Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter Rāmere (Friday) 18 February 2022

In today's newsletter, we would like to draw your attention to our planning for Covid-19 and the steps that will be put into place when we get active cases within our school community.

To help you with the process, we have put some key information, in the form of Questions and Answers, onto our school website. You can find it here under Covid-19 Questions & Answers 

On this page we hope you will find all of the immediate information you need if you, your child, or someone in your household either tests positive for Covid-19, or is a close contact of someone who has tested positive.

The page has questions that you can find the answers for by clicking on the arrow on the left of each question...

As you will know, we take the health and safety of our school and wider community very seriously. We are therefore being extremely cautious when children present at school with any Covid-19 symptoms. Unless we have heard from you e.g. 'My son Johnny has hayfever which is the cause of his runny nose at the moment', we will be calling you to come and pick Johnny and his runny nose up and take him home!

While your child has any Covid-19 symptoms, we are strongly encouraging you to take them for a Covid test. This helps to reassure everyone that they are OK to come back to school. Even if you haven't had a test, please keep anyone who is unwell at home.

As we see more cases in the community, we know that the number of people needing to isolate at home is going to increase. We know that most of these people will not be symptomatic and that the children will need to keep learning if possible. For that reason, we have once again reactivated our "Learnng at Home" website. Teachers will be working through the website with the children next week, so that they are very familiar with it, and it is set out in a similar way to last year.

All of our teachers' contact email addresses are on the site, so that you can contact them if you have any questions. We are currently working on developing hard packs for those children for whom digital learning is not so easily accessible. Please let your child's teacher know if you need a hard pack.

Now is a good time to think about getting a few basic stationery supplies at home.

We expect to keep going as normally as possible at school, as we can with good staffing levels. If our staffing situation changes, we will let you know about any adaptations that we might have to make to our teaching and learning programmes.

Ngā mihi nui

If you have a Year 5 to 13 student who currently does not have broadband at home, or is on a prepaid Skinny Jump internet connection, and/or the cost of in-home internet access is a barrier, they could be eligible for the free broadband for learning. Ciena Jump for Student Fund provides a free wireless modem and free 150GB monthly broadband data for their home until the end of 2022. Please contact Sandy at school if you would like to know more. principal@beckenham.school.nz

You can email the PTA at pta@beckenham.school.nz

Erin Grigson has been playing various instruments for 25 years and teaching for 12 years. She has a degree in music education and taught in primary school in the USA for 2 years before moving to New Zealand. She can play and teach piano, voice, ukulele, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, tenor horn, trombone, and euphonium.

Erin’s instruments: piano, voice, ukulele, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, tenor horn, trombone, and euphonium

Erin’s prices: $20 for each 20-minute lesson and $30 for each 30-minute lesson.

Sam Jones teaches drums. He has been playing and teaching for almost 20 years and has travelled all over the world making and teaching music. He uses popular songs from current hits to rock classics to teach all the techniques students need to know to be successful on drum set.

Sam’s instrument: drumset

Sam’s prices: $30 for each 30-minute lesson.

Lessons will be held at St. Marks Methodist Church in Somerfield (5 Somerfield St.).

NZ Modern School of Music - Christchurch has other teachers as well who teach a variety of other instruments.

For more information or to enrol, contact Erin Grigson at nzmsmchristchurch@gmail.com or fill out the Google enrolment form at the link below:

We look forward to hearing from you!