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Community Update, 18 October 2021

KingsWay School —

A Note from Graeme Budler, Executive Principal

Dear KingsWay Community,

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa. 

Welcome back to Term 4, albeit strange to once again have the majority of the community doing distance learning. I particularly want to welcome the parents and students of our term four new entrant’s class. I want to reassure you that the KingsWay community are a stunning group of people, and we are considerably better looking in person than on Zoom.

I am acutely aware that many controversial issues are doing the rounds currently in the media. The author of James reminds believers in Chapter 3 verse 17: “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” I pray that we may set a wise example to our children, each other and society during this challenging time.

The Prime Minister announced today that we are to remain at Alert Level 3 for another two weeks. The ELT will release further information in tomorrow’s update.

Ngā mihi nui and God bless,

Graeme Budler 
Executive Principal

Whole School Notices

Vaccination Register

The Ministry of Education now requires schools to hold a COVID-19 vaccination register for all eligible students and all staff. Whilst there is no mandate for vaccinations for students, the Ministry of Education requires KingsWay School to record if your child over 12 years of age has had their first and second vaccine dose. KingsWay holds this information following the Privacy Act protocols and will only share it with public health authorities.

Action: Please complete this FORM (one submission for each child) to update KingsWay on your child’s vaccination status if they are 12 years or older before they return to school.

This link remains active and appears on the KingsWay website (popup notification) to allow you to update your child’s vaccination status should this change.

Once your child has had two vaccinations, please send a copy of their completed immunisation card or certificate to KingsWay’s Lead Registered Nurse anita.wicks@kingsway.school.nz

Wellbeing

As the rollercoaster of lockdown life continues, please see THIS message from the school counselling team for a reminder about how students can access support during this time.

Primary School Notices

Home Learning Term 4

Please note the following additions we have made to the Home Learning programmes for the Primary students this term:

Teachers will assign readers to all students (except for the New Entrants in Mrs Chun’s class) in the Sunshine Classics/Sunshine Online website. The books will be assigned according to the students’ reading level or age and provide an excellent opportunity for them to read a wider variety of material. All the books have follow-up literacy activities for the students to complete. We would encourage students to engage with this resource for 10 - 15 mins a day, if possible. Teachers will email the link, user- name and password to parents and will let you know when your child is set up for the programme. This is an OPT IN extra

All primary classes will be using the Seesaw platform where students can upload work for feedback from teachers. Each teacher will communicate with the students about which aspect of the work they would like to see uploaded every week. Teachers will send each parent their child’s home learning code, which is required to sign in. For some classes this will only begin in Week 2. This is an OPT IN extra if you would like feedback on aspects of your child’s learning. The following link provides instructions on how to log in to Seesaw: Accessing Your Child's Seesaw Learning Journal

Please note that for the Year 5 and 6 students, this is in addition to the assignments they complete in Teams, where teachers already provide feedback.

Teachers will now be providing extra online workshops during the week where they will be available to support students with work that has been assigned for the week or run short lessons with a smaller group of students. This may look slightly different at each year level as the needs of the students differ so greatly in these early years. The workshops may be led by any one of the teachers in the Year Level teaching team. Some Year Levels will only begin workshops in week 2. Teachers will communicate the start date with you. Students will be able to OPT IN to these workshops.

Every week students will have the opportunity to participate in a Spanish Lesson with Mrs Dove. The lessons will be targeted at different Year levels and students will be able to OPT IN if they wish to. Parents will be sent a link to this weekly lesson.

OPT IN workshops and lessons can be found here: Workship Timetable Week 1

Learning packs: If you have not yet picked up your child's Home Learning pack, you are welcome to collect it from the office on the SENIOR CAMPUS. Any packs not collected by Wednesday will be couriered out to students’ homes.

Middle School Notices

As always, Distance Learning got off to a smooth start for Term 4 today. As a staff, we are keenly aware of the disappointment it is for our students to not be onsite. We endeavour to create a fun and engaging week where they can learn, connect and be encouraged.

Students have been reminded of the two Whanau competitions that are open until Friday of this week so please encourage them to get active and get involved.

Senior School Notices

NCEA Derived Grade Exams

As noted previously, it looks increasingly unlikely we will be able to run our Derived Grade Exams on-site in week 2. This is because it would be dependent on larger numbers of students being together in one space. Senior Management are continuing to develop a plan for running ‘Derived Grade Assessments’ online via Teams. Because this will not be an ‘exam’ as such, the final derived grade will be determined by the assessment next week in conjunction with other work students have completed this year. Depending on what the government announcement is today, we will send out further details of what this will look like over the next few days. We encourage students to prayerfully prepare for these derived grade assessments and put their best foot forward.