Koru Team News 2026

Term 1, Week 4

This week we began our literacy group sessions. You may have heard your children talk about the yellow jelly bean table! This is where our literacy groups take place. At Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto we follow a Structured Literacy approach to reading. Your children will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. Your child could practice writing them as well as saying the pure sounds each letter makes. Heart words, these are words that cannot be sounded out, will also start coming home for children to practise. Once they are proficient in segmenting and blending the first 8 sounds together, and know the heart words, they will start bringing home decodable books to read with you at home. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to their success at decoding words, so this stage may take longer for some learners. It is exciting to see their progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practise with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once they are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

Evacuation Drill

Each term we have a schoolwide practice drill on a different type of emergency situation. On Wednesday morning we had a practice fire evacuation drill. We talked about it a lot and even had our own mini practice the day before. The children were amazing during the drill, so calm and listened so well. We were very impressed.

Whare Kotahitanga

On Wednesday we had our first Whare Kotahitanga event. It was lots of fun! Whare Kotahitanga is a refreshed house programme focused on connection, belonging, and unity rather than competition. It is being run on Wednesday afternoons for the next 3 weeks. During the sessions each house is taking part in a different activity. Over the 4 week programme each house will rotate around the 4 different activities. Ask your little house member what the activity for their house was this week.

Photos from Learning Through Play

Photos from one of our Maths lessons this week - How many puppies are in the basket and how many are out of the basket? Can you write the equation?

Reminders

• Hats are needed each day at school for terms 1 & 2
• Our library day is Friday so books need to be brought back to school before Friday
• Poetry books go home on a Friday and can come back any day before the next Friday
• House tee shirts can be worn on the next 3 Wednesdays - these are optional uniform items and can be purchased from the school office.
• There has been quite a lot of sickness across the school, if your child is unwell please keep them home to prevent spreading bugs.

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

We have all been enjoying these warm days and the opportunity to spend some of our Learning Through Play sessions playing outside. There has been lots of activity in the sandpit, a favourite this week has been excavating ponds and filling them with water from the outside tap. You may have noticed some sandy shoes coming home! As the weather continues to warm up we will be involving more water play during Learning Through Play, so please make sure your child has a change of clothes in their school bag, incase they do get a bit wet when playing.

Cyber Safety

During the afternoons in week 3 (last week), we completed a unit on Cyber Safety. This unit focused on sharing personal information online and thinking about what kind of people we can trust when sharing our personal details online. We followed Hector the Dolphin, and his friends, as they navigated their way through some different online situations. During week 6 we will continue with Cyber Safety with the focus on understanding that their emotions can be a powerful tool to assess unsafe situations, the importance of checking with an adult before going online, and being open about their online experiences with a trusted adult.

Life Education

We enjoyed our first visit to meet Harold in the Life Education classroom this week. This weeks session was on Big Emotions, learning that all emotions are important but we don't want to get stuck in some emotions for too long. After we identified some different emotions and how they make us feel, Helly the Educator, in the van, showed us a few things we could do to try to move out of being in a 'stuck' feeling back into a 'stay' feeling. More information about the second lesson (next week) and some photos will be in our next blog.

We have a couple of short weeks coming up:

• Next Friday, 15th November, is Canterbury Anniversary Day
• Monday 18th November is a Staff Only Day so school will be closed to students 

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

A very warm welcome to Alex, Dante and Harry who have joined our team recently. You've made a wonderful start to school, tamariki - well done!

Preschool visits - On Fridays we have been welcoming visits from some of our local preschools. This is a great chance for some of our tamariki to see their past teachers and friends from preschool. The children just love showing their preschool friends around the hub and playing with them again! Their teachers also enjoy seeing how they have settled into school.

Word of the Week - Each week our kura has a school-wide Word of the Week. This weeks word is Determination. The Word of the Week is introduced each day in the daily notices and often there will be a story or short video clip to demonstrate the word in action. These words show us how we can live our school values. We have great discussions about the word and talk about the various ways we can demonstrate the word during our day. Each word is revisited each term so the children get to know them well and can identify ways they, and others, can show the word. Next weeks Word of the Week is Cooperation. Other words we use are, upstander, honesty, inclusion, kindness, respect, resilience, friendship, and responsibility.

Calendar Art -You might have noticed the very cute calendar artwork has been finished and is on display in the hubs. If your child is in Georgia's or Elizabeth's Home Group you will be able to purchase their artwork either as a calendar, a notebook, a mouse pad, or a pack of greeting cards. These make great gifts for relatives! This is a PTA fundraiser. Keep a look out for the order form coming home soon. 

Sunhats - A little heads up as we move into some sunnier weather, it is compulsory for all children to wear a hat in Terms 1 and 4 when outside at school. These can be plain black or red, in either a wide brimmed style, or bucket hat. They can be purchased from Mainland Uniforms or other clothing retailers. Please send these to school clearly named.

Changes to contact details - If there has been any change to your contact details, or those of the emergency person you have for your child, please advise the office so they can be updated.

Staying Safe Online Scams - People in New Zealand are losing millions of dollars to scammers each year - and this is just the figures reported to Netsafe so the actual figure is likely much higher! It's important that you and your tamarilki know what to look out for to avoid scams. Netsafe have put their best advice together to help you stay safe online and stay away from scams.
Read their scam tips here. 

Look at our great little set ups using different equipment in the classroom.

We have been enjoying the beautiful spring weather outside...

 Kia ora, e te whanau,

This term is whizzing by! Can you believe we are halfway through Term 3 already?

It was great fun seeing all the children and teachers dressed up for Book Character Dress Up Day on Friday of Week 4. There were some amazing costumes!

Each week our kura has a 'Word of the Week', which is a focus across all teams. This week's word is 'kindness'. Throughout the week, we have lots of discussions about what the word means and how we can demonstrate the word in and out of the classroom. We love seeing how the children are displaying the word of the week throughout the day, and how they use the word to describe situations that happen during their play. It's always so neat hearing our learners use previous 'words of the week' in their explanations and discussions with teachers and peers too. Next week's 'Word of the Week' is 'resilience'.

We hope you are all having a lovely weekend together, and we look forward to the week ahead. 

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Georgia, Elizabeth, Nicola, Stacey and Jeanette