Pōhutukawa Team Newsletter – Term 2, Week 6, 2017

Dance

The children have begun practicing their dance routines in groups, with the help of our Jump Jamp team leaders.  Enthusiasm has been high with many children also practicing at home.  The routines are looking sharp, with high involvement and lots of smiles all round.




Writing

We are continuing with our descriptive writing.  This week, children have selected two animals and combined them to produce a hybrid animal with a unique new name.  The children have been focusing on using paragraphs correctly and including figurative language to add interest to their writing.  Here are some examples.


Cheamouse Hybrid
The Cheamouse is a cheetah and a mouse, all mixed up together.  The Cheamouse is a part of the Caouse family, which means big vicious cats and tiny little mice are all mixed up together like slime, mixed up in your hair.  The cheeky little Cheamouse has heaps of relatives like the pumping Puamouse, the terrifying Tiamouse and the leaping Lynamouse.
  
The Cheamouse loves to pounce on beautiful butterflies and loves to eat lovely luscious red cheesy meat from the best deli’s in Tokyo and the greenest caterpillars.
  
The Cheamouse is very spotty like a lady bug and is the size of the sweetest, medium sized, babies’ fist.  The Cheamouse makes the sound “meack”, a squeak and a tiny meow, mixed up together like a cake in a mixer.

The enemies of the Cheamouse are little rock-crawling crabs, birds and chickens.  They are from the deep, deep South of Hawaii. 

I am really glad that they aren’t so big, or we would probably all be dead by them violently smashing everything in its path.

By Hebe Butland.

The terrifying Chragon
A Chragon is a ferocious creature that lurks in the shadows of the African savannahs. It is rarely seen, but they are usually found in the rocky mountains where they sometimes live. They are a breed of dragon and cheetah.

They have deadly and dangerous abilities like their poison tipped tails and saliva. They are flying creatures with enormous wings making them powerful fliers. They are as fast as lightning in the midnight sky, but unlike their relative, the cheetah, they can go for hours on end without tiring.

They have light sand coloured scales with black spots and splashes of colour on them help to blend with the soft sand and grizzly grasslands.  They usually have hazel brown or yellow eyes but can have any colour.  They also have thick spikes down their backs, necks and tails and they have spots that glow like lightning in a midnight sky.

They like rocky mountain caves and cracks, boiling African plains and grasslands.

Now you have learnt about these terrifying creatures.  Would you want to go looking for them?
Probably not!

By Kate Dunstan.

The year 5 & 6 Basketball team

The year 5/6 backetball team have been playing on Thursday nights at Pioneer Stadium.  As a newly formed team they are really working very well together and have had some fantastic break aways and baskets.  What a team!  The Pioneer Basketball club are offering a July School Holidays clinic for boys and girls aged 6-13. The focus will be on shooting and footwork.  Please see the link below for more information.







Coping in a Changing World – Art in Hub 7

In term 2, Hub 7's inquiry topic is focusing on 'Coping in Changing World'.


As part of this inquiry our visual art has been motivated by the changing seasons.  We have been looking at the ways that the change in seasons affect our landscape, colours of foliage and sky, light, textures and temperature.  See our paintings below - a work in progress.










Term 3, Week 6 Newsletter

Cricket
Next week (Tuesday September 1st), the Christchurch Metro Cricket Association will be sending coaches out to Beckenham School to run 30 minute coaching sessions with our hubs. This will be a fantastic way of learning some cricket skills from the professionals.  These sessions will run outdoors if the weather is fine, and indoors if the weather is wet.  We look forward to their visit and hope the weather is nice!
Please remember to send your child along to school with appropriate sport shoes and clothing.

Gymnastics
A reminder to all families that gymnastics is now finished.  The children have thoroughly enjoyed these activities and we have noticed budding gymnasts practicing their moves in the playground!  Thank you to all the parents/caregivers for your support, and for ensuring that your children came to school wearing appropriate footwear/clothing.

New learning topic
Next week is week 7, time is flying by!  Our learning will be moving on, and the next topic we will focus on will be MLE’s.
As you will be aware Beckenham School’s classrooms will soon transform and transition into a MLE (Modern Learning Environment).  Therefore, our focus with the children will be to develop their understandings around the internal and external spaces in which they will be learning.  We will do this by encouraging the children to work collaboratively as we think about our future learning spaces.

Learning Conferences
A big thank you to all those parents/caregivers that attended their child’s learning conference this week.  It was a valuable way to share learning progress with you, and it was encouraging to see so many families attend.  If you haven’t organised a Learning Conference yet, please contact your teacher and we can make a time to meet before or after school to do this.