Author Archives: Amber Donovan

Kahikatea Newsletter Week 1 Term 2

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 Welcome Back Everyone! 

We hope you have had time to relax with your child/children over the school break. There are some important events and activities coming up this term including: 

School Cross Country ( Tuesday May 11th) 

Visit to the Botanic Gardens (May 24th & 25th) 

Staff Only Day ( Friday May 21st and Tuesday 8th June) 


Autumn/Winter Term

As the weather begins to change we invite you to please send you child to school with a named school jersey. Your child/ren are not required to bring their school sunhat during Term 2 and 3. 

If you wish to send a pair of warm socks or slippers to school for your child to wear inside please ensure these items are clearly named. 

Raincoats/Jackets/Gumboots need to be clearly named also. 


Cross Country Practices 

Teachers will be taking their homegroups out to the big field each afternoon to practice running the cross country course. Year 1 and 2 students will run a single lap of the Beckenham Park. 

Please send your child to school each day in footwear appropriate for running. Thanks! 


Visit to the Botanic Gardens 

We still need adult helpers for our trip to the gardens in late May. If you are able to support Amber or Charlotte's homegroups (Monday 24th May) OR Katie or Lisa's homegroup (Tuesday 25th May) please email charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz 

Communication with teachers

Teachers are in meetings daily from 8.15am to 8.30am and again from 3.15pm three to four times a week. 

If you need to make a time to meet with you child's homegroup teacher please email them. 

It is so nice to see everyone! Here are some first day back photos...

















Kahikatea Team Newsletter TERM 1 Week 11

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Cross Country

Our whole school cross country is coming up at the start of next term. This will be held on Tuesday the 11th of May in the afternoon. 
Child/ren will run in Year Groups.
Kahikatea is made up of Year 1 and Year 2 students. Some of our Koru students will run with our Year 1s. 
Seniors will have an earlier lunch and start first. The Junior students will start later in the afternoon. Timings will be confirmed during Week 1 of the Term 2 and sent out to you via the school newsletter. 

We encourage all the students to embrace our school value "We Love Challenge" and to try their very best. While for the majority this will be participating as a runner, there will be additional ways to make sure all our tamariki are involved in the event. 
Teams have started our practices already and will continue during the first week of Term 2. We know that some children will enjoy practicing over the holidays. Happy running!


Upcoming Excursion to Hagley Park & the Museum


Team Kahikatea will enjoy a fantastic excursion to Hagley Park to undertake a 'Park Explorers' Programme with the Council's Learning in Action Team, as well as a visit to the Museum to learn about Canterbury's history within the 'Christchurch Street' area. 

Our learning focuses are: 
* change in our local community 
* change in nature 
* life processes in nature
* biodiversity  
* scientific skills: observation, categorising, describing
* working together, communicating ideas and reflecting on our growing knowledge

We would love to start organising parent helpers for this event. Amber's and Charlotte's home groups will take the excursion on Mon 24/5/21, and Katie’s and Lisa’s groups will go on Tues 25/5/21. The trip will take a full day. 

If you would like to be a parent helper, please email Charlotte on charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz with your name, phone number, and your child's name. Note: unfortunately, younger siblings cannot come.


Handwriting & How You Can Help Your Child

The first start of our handwriting programme, Kinetic Letters (TM) is making bodies stronger. We work on strengthening different areas of our body, which supports our ability to write clearly and easily. Here are some the activities we do to strengthen each part of our body, and you might try practicing at home: 
* Pelvic Girdle: crawling, jumping, hopping, climbing 
* Shoulder Girdle: plank, chair or floor push-ups, pull-ups (e.g. on jungle gym or bars)
* Forearm and Wrist: practice the pencil grip, pegging, blocks, playdough, making (construction), finger action rhymes
* Positions for handwriting: practice sitting properly with back on chair, and legs under table; sitting crossed legged with straight backs
See teachers if you would like more ideas. 

Wellbeing 

We have started learning about emotions and feelings over the last fortnight. 
We have discussed how emotions can change our facial expressions, practised showing, describing and naming different emotions. Simply by naming emotions, we can help ourselves to manage them. 
Children watched and talked about this video (you might like to watch at home) and we made our feelings monsters.




ESOL Learning 

Our ESOL students have been working on giving directions, location language and prepositions, by playing games and giving directions 
to peers during their classes with Jeanette. Key terms we have discussed include: first, last, after, next, up, down, under, on, beside, inside, 
underneath and behind. 
Students have also shared aspects of their own cultures, which we have collated into a display in our hub:


 
Thank you for all your support this term and for making time to meet us for learning conferences in Week 11. We wish you all a very safe and happy holiday! 


Amber, Charlotte, Lisa & Katie 




Home Learning and our Structured Literacy Workshop

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Kia ora whānau,

You will notice that there are some literacy Home Learning resources in your child's reading folder this week. These resources are to support what they are learning in their structured literacy lessons. More alphabet letters and resources, such as heart words will be added. 

If you have queries about the structured literacy programme or are interested to hear more about it, please join us for the workshop detailed below.

The Structured Literacy Approach: Parents and Caregivers workshop - understanding how our children learn to read.

Join us in the staffroom at 3.15 pm or 7:00pm on Tuesday 30th March 2021.

Caroline Morritt, our Resource Teacher of Literacy will explain this approach to teaching reading and writing. Based on the Science of Reading, Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto uses an explicit, systematic structured literacy approach to build a strong literacy foundation.

Decodable books support targeted classroom teaching of phonological awareness and blending and segmenting skills for accurate, automatic reading and spelling. 


Team Kahikatea (Lisa, Charlotte, Amber & Katie) 

School-wide Structured Literacy

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 Kia ora Whanau,

This is an information letter providing an update around our school-wide approach to teaching Reading and Writing -  Structured Literacy. 

The Structured Literacy approach is based on over 40 years of world-wide academic research. It is an approach in which children are taught systematically and explicitly to firstly recognise speech sounds, as our brains are designed primarily to process speech. Reading and writing are human inventions, so it is vital we work from speech and then move to print. Children are taught to recognise individual words, syllables, onset sounds, rime and individual sounds in a word.

At the same time, children are gradually introduced to the letters of the alphabet and the sounds the letters represent. They are also taught to write the letters. As the children increase their letter/sound knowledge, they will be shown how to read and write words with these letters. 

The children will be learning to read using decodable books. Stage 1 of these books contain words the children can decode (sound out) using the first group of 8 letters (m, s, f, a, p, t, c and i). Stage 2 introduces 8 more letters, and so on. As the English language is not phonetic, the teachers will gradually introduce the spelling rules and patterns we need to know in order to read and write in English. The books we will be using follow a sequence and will support the teaching. 

Your child will not necessarily bring books home straight away. They need to know the first 8 letters and the sounds they represent, as well as the skills of segmenting and blending sounds, before being given a text. This is to ensure success and accurate reading, rather than guessing. In the first instance, we will be supplying you with flashcards for each of the sounds the children are being taught. Reinforcing the sounds they have learnt at school, when at home with you, will be extremely helpful for your child. 

In our Senior Classes the explicit, sequential teaching will be done with small target groups and also through daily whole class phonological awareness and spelling sessions.

When your child brings their Literacy Folder home (NE to Year 4), you will find literacy resources that you can use at home to support their learning. Please ensure the folder is returned to school the next day with all the resources inside.

We are excited to be helping the tamariki with our fun, engaging and evidence-based literacy programme this year.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your child’s Home Group Teacher.



Kōwhai News Term 1 Week 5

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 Kia ora whānau, 

We have been a busy hub this week, starting into our new inquiry unit - exploring Canterbury historical life and how it has changed over time. Over the next few weeks the students will learn about the first waka to come to Aotearoa, changes in technology, fashion, school, animals, plants, housing and transport in Canterbury
. We will also be visiting Ferrymead for a day in Week 8. A notice about this will come out next week. 

We now have our library days set in stone for this term and they are as follows:

Nick and Rowe's homegroup - Monday

Laura's home group - Tuesday

Quynh and Meagan's homegroup - Wednesday. 

Please help your child by reminding them they need to bring their library folder with their books to return on their day of the week. 

During our Team Hui this week we had a discussion with the tamariki about our hub toilets, and making sure we keep them nice and tidy. We have had some instances of urine on the floor and around the toilet. Please help us by having a chat to your child about their toilet etiquette at school. Thank you! 

We have been busy in Discovery this week: 












We have been asked to pass on the following notice from the Southern Districts Cricket Club about Year 3/4 Girls Cricket. Please see the information below. 

Have a great weekend! 

The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Meagan, Rowe, Quynh and Nick