Kia ora, e te whānau,

We warmly welcome our new tamariki into the Koru team, and to Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto! Luca, Zoe and Ruby have all started school in the last fortnight and have settled beautifully into the team. We appreciate the wonderful help of our 'golden oldies' who are truly amazing at providing wrap around support, thereby demonstrating our school value, 'We Care'.

Life Education:

This week and next, the Life Education van, along with educator, Kirsty, and her support crew, in the form of Harold the Giraffe, are based at school with us. The Koru team have two lessons with Kirsty and Harold, the first of which was on Monday, and the second, today. Our broad focus is on Living Things, with questions relating to:

• Where does our food come from?
• Why do we need to eat a variety of food?
• What do all living things need to stay alive? 

• What do living things need to survive (food, water, shelter, sunlight)?
• How do plants and animals grow and change?
• How can people care for plants, animals, and natural places?

Harold's 4 favourite letters!

Harold, being a little bit mischievous

Harold, singing his song about friendship

Some living things work together as a group

Working together as a group

Enjoying time with one of our Friday big buddies

Ordering numbers to 20

Sketching different types of plants around our school grounds

Making giraffe shapes with our hands

Big Brothers Big Sisters is an organisation that helps children and young people build confidence, resilience and positive relationships, through mentoring.

The programme matches young people with caring adult or older-youth mentors who spend regular time together, talking, sharing activities and simply being there. These supportive relationships can make a real difference to a young person’s sense of belonging, self-confidence and ability to navigate life’s challenges.

A few items of note:

Kia ora, e te whānau,

A very warm welcome (back) to you all, and we especially welcome the families of our newest tamariki. The children have settled beautifully, and we are truly impressed with the way the older children are showing such care and kindness towards the children who had their first day at school last week. 

We have a busy term ahead, and will be keeping you up to date with our whiteboard notices, as well as through our blog posts. Also, please make sure you read our school newsletters as they are sent out to you via Hero. Another way to keep up to date is by checking our school website where you can find our school calendar. Here you will find all the details you will need to know, about what's coming up in the days, weeks and months ahead.

What's coming up: 

On Friday, August 7th, a 'Scooter-athlon' is being held at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto. This will involve Koru team tamariki running a short distance, scooting around a course which will be well-marked for the children and finishing with another short run. Teachers will take their Home Groups out to walk the course, prior to the event itself. There will be several marshalls at points around the course, to ensure that children follow the correct route. The running parts of the course are in the park, and the scooting part is around the edge of our junior playground and also includes the courtyard area on the river side of the hall.

If you happen to have a spare scooter and helmet, we would be very grateful if you were willing to lend them for use during the event. Please see your child's Home Group teacher if this is the case.

If your child would like to participate, however doesn't have a scooter and a helmet, please let your child's Home Group teacher know and we will endeavour to match your child with a spare scooter and helmet.

Please note that this is a fun event and there is no compulsion for children to participate.

Those children participating will do so in house groups:

• 2:25 p.m.: Fisher and Heathcote
• 2:35 p.m.: Tennyson and Waimea

Kia ora, e te whānau,

Welcome to our Week 7 news, and isn't it hard to believe that we're over half way through Term 2 now?! 

We're loving hearing your tamariki complement each other as they notice our school values being put into practice by their friends, throughout their days at school. We even hear gorgeous stories about this taking place at home too! Tino pai, tamariki - you're awesome! 

The children continue to put impressive effort into their learning across all curriculum areas. Our Literacy programme in the Koru team includes: small group reading and writing (individual letters, heart words, short words at their level, and then leading to short and gradually longer sentences), shared writing (whole class), handwriting, phonemic awareness, Narrative Intervention and a weekly library visit.

Some of the following links have been shared in previous posts, however they're well worth resharing, for new families as well as a reminder for the families of children who started in Term 1:

• The Sounds of New Zealand English
• How to Help at Home
• Stage 1 
• Stage 2 
• Stage 3 
• Stage 4 
• Stage 4+ 

What’s coming up:

• Junior Park Explorers: June 18th (Hooray, and thank you so much to those of you who have offered to help. We really appreciate that!)
• Reports shared: June 19th
• Learning Conferences: June 23rd and 24th

Congratulations and thank you:

We would like to acknowledge our very own Izzy Sepie, who recently amazed us all by single-handedly raising a very large sum of money in response to Cade's request for support for those families who might be struggling to provide food, stationery and/or uniforms for their tamariki. Izzy's response to this request for help was to hold her very own bake stall, and all of the money she raised, she donated to the fund which the school holds to support these families.

Izzy, you're a superstar and we say, "Thank you!" Tino pai tou mahi.

Photo Gallery:

Kia ora e te whānau,

It is incredible to think that we are into the second half of our first term together... and what a fantastic term it is! The tamariki are well-settled into school life, including our routines, timetables, and expectations. It's a joy to listen to them referring to our school values at both mat time, and during their learning and play. Their ability to articulate their thinking and their reasoning is second to none, and we're very proud of the way that they are already 'living our school values' (in particular, 'We Care' and 'We Get There Together' which are our focus values for Term 1)!

Kotahitanga (Getting On Together):

Throughout this first term, we have been focusing on the importance of making connections, forming, maintaining, and sustaining relationships.

Over the term, our work has (and will be) related to:

• personal identity and self worth (feeling good about ourselves)
• belonging
• talking about ourselves, including about our feelings and expressing our opinions
• enhancing relationships (working cooperatively)
• communication
• friendship (defining friendship, establishing friendships, maintaining and sustaining our friendships)
• social environments and, in particular, our class (aroha; what it looks like, feels like, sounds like; and making good choices in our happy hub!)

Maths in the Koru team:

Our Maths programme in the Koru team is made up of several different components:

• Warm ups
• A sequence of lessons focusing on a particular strand, or strands, of Maths (e.g., Maths and Statistics, Geometry, Algebra, etc.)
• Problem solving
• Maths games

Warm ups:

These take place at the start of each Maths lesson, and can take the form of an activity we call Notice, Think, Wonder, another activity we call Move and Prove, or a focus on number knowledge.

'Notice, Think, Wonder' will begin with a photograph which is designed to stimulate thinking and questions. Some examples might be:

What do you notice? What do you think? What do you wonder? What do you notice? What do you think? What do you wonder?

The letters 'a', 'b', and 'c' (and also 'd' as the children become familiar with the activity) are positioned on corners of the mat. The tamariki are given thinking time and then might be asked to 'turn and talk', to discuss their thinking with a learning buddy. They are then asked to move to the letter which represents the option that they have chosen. The 'prove' part of Move and Prove asks children to justify their thinking - why did they choose the answer which they chose? 

• All About Us (a 3-week topic, focusing on Number, Geometry, and Algebra)
• Pattern Makers (Algebra)
• Counting One to One (with a focus on Number Structure and Operations)

A selection of photos taken during these topics follows, and these will provide a glimpse into the learning the children have been engaging in during these topics.

Problem Solving:

Once a week, we have a problem-solving activity, during which the children are presented with a Maths problem to consider. They will generally work with a learning buddy and will have access to a range of equipment, including materials to help with their thinking and a whiteboard and a whiteboard pen for recording (one of each of these, between two children, encourages sharing and turn-taking).

An example of a possible Maths problem

Maths Games:

On Fridays, our big buddies from the Kauri team spend time with us and, during this time, the children are provided with a Maths game which they will play in small groups, each group supervised by one of the Kauri team students.

On the last two Fridays, the game the children have played is the game called '21'. (This might also be a fun game to play at home.)

This is a strategic counting game where players take turns to add 1, 2, or 3 numbers to a running total, starting from 1. The objective is to not be the player who says "21"!

In the Koru team, we are learning to think and act like Mathematicians, and we are LOVING it!!

• Here we are practising our interoception activities:

• Practising the letter sounds and forming the related grapheme:

• Playing schools:

• Playing hospitals:

• Practising writing the heart words:

Kia ora e te whānau,

It is very hard to believe that we are at the end of our school year - a bittersweet feeling for all, as we say our farewells in advance of the long summer holiday. 

Our children have continued to work hard in all areas of their learning, despite the fact that many of them are feeling very tired indeed! We congratulate all tamariki on their impressive self-management, as the resources around them have been packed up, walls have been cleared, and spaces emptied, leading up to the final big furniture move on Thursday afternoon. Friday arrived, and the children had their first day in Tahaki, embracing the new space with enthusiasm and positivity. Very well done indeed, children. We're proud of you!

We send our heartfelt thanks to those families who were able to give their time last Thursday after school. We appreciate all you were able to do to help us. Your willingness and patience as we were trying to negotiate the boxes, the furniture, and the equipment were truly amazing. You just quietly pitched in, saw the needs and gaps, and filled them. Hooray for you!

Literacy books:

If you happen to find any Little Learners reading books over the summer break, please return these to the office in the new year.