Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been wonderful to connect with our community during Learning Conferences last week, and with our Matariki Whānau Rōpu hui this week. Thanks for coming along!

Matariki

We have been learning about Matariki through story telling, craft and singing. Our learners loved having whānau in the hub and joining in with the Matariki activities on Wednesday night. 

Here are some photos:

Mathematics

Our learners have been so engaged in our 'Notice, Think, Wonder' prompts. Here are some of the thoughts that we came up with for the following image:

Term 1 Week 9

Kia ora e te whānau,

What a busy couple of weeks we have had! A highlight, of course, was our team trip to Ferrymead. It was a successful day, with our learners getting to experience a range of activities and transport themselves back to the 'olden days'. Another big thank you to our whānau helpers, you were wonderful.

Student Voice

"My favourite part was making an olden day toy."- Thalia

"We got to go on a tram! It was the only tram I've been on in my whole entire life that doesn't have walls!" - Neasa

"I liked the chickens, dressing up, and the river." - Sarah

"I liked the chickens 'cos they were fun to look at! My favourite thing to play with was the yo-yo." -Jace

"I liked having activities and the playground. I liked the horse toys and the skipping ropes." - Finn

"I liked the toy babies and the bikes!" - Maryam

"I liked the costumes!" - James

Home Spaces

On Thursday, we moved home spaces. Each teacher moved clockwise around the hub which means that:

- Katie's home group is in the Theatre

- Lisa and Quynh's home group is in the Atrium

- Krystal's home group is in the Breakout space

- Amber's home group is in the Nook

Making this move before the end of the term has allowed all of our learners to know where they will be when returning to school at the start of Term 2.

Uniform/ Lost Property

As summer draws to a close and Term 2 and 3 are ahead, sun hats are no longer a requirement at school. We will send home all hats on the last day of term. We will need them back at school for Term 4.

Over the holidays please ensure that all of the uniform items that belong to your child are clearly and accurately named. In some cases, there is a sibling's or previous owner's name on labels, which makes it tricky to reunite the items with their owner. 

For Terms 2 and 3, your child is welcome to bring gumboots and jackets to school. We have shoe racks and clothing racks to use for these items.  Please make sure these are also clearly named.

Innovation

We continue our focus on innovation into Term 2, where the main focus is going to be on following a design process to make an instrument. We will explore different types of music and instruments, listen to a live percussion performance, learn about the technology design process, and make our instruments. 

We are looking for items to create these instruments with, such as...

- clean tin cans (with no sharp edges)

- clean plastic containers or bottles (not milk bottles)

- glass jars

- lids (tin or plastic)

- tissue boxes

- other small boxes

- cardboard tubes

- balloons

- thick cardboard

- rubber bands

Ferrymead Photos

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Kia ora e te whānau,

Thank you for taking the time to attend Learning Conferences this week. The opportunity to touch base with each whānau prior to starting the new school year is invaluable. We really enjoyed hearing about each child's holiday break and share in their strengths and next steps. 

We had a wonderful first two days back at school! The air conditioning kept us cool as the sun blazed outside. It was wonderful to connect with our home group learners and get to know each other as a team. What really stood out to us was the positivity in the hub. The children were excited to be back at school and keen to give new things a go!

Play Areas

We went on a boundary walk on Thursday to show children the areas that they can play in during break times. The following was also shared with children...

Nuts at School

Kia ora e te whānau,

Our huge highlight this week has been swimming! We are so proud of our tamariki showing our kete values, 'We Love Challenge' and 'We Love Learning'. They have also demonstrated our key competencies of 'managing self' and 'participating and contributing'. Each day the changing process has become faster and lost property is becoming slightly less!

The focus of our swimming lessons has been on safety in the water:

For some of our tamariki, swimming has been a new experience that was initially a little scary. A VERY exciting comment heard from one of our learners was: "Look at me, I'm doing bubbles in the water and it's only my third day in the pool!!"

Thanks again to our wonderful parent helpers, for supporting our learners at the pool.

Here are some photo highlights from the week:

Kia ora e te whānau,

We are lucky to have two University of Canterbury speech-language therapy students with us this term, Lilly and Sarah. They are on their final placement before joining the workforce! Lisa Collier is a registered Speech-Language Therapist (SLT) as well as a teacher, and will be supervising the students. 

Lilly and Sarah will be working with many of our Kahikatea learners over the course of the term, in varying capacities. If Lisa currently works with your learner, then it is likely the students will also be part of their learning programme.

Please see a brief introduction from Sarah and Lilly, below.

If you have any questions, please contact lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz

Ngā mihi nui,

The Kahikatea Team

Sarah & Lilly

Kia ora everyone, 

I am Sarah a speech-language student in my fourth and final year of study. I am looking forward to working with Lisa, and meeting many learners during this experience. 

Before this placement, I have most recently had the opportunity to work with adults and children who have voice and fluency disorders, which allowed me to grow my knowledge and develop interest in areas that I did not have previously. 

I have great interest in working with children with complex needs; specifically, autism, and individuals requiring an AAC device. I look forward to the time that I will be spending at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto, and everything that I will learn and take away from this experience, which will allow me to grow as a speech-language therapist.

Ngā mihi,

Sarah Keppel