Dear Parents / Caregivers

Welcome to the end of Term 2. We’ve had a successful term which has seen the students being able to learn across teams and play with their friends throughout the school.

Thank you to you all for ensuring your child doesn’t come to school when they have cold symptoms. This has certainly assisted in minimising the spread of infection in our school community.

Term 3 will see Ms Laura Bateman and Ms Natasha Luxford taking up the position of Co-Acting Principal. I will be on a Principal Sabbatical for Term 3.

Term 3 also sees the Board election. Do check out the information below and please consider putting your name forward to be a Board member.

The following topics will be covered in this weeks Principal Message:

• Board Elections
• Reports / Spotlight
• YCC Mufti Mania
• Sports Report
• Community Notices

Ka manaakitia e te Atua

Alister Bridgman

Tumuaki

Call for nominations: St. Joseph’s School Takapuna Board of Trustees Elections  

Nominations are now open for five parent elected positions on the St. Joseph’s School Takapuna Board.

Our board should be representative of our community to ensure a diverse range of views and perspectives are heard. Candidates do not have to have a child at the school. 

We are using an external organisation to manage the election process called My School Election. You will receive information directly from them, as well as from our school, about the election process. Please visit My School Election for more information and/or to make a nomination.  Hard copies of the nomination form will also be available via the school office. 

Nominations are open now until Wednesday 3, August. If there are more nominations than vacancies, then parents and caregivers will receive an invitation to vote either electronically or by post.  

The returning officer for the triennial board election is Bernardine Vester.  She can be contacted at returningofficer@myschoolelection.nz.  

School board members are active leaders in our schools. They have an important role of supporting strong professional leadership and ensuring effective teaching for all students through informed governance. Over the holidays, please give some thought to whether you – or someone you know – might be interested in being nominated.  Wishing you a safe and healthy holiday.  

Eric Esnouf, Chair, St. Joseph’s School Takapuna Board of Trustees 

Mid-Year Report / Spotlight Samples – Years 2 – 6

Today you will be receiving your child’s Mid-Year Report and their Spotlight Samples through the @SchoolApp. You will receive a notification through the app, if notifications are turned on, alternatively you can open the app and click on Reports.

Information on how to read your child’s report is available here.

If you require support logging on please contact Lizzy at secretary@sj.school.nz. She can re-send your log-in/password details if required. However if you’ve received those details and still having issues, Lizzy will need to contact our system provider “help desk” on Monday. Thank you for your patience.

Parent Student Teacher Interviews – Years 2 – 6

In weeks 2 – 4 of Term 3 you will be contacted by your child’s teacher to arrange a time to meet to discuss the Mid-Year Report. They will share with you your child’s progress and their next learning steps. It is important that all parents attend these meetings with their child. 

These meetings will be held in well ventilated learning spaces. Parents/children will sit distanced from the teacher. There will only be one family in the learning space at a time. Masks must be worn. Sanitizer will be available on entry to the learning space.

Year 0/1 Students

Parents are invited in to meet their child’s teacher to discuss the School Entry Assessment and again when the child’s 6 Year Net is completed. The timings of these meetings are determined by the start date of the student.

A huge THANK YOU for all your support for today’s “Mufti Mania” day. We are pleased to advise approximately $900 has been raised in gold coin donations towards this very worth cause. 🙂

St Joseph’s Sport Term 2, 2022

Wow! What a fantastic start we’ve had to sports at St Joseph’s this year! It is great to see so many children participating in a school team and giving sports a go.

Sports teams are a great place for children to develop physical skills while allowing them to improve social skills, communication and team work in a fun and friendly environment.

Some children from the different sports codes have written an overview so you can learn a bit more about the different sports at St Joseph’s.

We would like to say a big “thank you” to all of the people that coach and manage our teams, as without them, we would be unable to enter into the specific competitions. Thank you also to every single family that gets their child/children to the games each week, as we know this can be a bit of a juggle!

If you are interested in finding out more about sports at St Joseph’s, please check out the website at: https://www.sj.school.nz/physical-education-and-sport/

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Netball at St Joseph’s

Netball is a sport where you have a ball and the aim of the game is to pass the ball down the court and shoot a goal. There are two sides in the team, defence and attack. Attack is where you get the ball down to your goal and score points, and defence is where you have to make sure that the team you are playing doesn’t get the ball to their goal.

If you want to play netball you need to be fit and work really hard. You also have to have a growth mindset and keep going even if you are tired or behind in points. There are lots of rules and it is important to listen to and communicate with your teammates and the umpires.

Each team trains once a week before school. We do practice games and drills and we work on getting better. Our coach then puts us in positions that we work best in for the games. So the recipe to getting better is practice, because practice makes perfect.

At St Josephs when we play our games we show pride, joy and good sportsmanship, because all of us are one big school and represent all of the above and the Mercy Values. Everyone in the team is accepted in what they do, we all train as hard as we can and we help and encourage our teammates.

We have a really good community of netball teams at St Joseph’s ranging from Years 1-6. Year 1-5 play at Pinehurst School, and Year 6 teams play at Netball North Harbour.

Year 1 Twinkle Toes
Year 2 Shooting Stars
Year 3 Diamonds
Year 4 Magic
Year 5 Hot Shots
Year 6 The Phoenix & The Dragons

By: Aria, Charlotte, Lucy and Violet

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The Final Countdown
By Azariah (Year 3)

It all began when the lights went out. My legs were ready and my heart was pumping.

It was the finals. The crowd cheered our name, ST JOE’S KNICKS! We listened, we learnt and we got open, but it just wasn’t our day. We did good defending and went under the hoop. Unfortunately we lost, but we tried our best. The people who were handing out the medals were girls. Me and Indi want to be just like them.

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Basketball at St Joseph’s

We have six St Joseph’s basketball teams that played in the first basketball season this year.

Breakers Basketball
Year 1 & 2 Rockets
Year 3 & 4 Hornets

North Harbour Basketball
Year 3 & 4 Knicks
Year 5 Magic
Year 5 & 6 Heat
Year 6 Celtics

When you play basketball you need to believe in your team and have good drive and determination. It is nice to win but it’s not all just about winning. These are some values that we think are important:

Team work: this means working well together and communicating for a common team goal.

Fairplay: this is about including everyone and giving everyone a fair chance. It is also about encouraging others.

Sportsmanship: this is having the ability to lose a game and still congratulate the other team.

Thank you to all of the coaches and managers for taking time off to coach us and help us to play basketball. Thank you to all the teachers that sorted out the teams and for supporting us at our games.

By Conor & Gaevry 

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Splash Polo Summary

Splash Polo is a Water sport that we play up at AUT Millennium Pools and is a version of Water polo for children at primary school.

The children that play are fit and energetic participants who have fun passing, blocking and shooting goals to come out as the winning team. Fortunately, we have lots of students who have just started playing at St Joseph’s, and the kids are loving playing this sport! Our school teams are:

Year 2 & 3 Orcas
Year 4 Dolphins
Year 4 & 5 Swordfish
Year 5 & 6 Marlins
Year 6 Sharks

“I love this sport, it’s absolutely awesome. The excitement and nervousness makes it even more fun and makes me work even harder. I am also happy that most people show good sportsmanship when they win or lose. That’s the best part about this game.” – James

“It’s a great experience to gain friendships and a new technique of developing water skills. Splash polo is a challenging but yet entertaining and enjoyable sport you can play from Year 2 all the way to Year 6.” – Sophie

Also a shoutout to all the Coaches, Managers and supporters who put their hand up and volunteer their time to help us go through the good and the bad times. It takes a lot of heart to help us children, so remember that okay?

By James & Sophie

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Hockey

The Red Sticks hockey team is St Joseph’s official hockey team for 2022. It is made up of 8 players, from year 4 up to year 6. We practice at Rosimini every Wednesday morning, and some days we arrive for practice and are trained by the Blacksticks. We had four Blacksticks show us their tricks and skills which have improved our game.

We play our games every Monday evening at the National Hockey Centre in Albany. We have won 6 of the 7 games we have played. We also played against a team who was in a higher league than us and we crushed them!

We love hockey because we have so much fun and it also improves our fitness, we learn ball skills and sportsmanship. But the best thing about hockey is the people playing it and we can’t stop winning.

We also love hockey because we have an amazing coach to teach us the coolest tricks. Fun fact our coach knows one of the coaches from the Blacksticks and that’s why they often come to our practices.

Hockey is a sport not many people play and talk about but we would like to know how many people you know that play hockey. We would also like to know your opinion on hockey.

By Chad & Grace

Please check out the latest community notices that are on our school website.