assembly and you are warmly invited to join us in prayer.

Principal's Message

Celebrating our Tongan community.

At Holy Cross we are blessed to have so many different cultures within our community. This week is Tonga Language Week -Uike Lea Faka-Tonga. Enriching Aotearoa New Zealand through Prayer and faith.

Throughout the week each class has done something special to recognise and celebrate this precious culture and language. Our Tongan students have been able to take on the role of teacher to support understanding and learning within their classes.

Today our beautiful student leaders led us in our prayer reflections; malo ‘aupito

We all know the positive feelings we experience when we are recognised and greeted warmly. This week we invite you to learn and use these greetings:

Mālō e lelei Hello

Mālō e lava mai Welcome

Nofo ā (to those staying) Goodbye

‘Alu ā (to those leaving) Goodbye

Malo Thank you

Malo ‘aupito Thank you very much

Our school motto says:

“Let Your Light Shine” “Ke Ulo Atu Ho’o Maama”

Let’s make sure the words in our motto can be seen in all of our actions and interactions with others.

Whānau check in

This year it has been challenging to communicate in our usual manner. As you are aware we held learning conversations at the start of the year and historic lockdown reports in the middle of the year.

Your completed survey responses provided useful feedback for our teachers in relation to the successes and challenges of learning during lockdown.

We place great value on our learning conversations with you and have considered how we might best enable these.

We are in the process of setting up interview times which will conducted by zoom or telephone in the last week of this term Tuesday 22nd September and Thursday 24th September or the first week of term 4 Tuesday 13th October and Thursday 15th October.

The link to book an interview time will be emailed to you on Monday, if you need assistance from the office to book a time, please call 04 388 7189.

The reason for this interview format is to cover all eventualities, this way interviews will definitely go ahead regardless of the COVID level we are operating at.

KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE ONLINE

We regularly share information and updates for families in our newsletters and on our website. It is vital that you engage with this information to support your child’s learning in this area; this will enable you to monitor and control device use. We are available to help you with any specific requests if needed.

If you have not already, please go to the netsafe site, as the information and support there is invaluable.
From this site we have included some key links below, please revisit these.

https://www.netsafe.org.nz/staying-safe-online/
https://www.netsafe.org.nz/the-kit/resource/online-safety-parent-toolkit/
https://www.netsafe.org.nz/parental-controls/

Tik Tok: Many of you will have heard through the media about a disturbing video that is circulating on Tik Tok. We attach information that will support your conversations with your child.

This is very timely as currently our senior students are revisiting a programme DQ World- specifically devised for students 8-12 years in age. It supports them to develop knowledge and understanding of the 8 core DQ Citizenship Skills children need. The students will complete this programme over two terms. Click on this link to explore the site. We encourage you to watch the short video to gain an understanding of how DQ World works.

Further Information For Families

https://www.netsafe.org.nz/tiktok/
Here are 5 Things Parents Need to Know about TikTok

1. Strangers Can Send Private Messages
If your child’s account is public, they may be receiving messages from complete strangers. Talking with your child about interacting with strangers, especially online, is becoming more and more important. Sometimes predators create social media accounts posing as children so that they appear more disarming or approachable. Remind your child that if they do not know them in real life, they should not be talking to them.
**Update as of 5/6/2020: For users under 16 years of age, direct messaging is now disabled.

2. Suggestive Content Abounds
As with any social media platform, there is always suggestive content mixed into the bag. With TikTok being mostly based on music and video, profanity and suggestive clothing/dancing are the most obvious sources of adult content.

3. Parental controls can be managed remotely
With the 2020 update of the app, parents now have more control over their child’s account. With a new feature called “Family Pairing”, parents can link their child’s account to their own where they can control direct messages, set screen time limits, and turn on/off restricted content directly from their phone.
Parents will also receive a notification if any of the settings are changed or turned off from their child’s phone.

4. Positive- there is a ‘digital wellbeing’ setting
One of the more admirable functions in the app is the ability to turn on the ‘digital wellbeing’ setting. Once turned on, this setting will set time limits on app use, which can help your child moderate the time they spend on their phone. You can also find strategies for keeping your child’s screen time in check in this Kid Matters blog post. This setting also allows a parent to put restrictions on their child’s account. This will block videos that have been flagged as inappropriate. An important point to remember however is that not all inappropriate material is flagged properly; things slip through the cracks.

5. TikTok collects user data
While this is nothing new and all social-media apps participate in this practice, it is worth reminding parents of. This is a quote directly from TikTok’s page on privacy-
“We share your data with our third party service providers we rely on to help provide you with the Platform. These providers include cloud storage providers and other IT service providers. We also share your information with our business partners, advertisers, analytics and search engine providers…”

We hope you find this information helpful; please remember, if at any time you have questions or need more support, contact us. Let’s work together to keep our tamariki safe online.

Garden to Table

Bee talk with Adrian - By Willy

I discovered bees use buzzing to shake their pollen free.

There are 60,000 worker bees and 100,000 bees in a single hive.

I found out some bees are called drones.

This week in GTT Serena tells us how she made herb and sunflower seed pesto and fresh herb crackers.

"We chopped up lots of vegetables - kale, garlic, roasted sunflower seeds and we blended everything together to make the pesto.

The crackers we made had flour and herbs, we rolled them and chopped them into smaller pieces and then baked them in the oven.

I learnt carrots are good for your eyes and mind."

In the garden this week,Marilyn learnt that soil is made of organic matter, rocks and pebbles, and water and air. Marilyn helped with a soil experiment, she put water, clay and sand in a glass jar to see what happened. All the soil sank to the bottom of the jar.

Marilyn said "We went to the peace garden and watered the strawberry plants and also some gave the plants a special mixture that helps the strawberries to grow.

We also put hay on top of the strawberry plants to keep them warm."