Author Archives: Amber Donovan

Kahikatea Newsletter Week 5 Term 2

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Reminders

Tuesday 8th: June Staff Only Day 

Thursday 10th: Park Explorers Trip - Amber & Charlotte's Home Groups

Library days: 

    -Katie and Lisa's Home Groups- Tuesdays (Thursday for week 6 only)

    -Amber and Charlotte's Home Groups- Thursdays (no library day week 6 due to trip)

Junior Park Explorers and Museum Trip

Katie and Lisa's home groups had a fabulous trip to the Botanic Gardens and Museum last week. Thanks so much to all of the whānau helpers for coming to support us on this trip. We were very lucky with the weather and the tamariki had a wonderful time. Amber and Charlotte's home groups are looking forward to their trip on the 10th June. Thanks to all of our helpers for rescheduling.

Learner voice:

Pippa- "I liked the museum and all of the stuff we had to figure out. We worked out the old fashioned washing board. At the beginning I thought it was something to do with music."

Shikani- "My favourite bit was when we went to visit the gardens and we were pretending to be birds, buzzy bees and ladybugs. I learnt that they are special to us because they help us survive."

Max G: "I liked it when I rode the bike at the museum. I liked the horse. I did like playing in the playground."

Myra: "I loved the games that we played. We learnt to be birds. We learnt about them and we had fun. I also loved the big, giant bike."

James: "I liked guessing the things at the museum. I liked the botanical gardens and climbing the tree."

Jeremy: "I liked the museum because we guessed the old things from the olden days."

Zak: "I liked nature and learning about the creatures. I found a bug under leaves and wood."




















Sandpit

We are loving our new sandpit toys! Thanks to the PTA and Outdoor Spaces team for these. We have been working on showing our values when using these toys, especially 'We Care' and 'We Get There Together'



Here are some more photos of our learners for the last week:






Maths : making patterns

















TODAY’S TRIP IS CANCELLED DUE TO THE WEATHER

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 Kia ora whanau, 

Today's trip to the museum and gardens is CANCELLED due to the weather. We had a call from the CCC to say the combination of showers/rain and the wind will make the event difficult to run. 

This affects Amber and Charlottes home groups. 

At this stage tomorrow we expect the trip for Lisa and Katies home groups to go ahead. 


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)