Dear God,

You come to us in Jesus who teaches us that the way to happiness is through our love for one another.

Watch over the teachers, students and families of Sacred Heart Cathedral School as we try to be faithful to this teaching.

Help us to be a welcoming and joyful community, so that others may come to know your love and peace.

We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord,

Amen.

Kia ora koutou e te whānau,

Welcome to 2024. I hope you have had an amazing break over the Summer.

Special welcome back to Ann Stephen who has been on refreshment leave and will be working in Room 1 with Mrs Stewart; Nikolai Solia, our new Director Of Religious Studies; Anna Revington, who is our new teacher in Room 9 and Hannah Ryan, who is our new teacher in Room 10.

Special welcome to all of our new students who have joined the Sacred Heart Cathedral School community: Room 1: Sophia, Liam, Arabella, Ava, Aliza and Alex; Room 2: Khoi, Hunter and Daniel; Room 3: Zia; Room 5: Charlie; Room 6: Kobe-Max, Eliano and Jona; Room 7: James R and Mataio; Room 8: Jack, Louie, Lunar, Anya, Charles, Lashini and Ezekiel; Room 9: Sasha, Hannah, Anaya, James N and Jorinidi;  Room 10: Rezanne, Isabella, Scarlett, Isaac, Harper and Geri.  You are going to have a wonderful time at our school and will make lifelong friends.

A very special welcome back to Father Patrick Bridgman who has returned to the Cathedral Parish.

It would be safe to say there is a lot of treasure at our school. 

Pick up and Drop off:

Please no driving into school for pick up or drop off at the start of the day or the end of the day. There is limited parking on Hill Street and plenty on Hawkestone and Molesworth Street. 

When we have school-wide celebrations we will open up the school for parking.

If you are picking your child up from After School Care you may drive into school.

At Sacred Heart Cathedral School, we have 3 key expectations:

• Respect
• Safety
• Responsibility

These key expectations are helpful at school and home and of course when interacting socially in person or online.

Have an amazing week. Please reach out to your child's class teacher if you have any questions.

Arohanui,
Bernadette Murfitt
Tumuaki
Sacred Heart Cathedral School

The staff have had Professional Development in the Zones of Regulation. This was facilitated by the Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour.

This programme will help all of our students develop skills in self-regulation.

Each classroom will have a display that will support all to employ positive strategies to self-regulate.

As a staff, we are learning to use consistent language to help our students regulate.

For example, 

• taking some deep breaths 
• having a drink of water

The tools that we as staff will use are intended to be neutral and non judgemental.

All of our school policies are housed on an online platform.

You can access:

https://www.schooldocs.co.nz/

username : sacred-heart

password: school

Room 1, 2 & 3:

From the beginning of Term 1 2024, schools and kura with students in years 0-8 will spend an average of one hour a day teaching each reading, writing, and maths. This will be business as usual for the students at Sacred Heart Cathedral School.

Everyday our students read, write, and engage with maths in a variety of purposes and meaningful contexts.

Our staff will deliberately and purposefully dedicate time to teaching these core skills. Teaching techniques like investigations, collaborative learning, and games will continue to be used so students stay engaged with their learning.

Our students receive regular, focused instruction in these core areas.

Learning to read, write, and do maths is important in everything we do. Our staff will continue to provide quality instruction. This coupled with a high-quality local curriculum taught using evidence-informed teaching practices will be just the ticket to lift progress and achievement. 

For the above to happen, we need your child at school every day (unless they are sick).

Attendance is the key to making great progress across the curriculum.

We have our annual Beach Day in Oriental Bay on Friday, February 16th. Kindly follow the link to your child's classroom to find out more information about the trip. Please fill out the consent form as soon as you can, we would really appreciate it.

Junior Syndicate - Room 1, 2 & 3 Form:

Middle Syndicate - Room 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 Form:

The children all know that they leave school via our crossing on Hill Street at the bottom of Guildford Terrace. Then cross at the traffic lights right down by the Beehive. Bus students wait on the platform and train students go down to the station via the subway.

Safety is always number 1.

In the morning, it is the reverse cross at the traffic lights by the Beehvie walk up through Parliament and cross at the crossing at the bottom of Guildford Terrace.

For many many years, Sacred Heart Cathedral School has asked all students to hand their phones in at the start of the day and collect them at the end of the day. The government's new policy "phones away for the day" will be business as usual for us.

If you need to get a message to your child, you can email or call the school office at (04) 472-4047, please stay on the line, listen to the prompts, press 1 to go through to the office.  

• As our tamariki spend more time online, it’s important parents and whānau help them stay safe. Now is a great time to talk to them about how we use the internet and digital technology.

• Netsafe has created an Online Safety Parent Toolkit so parents, families and whānau have all the information they need to talk about online safety.

If you or anyone in your whānau needs support, you can contact Netsafe on the details below.

Link: https://netsafe.org.nz/parenttoolkit/

Student User of Digital Technologies Agreement for Sacred Heart Cathedral School

SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL SCHOOL STUDENT USER AGREEMENT OVERVIEW:

Digital technologies are tools that can help us learn at school in all sorts of ways. Some of these ways include looking at interesting things online, talking to people, creating music and media, gathering new ideas, and learning how to use tools.

When we use digital technologies and online spaces it’s important that we learn ways to keep ourselves safe, and that we make positive choices in ways we behave when we are online.  At Sacred Heart Cathedral School we call this being a ‘digital citizen’ and good digital citizens help to make our school a safe and positive place for everyone.

This agreement shares what Sacred Heart Cathedral School does to help make learning online safe, and what we need to do. We know it is not always easy to understand everything about online spaces.  It can be complicated at times, and some things can go wrong. This is why it’s important that we commit to making it as safe as possible to use digital tools and online spaces for learning.

SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL SCHOOL ROLE:

Sacred Heart Cathedral School supports you by helping you learn in the best ways we can, and keeping you safe at school whether you are online or offline.

We will do this by:

• making everybody aware of their responsibilities
• planning times in the terms to learn about positive online behaviours and ways to keep safe
• overseeing students’ use of school’s digital devices and online spaces during school time
• offering access to the internet and online platforms
• using filtering software to protect everybody
• keeping safe the personal information the school collects about you
• protecting your rights to a safe and positive online environment
• providing opportunities to use digital technologies in the learning at school
• having a plan to help you when something serious or illegal happens that involves digital technology or online spaces. This might include getting in touch with the Police or Netsafe.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES:

As a student of Sacred Heart Cathedral School and also part of our community, we ask you to help make our school a place that is safe, friendly, and fair. This means taking our school values and acting on these whether you’re online, or offline, and help to make our school a positive place to learn, connect and play. This is being a ‘digital citizen’.

As a digital citizen, you will:

• Keep it kind. Think about others online and talk or share in respectful ways.
• Keep it to yourself. Keep passwords and information about yourself and other people private and offline as it can be easily shared, viewed, screenshot, or changed by others to mean different things. Nothing is private online.
• Keep it careful.   Because things you do or say online can be seen by others, be careful to share the things you can feel proud of, or would be happy sharing with someone face to face.
• Keep it positive. Always respect others online and communicate in a positive, respectful way.
• Post with caution. Anything you post or do online can influence what people think of you. Put your best foot forward online.
• Don’t believe everything you see. Always think carefully about the information you see online – not everything is true. If you are unsure of something, talk to a teacher.
• Avoid online bullying. Creating or forwarding content that is harmful or hurtful towards someone else is not okay at any time. Sending multiple messages to somebody who doesn’t want them is also considered online bullying and is never okay.
• Be security smart. Keep personal information secure by using strong passwords and not sharing them with other students. Always log out of a site, or device.  Get permission before downloading software to the school network or connecting new devices.
• Respect others’ rights. Always ask first if you need to use someone else’s device, online sites, and their image, ideas, creations or work that’s stored online.
• Recognise others’ work. When we use or take others’ work or ideas from the internet, we need to make sure we copy or use these in ways that are okay because there are rules about this. Your teacher will help you to use things you find online in the right ways.
• Use personal devices sensibly. Keep your device(s) on silent during school hours and only use it outside of school time, unless you have been given permission to do otherwise.
• Seek help. Sometimes you or someone you know will feel unsafe or come across bad or hurtful content online. If this happens, talk to a trusted adult about what can be done.
• Treat the school’s devices with respect. Always remember that we do not deliberately damage or break the school’s devices.

ONLINE INCIDENTS:

Despite the good things technology offers and people’s best intentions, sometimes things will go wrong. Sometimes these things are on purpose, and sometimes they are accidents. Sacred Heart Cathedral School will do its best to support you if something goes wrong online.

Online bullying. Online bullying is not accepted at our school. If you or somebody else is being bullied or criticised online, report it. Keep the content so we can investigate it. Stop any further contact with the person who is bullying. You can report to your teacher or Mrs. Murfitt for help. It’s important to think about sharing what’s happened with a trusted adult like a parent, a member of your whānau, or someone else who looks after you. 

At school we recognise the opportunities and benefits of being online, but we are not able to control students' online access and use outside of school hours.  We will, however, do our best to support and educate our students in the safe, informed and responsible use of devices and online spaces.

Report a problem. We need your help to keep our school safe. If you see something on the school systems that you don’t think should be there, we need you to report it as soon as you can to your teacher or Mrs. Murfitt. This is really helpful and important, so that the school can find out what the problem is and fix it as soon as possible, and help those who might need it.

Online safety support. Netsafe is our New Zealand online safety organisation that is able to help when things go wrong online, when we have problems with content or negative things that others are doing online. They provide free, private advice for you and your family, seven days a week, for all online safety challenges. They can be contacted on 0508 638723 or online at

Don't forget to send in an item for our emergency supplies. For example: biscuits, muesli bars or crackers.

Thanking you in advance.

Every Tuesday at school is Trash Free Tuesday.

Newlands Brownies have vacancies for term 1.

Start Date: 13 Feb 2024 (Tuesday) at 6.00 - 7.30pm

Newlands Community Centre

Register with https://girlguidingnz.org.nz/join-us/brownies/