Author Archives: Nick Bruce

Kōwhai News Term 1 Week 7

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Kia ora everyone,

Here is the latest news from the Kōwhai hub.

GetWise Visit

This week we learnt about financial literacy with Jeff, a guest educator from ASB Bank.

Jeff was lots of fun and used interactive activities and practical examples to teach the children about important financial concepts such as saving, budgeting, and managing money. The students were actively engaged, asked questions, and participated with great enthusiasm in the lessons.

Emma Nahna Visit

We are fortunate to have the wonderful Emma Nahna, Speech-Language Therapist and Literacy Consultant, coming to run a whānau workshop this term. Emma is extremely knowledgeable and an engaging speaker. Her mission is to support educators and parents “...to grow every child into a successful reader and writer.”

Emma will be running a whānau workshop on Thursday 23rd March at 5:30pm for our Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto whānau. The first hour and a half will cover the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of structured literacy across the school and how you can support your learner at home. The last half an hour of the session will emphasise the importance of continuing to follow a structured literacy approach into the senior levels of the school, and will delve into morphology (the study of the forms of words) and syntax (the arrangement of words to create sentences).

Photo credit: Sound Foundations for Literacy Website
https://soundfoundations.co.nz/about/

Literacy Home Learning

We recently sent home a home learning pack containing spelling booklets and information about our literacy home learning programme. An online version of this information can be found here.

If your child is bringing home Pip and Tim books then they are working through the structured literacy programme. We have recorded some videos to support your understanding of what our structured literacy stages look like and to explain what you can do to support your learner at home. You can access the videos from the links below:

Reading & Library Folders

Finally, we ask that you ensure that your child brings a reading folder to school every day so they can take their literacy books home to read. The folders help to protect our precious books from damage so that we have them in use for longer. Also, your child will need to have a library folder if they want to issue any library books as Anne, our librarian, has a strict policy of only issuing books to those who have a folder. If you are not sure which day is library day for your child, please ask your homegroup teacher.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

Have a lovely weekend. 

Ngā mihi, 

The Kōwhai Team

Kōwhai News Term 4 Week 7

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Kia ora koutou,

This term has been full of excitement! We have recently had a big focus on transitioning in preparation for 2023. The Year 4 children have had a visit to the Pōhutukawa team and the Year 3s have had Discovery with the Year 2s. All the visits have been very successful so far and enjoyed by all!

Playground

Our new junior playground opened recently and is very popular. Here are some photos of the children's favourite playground activities. 





Concert

We were privileged to enjoy two fantastic concerts last week which showcased some of our students' musical talent. Thank you to the students who performed. You were outstanding!





Kapa Haka Performance

On Wednesday, the Year 3/4 Kapa Haka group performed 5 songs at the Community Picnic and they were amazing. The children really rose to the occasion and gave it their all. Thank you to all the whānau who came to support them.




Book Return

As the school year draws to a close, we kindly ask that all Pip and Tim books are returned to school by the end of next week.

Have a great weekend!


Kōwhai News Term 3 Week 5

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Te Whare Tapa Whā

This week, we have been exploring our school's new wellbeing definition with our students. It is based on Mason Durie’s Hauora model. The students have completed a word sort to learn more about the actions and behaviour that comprise each element of the definition. We have also created role plays of how we show the definition in our own lives. 


Rākau 

The children have been designing and creating rākau (sticks) to perform traditional Māori stick games. Here is a photo of some of their rākau designs.


Book Character Day

The children had lots of fun dressing up for Book Character Day last week. Here are some of their costumes.







Amazing Dancers

Congratulations to Caoimhe, Penelope, Izzy and Poppy who performed a dance at assembly last week. They spent weeks choreographing and practising it. Their performance was outstanding.

Have a great weekend!


Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 3

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Kia ora whānau,

We have been doing a lot of exciting activities in the Kōwhai Hub this week.

Discovery

This term, during Discovery, a group of children have been learning to write computer programmes using Scratch. The children have been learning about concepts such as events, if statements, loops and variables. Some children have been making their own computer games while others have been programming interactive stories.




Science

We have been learning a lot during our science lessons and have been having lots of fun at the same time. Here are some photos of our crystal growing experiment.




Statistics

Next week, we will be starting a new maths topic focusing on statistical literacy and investigations. The children will be learning about fair surveys, graphs, spreadsheets and more.

Celebration Assembly

Last week, we were able to have Celebration Assembly indoors for the first time in months. It was great to be able to get together again. At the moment, half the school goes to assembly at one time to help us maintain a safe level of social distancing.

That's all for this week.

The Kōwhai Team

Cyber Safety and BYOD Agreements

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Kia ora koutou


Last Friday, we sent out a Learning Conference newsletter that did not have the links to the cyber safety agreements. Here is the cyber safety section of that newsletter with the links attached.

Cyber safety Agreements (all students) and BYOD Agreements (Y5-8 students)

You are encouraged to take some time before the Learning Conferences to read through our cyber safety agreements so that you can bring any questions you might have about them to the Learning Conference. At the Learning Conference, you will be given a copy of these agreements to sign.