Welcome to Term 2 😃

It is wonderful to be able to welcome whanau into school grounds and for our school day to be returned to the usual 3pm. Thank you for continuing to follow our health and safety protocols and supporting your child/ren to do the same. We Get There Together!    

We are well into our learning programs and this week some children have a new literacy teacher. Please look in your child/childrens reading folder to find this HOME LEARNING notice: 

Kia ora e te Whānau,

Please find letter cards attached, for the stage your learner is working at in structured literacy. They can be cut up and put into the plastic bag and used at home. 

This is a copy of the Scope and Sequence your learner will be working through:

How can you help your child at home?

The emphasis in teaching spelling is to focus on the sound. Making the phoneme (sound) - grapheme (letter shape) connection is the first step in literacy learning.

Ensure that your child is saying the ‘pure’ sound without an ‘uh’ sound on the end, for example, ‘lllll’ rather than ‘luh’. Please refer to a Youtube clip, The Sounds of New Zealand English (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SePU-T4S-js) for more information on the sound that matches each of the letters.

In your pack, you will have the letters for the current level. It is helpful to look at the Scope and Sequence above to also revise what has been taught prior. 

Letter-Sound Connections

Speed Sounds: your child can look at each letter card and say the sound it represents. See if your child can do this at speed.

Writing the letters: you say the sounds and your learner can write the letters. If they are not confident with this yet, let them copy the letter cards. They could write them on a whiteboard, on paper, or could even make their own flashcards.

‘I Spy’: You can play games such as ‘I Spy’, using the letter sound (not the name).

Stepping Stones: Place the cards on the floor with the letter facing up, as if they are stepping stones across the river. Explain to your child that they have to cross the ‘river’ without falling in the water. As your child steps on each card they say the corresponding sound.

Fish or Memory: You could make up a matching set of letter cards, and use both sets to play Fish or Memory together, by placing both sets of cards face down on the table or floor. Each player has to be able to say the sound, if they are to keep a matching pair of cards.

Making words and non-words

Using the letters in the pack (and making cards for the letters taught prior), you can make CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). For example in stage 1, you could make words such as ‘map’, ‘tip’, ‘sit’. If you learner is feeling confident with this, try making some ‘non-words’- e.g. ‘mip’. This can be done as a reading task where you make the word/ non-word, and they read it, or they can build the word with the letters as you say it (e.g. “make the word sit”, and they select the ‘s’, ‘i’, ‘t’ from the letter pack). After your learner has built the word, they can also write it.  From stage 5, you can also focus on words with two consonants at the beginning or end e.g. slip, tilt

Practise decoding

When the decodable story books start to come home, your child will have already practised reading each book several times at school. The aim is for your child to be very confident as they read each text to you at home. If your learner does hesitate at any particular word, you could encourage and support them to segment and then blend the sounds in the word to decode that word. They could then re-read the sentence from the beginning to ensure fluency as they read. 

If you would like to learn more about Structured Literacy or the Science of Reading (as it is also called), a good place to start is the Little Learners Love Literacy website, littlelearnersloveliteracy.com.au, under the tab ‘Why Little Learners Love Literacy’.

Have fun with your children, as they learn the letter sounds and how to blend and segment them!

Health and Well-being

We still need you to let us know if any of our children test positive during the holidays, please.

If your child tests positive, please email me (principal@beckenham.school.nz) with their name, and the date they either started symptoms or tested positive. We will be forwarding numbers to the Ministry of Education through the holidays. 

If your child/children need to isloate at home do take a look at our  Learning at Home Page . It is being updated for Term 2 and will have new themes and activiites to explore. 

Up-coming Events

Kia ora Koutou!

What a fabulous and busy 5 weeks we have had in team Kahikatea. We have been very impressed with the hard work from all of our Tamariki. Thank you for continuing to support us at this time, especially by keeping up to date with information being shared via HERO. If you are having any trouble with this or you are not recieving notices or news from school please let us know. 

Kete Focus 

This week we have been focusing on using good manners, including waiting for our turn to talk, waiting patiently in a line to wash our hands, saying thank you and being polite to each other. When we do this consistently we are showing our school values: We Care & We Make a Difference. 

You can ask your child/children: how and when do you show your manners at school? 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting Program

We are very excited to be starting our Kinetic Handwriting lessons. Keep an eye out for the Bounce and Skip monkeys as they may come home with your child. If Bounce and Skip come for a visit they will be accompanied by a book with instructions for their visit home.

Jerseys and Hats 

A reminder that as the weather starts to cool down, please ensure that your child’s jersey is clearly named.

Every child is expected to be wearing their hat when they are outside. If your child has lost or misplaced their sunhat please encourage them to look for it here at school first and if it cannot be found please replace it.

Literacy Groups

Our team is in the process of carrying out our assessment schedule for literacy and once completed we will look at our groupings. 

We are continuing to with our oral language programs, shared reading with follow up activities, poetry, writing, spelling, phonemic awareness, handwriting and spelling activities. 

PLEASE NOTE: your child will not bring a decodable text home everyday. These are teaching books which are used many times by the teacher. Only when we know your child can read it fluently and with expression will we send it home. 

CONTINUE to read to your child/children at home, enjoy reading aloud and encourage them to explore books in all forms, such as picutre books, nursery rhymes, poems, non-fiction, chapter books and magazines. 

Contributions

We love having recycling (boxes, newspapers, empty egg cartons ect) for box/construction activities. If you have any spare please send it in with your child - we would greatly appreciate it!

Finally, here are some photos of our hub and our gorgeous tamariki: 

Arohanui, Team Kahikatea 

Morning Drop Off 

We are seeing lots of happy kids arriving at the Sandwich Road entrance each morning. Thank you so much for supporting your child to do this with ease. A quick hug and kiss goodbye is working so well for many of our tamariki. If you think your child needs any extra support at this time please let your child's teacher know. 

Literacy 

From Tuesday we will be starting group literacy lessons. We will run literacy (reading and wrting lessons) 4x a week from 9.15am to 10.15am. 

Our literacy program includes: 

• shared reading
• poetry
• oral language and phonemic awareness
• handwriting
• alphabet knowledge and phonics
• writing
• spelling

Reminders

Please name your childs lunchbox (including any small containers), drink bottle, sunhat and school jersey

Sunhats must be worn during PE and breaktimes

Please remind your child/children to please keep their shoes on at school. Children who do take their shoes off are encouraged to place them on one of the shoe racks in the hub and to put their socks into their shoes. 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting 

We will be starting this program again soon (once our new staff have completed the online training). 

The Bounce and Skip monkeys are all in need of some new jackets. If you have some sewing skills and would like to make some new ones that would be amazing!

Please email amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz if you are able to help. 

Enjoy these gorgeous photos of our tamariki engaged in Learning Through Play...

Gymnastics 

Wow! What an incredible start we have had to gymnastics in Kahikatea.

It has been wonderful to see our tamariki showing each of our Kete Values during the sessions.

We Love Challenge Nau mai te wero

- We love trying new things at gymnastics

- When something is hard we try and try again

- We know that challenge is good!

- It feels great when we achieve new things!

We Make a Difference Nā mātou he rerekē te ao 

- We encourage each other when things are tricky

- We help each other

- We show each other how to do things

- We let our coaches and bus driver know that we appreciate them by saying thank you

- We follow the rules at gymnastics to keep everyone safe

We Love Learning He taonga te ako

- It feels great to learn new things!

- We listen to our coaches so that we know what to do

- We practise and practise until we get it

- We know how important movement is for our bodies

- We ask questions and try to improve all the time

We Care Arohaina te tāngata me te taiao

- We show others kindness and use our manners

- We follow the rules to keep others and ourselves safe

- We help others if they fall down

- We make sure that everyone gets a turn

We Get There Together Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoe

- We encourage each other

- We take turns and wait patiently

- We listen to our coaches

- We put the equipment back in the right place

- We move safely to the bus

Latest News in our ESOL Classes

Read-a-thon and Book Character Dress-up Day 

 Gymnastics Social Story