Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been a very busy and exciting couple of weeks in our classroom! We have enjoyed lots of awesome learning experiences and finished the week on a high with our trip to Hansons Park.

Reading Success

Following the Readathon, we have noticed some fantastic progress with our readers. It has been wonderful to see growing confidence, a love of reading, and improving fluency across the class. Events like these remind us just how important daily reading is, even just 5-10 minutes each day makes a huge difference!

Thank you for all your support and encouragement with your tamariki and their reading at home. We are incredibly impressed with the progress everyone is making.

Across all literacy groups, students take part in a mixture of explicit small-group teaching, whole-class learning, and independent activities. We have loved seeing the engagement and enthusiasm during our small-group sessions. We even used some “silly fingers” to help with tracking while reading!

Book Character Day

Book Character Day was a lot of fun! It was great to see the effort students put into their costumes and the wide range of book characters that came to life around the school. Thank you to all our whanau for helping make the day such a success.

Hansen Park Trip

Our trip to Hansen Park was an absolute blast! The walk there was lovely and much quicker than we expected. Although the weather was a little windy and cold, it certainly did not stop our tamariki from having an awesome time.

We spent most of the day enjoying the playground and playing games with the sports equipment from school. Paul organised some fantastic activities, including tennis, football, and races. It was wonderful to see students playing, collaborating, and making connections with different friends throughout the day.

A huge thank you to all of our parent helpers. We could not have done it without your help.

Calling All Lego and Small Boxes!

As the weather gets colder, we are planning more crafts and creative learning activities for Learning Through Play and wet lunchtime sessions.

If you have any small boxes at home that you no longer need, we would love to take them off your hands! A collection box will be available in the makerspace over the next week.

Lego Donations

A big thank you to Sarah S, who kindly donated a large box of Lego for our students. It has been an absolute hit! The creativity and imagination our tamariki show during play is amazing to see.

If you have any spare Lego or loose pieces at home that are no longer being used, we would greatly appreciate adding them to our collection.

Thank you in advance!

Kapahaka performance!

Exciting news! Our tamariki will be performing Kapa Haka at Assembly in Week 8 on Friday, 12th June. The assembly will run from 10:00–10:30am, and whānau are warmly welcome to come along and watch.

We will send out another reminder closer to the time. We are looking forward to sharing all of the hard work and practice our students have been putting in!

Here is a sneak peek of us practicing!

We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing weekend. We look forward to another fun week of learning ahead😊

Ngā mihi nui

Sarah S, Amber, Sarah J and Talia

Ngā mihi e te whānau, 

Here in the Kahikatea hub we have enjoyed another wonderful week of learning. 

The tamariki are very much settled back into our daily routines and activities and have all reconnected with their friends after the half term break. 

Literacy - The tamariki continue to make steady progress through our structured literacy program
and have been enjoying practicing word recognition and creating their own sentences. Our shared group activities often create wonderful conversation full of rich language which the tamariki enjoy sharing with one another. As always our book swap day for Literacy is Thursday when the tamariki get the bring a new book home to share at home. 

Maths- Our Numicon program continues to gain traction with the tamariki as they get to explore new Math concepts and different Numicon resources. This week our focus has been on counting from 1 to 100 and the different ways this can be represented through estimating, grouping and patterns. The tamariki have enjoyed working as a class and in small groups to problem solve those tricky questions sharing their knowledge and growing together. 

Book Character Day!! Friday 15th May 2026 - Book character day is a wonderful opportunity for the tamariki to celebrate and share their favourite stories through visual representation, bringing fictional personalities to life for a specific occasion. It is such a fun day!

Cyber Safety - The HDCA for Parents and Whānau

The Harmful Digital Communications Act (or HDCA for short) is an act passed by the Government back in 2015 to help people dealing with serious or repeated harmful digital communications. It covers anything digital like text, emails or social media content. The most useful thing for parents to understand about the HDCA is the way the 10 communication principles define what is good or bad behaviour online.

If you’re ever concerned about your young person (or you just want to brush up on your knowledge!) visit Netsafe’s Guide to the HDCA. 

Have a beautiful weekend everybody.

Nga mihi nui

Sarah J, Amber, Talia and Sarah S

 Kia ora te Whānau, 

A big welcome back to Term 2! We have heard many amazing holiday stories and hope you all have had some lovely, quality family time together. Our tamariki have been so excited to be back, and there has been much chat and reconnecting with friends and teachers this week.

We have started off the term by delving into some new and exciting learning:

Maths in Term 2

This term, our Y0-2 ākonga (learners) are using Numicon equipment to support their maths learning. Numicon uses equipment which helps make numbers visible (see) and tactile (touch/use), allowing learners to see how numbers are composed (made up of), how they fit together and how they relate to each other.

The ākonga (learners)  have been wonderfully engaged in these Numicon sessions. They have been highly motivated to complete the daily activities, explain their thinking mathematically and use their maths vocabulary.

Literacy:

Our literacy learning is back in full swing, and the tamariki have come back from a break refreshed and ready to learn. It has not taken them long to get back into our literacy routines. 

A reminder to bring reading folders to school on Thursdays.

Inquiry Learning:

Kapa Haka:

We are lucky enough to have Kapa Haka sessions this term and in Term 4 with Whaia Cath, learning new waiata and tikanga. 

Talia and Sarah J homegroups had a session today. Amber and Sarah's home groups will have a session next week.

 Kia ora e te whānau,

Kia ora whānau,

It’s hard to believe we are already six weeks into the term! It has been a very busy and positive time in our classroom. Our tamariki have settled well into routines and have been showing fantastic engagement with their learning. It has been wonderful to see growing confidence, new friendships, and lots of enthusiasm across all areas of the curriculum. 

Literacy

We are a few weeks into our literacy groups, and we are incredibly impressed with our tamariki and their enthusiasm to learn. It has been wonderful to see students building confidence as they work through their reading and literacy activities.

A quick reminder that students can only take their reading books home if they have their reading folders at school. Folders only need to be brought to school on Thursdays. On this day, students will return their previous book and receive a new one to take home. Thank you for helping support this routine!

Maths

Last week, we were learning about shapes and geometry. Our tamariki enjoyed exploring and identifying different shapes through a range of fun, hands-on activities. Take a look at some of the things we got up to!

Over the next few weeks, we will be diving into place value and grouping numbers. Students will be learning how numbers can be grouped into tens and ones, helping them better understand how numbers are made.

Ideas to try at home:

• Ask your child to group everyday objects (such as Lego, pasta, or small toys) into groups of 10.

• Practice counting collections and see how many groups of 10 you can make.

• When you see numbers around you (letterboxes, page numbers, prices), ask: How many tens? How many ones?

These small activities can really help strengthen their understanding of numbers.

Inquiry – Sustainability: Healthy Bodies and Minds

As part of our inquiry learning around sustainability, we have been exploring what it means to have healthy bodies and healthy minds. Recently, we looked at how to create a balanced plate of food and talked about 'everyday foods' and 'sometimes foods'. Students discussed what foods help give us energy, what foods help our bodies grow, and why it is important to have a variety of foods on our plates. Have a look at our balanced plates of food! 

Tuakana–Teina

Our seniors recently led some wonderful Tuakana–Teina activities as part of their leadership week. They created a range of games and activities for small groups of our tamariki.

It was a big hit! It was fantastic to see such great engagement from everyone involved. Our younger students loved working with the seniors, and it was awesome to see the older students stepping into their leadership roles. Here are some pictures of the fun!

Little Kickers

We are excited to be taking part in Little Kickers, an organisation that gives children a positive introduction to sport by teaching football skills in a friendly, pressure-free environment. The focus will be on developing ball skills.

Please talk with your child about this and reassure anyone who might feel nervous that this is for everyone, whether they have played football before or not.

Little Kickers will take place on:

• Wednesday 18th March

• Wednesday 25th March

We are looking forward to lots of fun and active learning!

Diversity Day

Wow! Everyone showed up today looking bright and colourful for Diversity Day.

Thank you to everyone who brought along a gold coin donation. These donations are going towards two fantastic charities: Rainbow Youth and The Dyslexic Foundation.

Sickness 

There is a lot of sickness going around at the moment! If your child is feeling unwell, please keep them at home. Phone 033371404 or email the office at office@beckenham.school.nz to let them know your child is unwell and will not be at school. 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend with your whānau!

Ngā mihi, 

Amber, Sarah S, Talia and Sarah J