Kia ora e te whānau,

We have received the timetable for the Cross Country next Tuesday from Jenny, who has given us the approximate times that each race will be starting. The first race will be the Year 8 race from 1:35pm and the races will on a staggered start at 10 minutes from that point.

For us in Pōhutukawa the races are expected to start as follows:

Year 6 - 1:55pm

Year 5 - 2:05pm

Please note that the time is different than that on the Community Calendar. Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all.

We hope everyone was able to enjoy some extra family time over the holidays. The tamariki have come back looking rested and revitalised, and we are ready for another fantastic term in Pōhutukawa. 

Wellbeing/Hauora

We have also started the term with some stunning weather -very chilly mornings and very warm afternoons! With some similar weather forecast, our message to the children is around the importance of drinking plenty of water and taking off jackets and polar fleeces in the afternoon as we are noticing a big variance in temperatures through the day.

In saying that, the colder weather is ahead, and with it comes the inevitable surge in coughs and sniffles.  We will be vigilant (particularly at the start of the term) in promoting good hygiene practices. Reminders about regular hand washing, sneezing into elbows and using and discarding tissues are all good discussions we will be having at school and would be great to have reinforced at home, as well. Mā tātou kātoa te waka e hoe, we are all in the waka together.

"Cool Curriculum Classes"

We love alliteration in Pōhutukawa, and our "cool curriculum classes" are continuing with some changes this term. Anna will still be teaching Social Sciences and investigating World Cultures, incorporating this with our concept of Change as the term progresses. Rae is delving into Te Ao Māori with a look at comparing and contrasting Myths and Legends, as well as learning Te Reo Māori. Steve is continuing the Science investigation we started last year with the Urban Eel Project/Te Tuna Tāone and looking at how we can use the findings to make a difference to the health of the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho te awa. Finally, Gayle is covering Digital Technologies and working with the tamariki on coding. There is a lot of learning that will be happening over the term in CCC, so we encourage you to keep chatting about what we are covering in these courses with your tamariki. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning.

Cross Country - Tuesday May 11th

More alliteration, this time our whole school cross country, which is coming up next week. It was so great to see many of the tamariki hit the ground running - literally - and come back to school having done some training over the holidays. We are gearing up for the event by having daily training on the park, which the students are tracking on their cross country training goal sheet. Nau mai te wero, bring on the challenge! We are also encouraging the students to think about some of these goals, depending on their level of confidence, as we lead up to Cross Country next Tuesday:

• I can run until I get too puffed and then 'walk a cone, run a cone' until time is up.
• I can jog for the whole time without stopping.
• I feel more comfortable running 
• I feel great doing regular exercise
• I feel great challenging myself
• I feel great achieving my goals
• I have shown a positive attitude towards cross country training

Winter Sport

Winter sport starts in Week 5 of this term. We would love to be able to provide every child who wants to participate in competitive winter sport a place in a sports team. To make this possible, we are still looking for adults to accompany teams. Ideally, this adult would be comfortable having a go at refereeing a game. This is something we can support you in learning how to do if you are new to it. If you are not comfortable refereeing but would be available to support a team, please do still get in touch. The most important thing we need is for the children to be adequately supervised.  

At the moment we do not have enough adults for competitive winter sport to go ahead this year. 

Currently, we are still looking for:

Netball: 2 x year 5/6 and 2 x year 7/8

Hockey: 2 x year 5/6 and 1 x year 7/8

Football: 1 x year 5/6 and 1 x year 7/8 

Important Dates

Tuesday, May 11 - School Cross Country, 11:45 am 

Friday, May 21 - Staff Only Day

Monday, June 7 - Queen's Birthday (School closed)

Tuesday, June 8 - Staff Only Day

Urban Eel Project/Tuna Tāone

Last Friday we spent a fantastic day of scientific inquiry down at our river/ awa investigating the health of our river and discovering many things about the habitat. Thank you once again to all of the whānau that made it possible by being there as tautoko, support, and guidance for the tamariki. Jenny Bond from the Waterways Trust made a follow-up visit on Monday this week and the students were able to reflect on their findings and look carefully at the data that they had collected from the immersion day. Our next step in Term 2 will be to analyse the health of the Ōpāwaho river and look at ways we can make positive changes to the health of our local waterway and its surrounding habitat.

Learning Conferences

It was fantastic to connect with so many of you at Learning Conferences this week. These conferences provided a valuable opportunity to be able to update you on how your child/children are going at school, as well as to give you an insight into the learning that we are doing. As a follow-up to these short catch-ups with your child's homegroup teacher, we do encourage you to have regular chats with your child/children at home about what they are doing, and the things we are learning about at school. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning. To help facilitate this, here is the link to our Pōhutukawa Learning Site for you once again. This site is a one-stop shop for a lot of the learning we do in the team; you can access our other learning sites from here, too! Remember, you will need to be logged in to a Beckenham email account to access the links so it's a perfect chance to sit down and take a look together.

Cross Country in Week 2

Our school cross country is coming up on Tuesday May 11th at 11:45am , which is in the second week of Term 2. We will be doing some cross country training every day in week 1 and going over the course. All students will participate in the cross country and we will be working together on basic running skills and personal goals for the event. Nau mai te wero, bring on the challenge!

Have a safe and happy school holidays, kia pai tō hararei. See you all in Term 2!

 Learning Conferences

Week 11 - Monday 12th April and Wednesday 14th April

School will close at 2pm on both days, to allow Learning Conferences to begin at 2:15pm.

Please go onto the School Interviews website and use the code kk64k to book your learning conference. The Learning Conferences are for 15mins each, except for Year 7/8 where you need to book a 15-minute slot, but allow 30 mins (it works!)

The focus of these Learning Conferences will be to update you on how your child has settled into the school year, and to give you a picture of the areas of focus they are working on, particularly in numeracy and literacy.

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all.

 Parent Help Needed: Te Tuna Tāone - Urban Eel

We are still looking for parents or family members to help us with our Urban Eel/ Tuna Tāone activity day on Friday April 9 from 9am - 2:30pm. The activities will be based around measuring water flow and quality, riparian zone habitats, macro-invertebrates and will include an 'eel encounter' with longfin eel/tuna from our  Opāwaho/Heathcote River. No previous experience or prior knowledge is needed. In fact, we expect to learn as much as the students from these activities and gain a much better appreciation of our local environment.

We will spend the day down at the Heathcote River beside our Ponds, learning about stormwater pollution and habitat destruction of the native longfin eel, and teaching students about the need to take action now to care for our unique ‘Tuna Tāone', or 'Urban Eels'. 

If you are able to help us, please get in touch with your child's homegroup teacher by email as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you!