Category Archives: Koru

Koru News Term 2 Week 6

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Kia ora e te whānau,

A warm welcome to this fortnight’s Koru Team blog post. Although it’s been a quieter couple of weeks in terms of events, our tamariki have been busy with rich learning across all areas of the curriculum. It has been lovely to see their growing independence and engagement throughout all the activities and classroom routines.

Pathways, Direction, and Matariki – Our Maths Learning
As a start to our learning about Matariki, we shared the story Little Kiwi’s Matariki, which you can watch again at home here:
 👉 Little Kiwi’s Matariki - YouTube

This story inspired some wonderful cross-curricular learning. We created Matariki stars through art and craft, and used directional language (such as forward, turn left, turn right) to help Little Kiwi find the stars. We also used Bee Bots to practise our coding skills by programming them to follow a pathway towards the Matariki star cluster. This learning has supported our development of spatial awareness, early coding, and mathematical language, all while celebrating the Māori New Year.
















Kiss and Drop:
As the number of children in our Koru Team grows, our hub can feel a little overwhelming for some tamariki in the morning. Please aim to "kiss and drop" your child off at the door, rather than entering the hub with them. This will help set your children up for a calm, quiet, and successful transition in the morning. Thank you so much for your support with this!

Learning Conferences – Tuesday 10th & Wednesday 11th June
Our Learning Conferences are happening next week on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 10 & 11). Please note that school will finish early on both days at 1:00pm. Supervision will be available until 3pm for a small group of children who are unable to be collected at 1pm.

We need EVERY FAMILY to fill in this form (click here) to let us know your plans for your child(ren) on Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th June. This includes letting us know if you need your child supervised at school on one or both of the Learning Conference days from 1:00-3pm.

These conferences are a great opportunity to celebrate your child’s progress and talk about next steps in their learning journey.

If you haven’t yet made a booking, please do so as soon as possible:

https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/code - use the code: r3wt9

Literacy Folders:
Please continue to send Literacy folders to school each day, and remind your child to unpack them into their group’s box each morning. These folders contain important learning materials used during our Literacy lessons. Thank you for your support in keeping this routine running smoothly.

Matariki Evening – Tuesday 17th June at 5pm - 7pm
We are looking forward to celebrating the Māori New Year with our school community at our upcoming Matariki Evening!
 📅 Tuesday 17th June | 5:00–7:00pm

Here’s what to expect:
 ✨ Welcome in the hall at 5:00pm
 ✨ Kapa Haka performances
 ✨ Workshops and activities throughout the evening
 ✨ PTA Sausage Sizzle – please bring a koha (donation)

It will be a special evening of culture, community, and celebration. We hope to see you there!

We wish you a restful weekend and look forward to another fun and engaging fortnight ahead.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
Niquita, Stacey, Katie and Elizabeth

niquita.dalley@beckenham.school.nz

stacey.mclachlan@beckenham.school.nz

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

elizabeth.drummond@beckenham.school.nz

Koru Team Term 2 Week 4

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Kia ora, e te whānau,

A warm welcome to this week's Koru Team blog post. It's been a very busy fortnight, filled with lots of amazing learning, as well as the whole school Book Character Dress Up day last Friday and, of course, today's Cross Country event. The children did incredibly well during their Cross Country run today, showing 'We Love Challenge' (completing the course, and doing their best to show determination and stamina) and 'We Get There Together' (encouraging their classmates if anyone was finding the running challenging). We thank our Year 7 and 8 Kauri students who supported the Koru team tamariki as they ran today.










Kiss and Drop:

As the number of children in our Koru Team becomes ever higher, our hub can feel a little overwhelming for some tamariki in the morning. Please aim to "kiss and drop" your child off at the door, rather than entering the hub with them. This will help set your children up for a calm, quiet, and successful transition in the morning. Thank you so much for your support with this!

Learning Conferences:

We’re looking forward to meeting with you all at our learning conferences which are coming up on Tuesday, June 10th and Wednesday, June 11th, after mid-year reports are shared on Friday, June 6th. These meetings are a valuable opportunity to celebrate your child’s progress, talk about their current learning and next steps, and explore how we can work together to support them both at school and at home.

To make a booking, please go to:
https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/code and use the following code: r3wt9

Literacy folders:

A reminder to please stress with your children that they need to unpack their Literacy folders every morning and take them indoors to their group's Literacy folder box. This is incredibly important for the smooth running of our Literacy programmes. The contents of the folders are used during the Literacy lessons and are topped up at times throughout the week with new letter cards, heart words and, as children become ready for the challenge of reading books, with the Pip and Tim texts. Many thanks for helping us in this way.

Cyber Safety:
Staying Safe Online - Bullying

One in five young people in New Zealand have been the target of online bullying – it can happen to anyone, and it can be hard for parents and whānau to deal with. Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto takes online bullying seriously and would encourage you to chat to your tamariki’s teacher if you have any concerns about online bullying.



Readathon and Book Character Dress Up day:

We know that the children all enjoyed the Readathon's Stop, Drop, and Read, which helped to support some great reading habits. Thank you so much to those of you who were able to collect sponsors to help raise funds for our school.
  
If you still have sponsorship money to collect, this can be transferred directly to the PTA account 12-3148-0244558-00 using 'Readathon' as a reference.

The costumes on Book Character Dress Up day were absolutely adorable.

Check out the selection of photos below for some of the 'characters' who arrived at school last Friday!





























We hope you have a very happy and relaxing weekend and we look forward to seeing the tamariki, bright-eyed and eager, next week.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Katie, Stacey, Niquita and Elizabeth


katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

niquita.dalley@beckenham.school.nz

stacey.mclachlan@beckenham.school.nz

elizabeth.drummond@beckenham.school.nz

Koru Team Blog: Term 2 Week 2 (9/05/2025)

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 Kia ora e te whānau,

Welcome to this week's Koru Blog!

Book Character Dress Up Day: Friday 16th May
As part of our Readathon, we are excited to have a Book Character Dress Up Day on Friday, 16th May. All children are invited to come dressed as a book character, or if they prefer, to come in their usual school uniform. We can't wait to see all of the fabulous book character costumes- they can be as little or as big as you can make, find or create!!




Cross Country: Friday 23rd May
Our whole school cross country event will be on Friday, the 23rd of May. There will be more information to come about what time our Koru children will be running. Tamariki will be able to wear their house tops for this event. We are training most days for the Cross Country, so it is helpful for the children to wear comfortable running shoes. Our race will be between 11.30am and 12.00pm. The first race is the Year 8 runners, which will start at 11:00am, and the whole event should be finished by 12:00pm. See below for a map of where our Koru children will be running.



Literacy:
Our Koru children need to bring their Literacy Folders back to school EVERY day and put them into their group box in the hub. When the children learn a new letter, this will be added to their 'sound pack' of flash cards. When a literacy group has read a book a few times together, they are ready to take it home to read. If a child does not have their folder at school, we unfortunately cannot give them the book to take home, as each reading book costs $9 and we need to look after them by keeping them in literacy folders and returning them to school.

Phonemic Awareness Instruction
We are learning to blend words. We use the left hand to say the first word, the right hand to say the second word, and then clap our hands together when we say the compound word. eg. out - side, outside

'out'

'side'

'outside'

We are learning to segment words. The teacher says the compound word and place both hands together with palms up. Students repeat the word and then segment into two words, by separating their hands. eg. raincoat, rain - coat.


'raincoat'

'rain'

'coat'


Literacy Group Lessons
Each lesson covers revision about letter sounds (phonemes) and Heart Words that the children have already been taught. This helps to increase confidence and knowledge of the letters to know their sound when reading and how to write them. As the children work through the Stage 1 sounds (m, s, a, i, f, t, p, c), they learn the name of the letter, the sound (phoneme) and how to write it (grapheme) and read it. Before being given a book, they need to know the first 8 letters and the sounds they represent, as well as the skills of segmenting and blending sounds. This is to ensure success and accurate reading, rather than guessing. 
Writing a list of Heart Words

Literacy group lesson time! Writing heart words: I, my, the.

We read sentences and then write them. We check that they start with a capital letter and end with punctuation, and we read them back to ourselves to check that they make sense. Can you see a Heart Word? Does it finish with a full stop or a question mark?

Reading back the sentence together.

Here is Milo the Monkey, the letter 'm' makes the sound /m/. What do your lips do to make this sound?

Listening to a sound and writing the grapheme for it.

Writing the first 8 letter sounds.

It takes lots of concentration and practice to learn how to make our letters the right way!

Literacy helpful links 


Cybersafety
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 wonderful weekend!
Ngā mihi nui,

Stacey, Elizabeth, Katie, and Niquita

Koru Team Blog – Term 2 Week 1

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Kia ora e te whānau,

A very warm welcome back to school for Term 2! It has been a wonderful and wet start to the term with a lot of time spent indoors!


Our School Values

At Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto we have five school values:

  • We Care - Arohaina te tāngata me te taio

  • We Get There Together - Mā tatou te waka e hoe

  • We Love Learning - He taonga te ako

  • We Love Challenge - Nau mai te wero

  • We Make a Difference - Nā matou he rerekē te ao

This week, we have focused on our values of 'We Care' and 'We Make a Difference' to ensure that we all have happy days at school. Ngā tamariki have been amazing, showing inclusion, kindness, and consideration towards each other.



Our School Values


Our word of the week is upstander. An upstander is someone who speaks or acts in support of someone who is being mistreated. A fun way to learn about this was to go on an adventure with Oat the Goat. Feel free to let your child show you Oat the Goat's journey. Here is the link.



Concept-Based Curriculum (Inquiry)

Our school-wide concept-based curriculum focus this year is change. During Term 2, we are learning about change in Science.

This week, we learnt that adding ingredients creates change (structure, texture, colour and taste). Our first experiment involved children measuring ingredients to make milk. We then added vinegar to see what would happen. We noticed that the texture changed, and then the milk curdled. Ew!

Here were some of the hypotheses that children came up with before doing the experiment:

"The milk powder will change the colour." - Isla

"The water will go higher when the powder is added." - Frankie

"The water might turn purple." - Mohamed

"Adding vinegar might change the water's colour." - Beau

"There will be an explosion." - Jasper











We hope you have a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing you next week.

The Koru team

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

elizabeth.drummond@beckenham.school.nz

niquita.dalley@beckenham.school.nz

stacey.mclachlan@beckenham.school.nz



Koru Team Blog: Term 1 Week 11 (11/04/2025)

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Kia ora e te whānau,

Wow, we have made it to the end of our first term for 2025! We would love to say a massive 'thank you' to all our tamariki and whānau for showing our school value 'We Get There Together - Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoe'. 

Here are a few things our children have loved about being in the Koru team:


"I like playing with the Lego and drawing."


"I am showing We Care by listening to others."


"I love sitting at the yellow jellybean table for Literacy and learning new letter sounds."


"I love making new friends."


"I like learning."


"I like drawing with my friends."


"I like playing on the car mat with special cars."


"I like our teachers."


"I like going to Treemendous and the Junior Playground at Little Play and Big Play."


House Groups:
Our Koru children have been allocated a 'House Group' to belong to: Fisher, Heathcote, Tennyson and Waimea. Children from the same family/whānau are put into the same house. Each house group has it's own chant and tamariki learn this so they can participate in the house chant at sports and special events, and in Celebration Assemblies if their house has won the house points for the fortnight. You can find the House Chants here, and there are also videos that you can share with your child to help them learn their house chant. Each house has its own colour, and there are House Shirts that are an optional part of the school uniform, that can be purchased and worn on Fridays, or sports/special event days as advised in the newsletter.

House Games:
In Term 1 and 4, House Leaders from the Kauri Hub take House Games for all the Beckenham tamariki. Our Koru children played many fun games with the House Leaders and children from their House Group. Some favourite games were a sandpit treasure hunt, cat and mouse, hula hoop and ball team challenges and Duck, Duck, Goose! 

Cat and Mouse

Team ball challenges

News for Term 2:
We warmly welcome Niquita to Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto next term. Niquita will be our third Home Group teacher to join our Koru team. 

Kōmanawa block (the classroom up the ramp) is undertaking some building work, starting in the school holidays and will be completed around the middle of Term 2. Once this work is complete, our Koru team will start to use this learning space too.

Kiss and Drop
As more children are starting in the Koru team, our hub can feel a little overwhelming for some tamariki in the morning. Please aim to "kiss and drop" your child off at the door, rather than entering the hub with them. This will help set your children up for a calm, quiet, and successful transition in the morning. Thank you for your support with this!

Learning Through Play
Box construction continues to be a popular activity in the Koru team. If you have any boxes that you would usually put in the recycling, please send them our way! Our children love to stick, colour, shape, cut, decorate and paint. 

Have a wonderful break,

Ngā mihi nui,
Koru Team
Katie, Elizabeth, Stacey, Lucy, Maisy, Denise