Kia ora e te whānau,

We hope this finds you all well and managing to stay clear of the winter bugs which are starting to circulate. We'd like to officially welcome Callia and her family to Beckenham to Kura o Pūroto. Callia started school with us on Monday this week. A warm welcome also goes out to Ehsan who is going to be starting with us on Monday next week. Ehsan has a big sister in the Kōwhai team, so we welcome Ehsan's family back to the Koru team!

We've had a very busy couple of weeks since our last Blog post. Activities have included:

• Pink Shirt Day last Friday (emphasising the value of 'kindness')
• the school Cross Country on Tuesday last week
• learning how to play charades
• learning some new waiata and playing Te Reo (emotions) Bingo
• Book Character Dress Up Day today...
• ... and of course lots of lovely Learning Through Play, with 'Inclusion' and 'Kindness' being our Words of the Week, and therefore a big area of focus for us all.

How can you help your child at home?

The emphasis in teaching spelling is to focus on the sound, as opposed to the letter name. Making the phoneme (sound) - grapheme (letter shape) connection is the first step in literacy learning.

Ensure that both you and your child are saying the ‘pure’ sound without an ‘uh’ sound on the end, for example, ‘lllll’ rather than ‘luh’. Please refer to this Youtube clip, The Sounds of New Zealand English, for more information on the sound that matches each of the letters.

Here are some ideas about ways you might use the letter cards at home with your child: 

Speed Sounds: use the cards as flash cards - your child can look at each letter card and say the sound it represents. See if your child can do this at speed.

‘I Spy’: You can play games such as ‘I Spy’, using the letter sound (not the name).

Stepping Stones: Place the cards on the floor with the letter facing up, as if they are stepping stones across the river. Explain to your child that they have to cross the ‘river’ without falling in the water. Your child steps on each card and says the corresponding sound.

Fish or Memory: You could make up a matching set of letter cards, and use both sets to play Fish or Memory together, by placing both sets of cards face down on the table or floor. Each player has to be able to say the sound, if they are to keep a matching pair of cards.

Writing the graphemes: you might make the letter sound and ask your child to write the matching grapheme (support your child as much as is needed with this activity)

Some of the above ideas can also be used with the heart words that your child either is, or will be, bringing home in their literacy folder.

Look out for more information about our Structured Literacy programme in future Blog posts.

...and now just a few more fun photos from the past fortnight!

Cyber Safety Information for Whānau:

Staying Safe Online...

As our tamariki spend more time online, it’s important parents and whānau help them stay safe. Now is a great time to talk to them about how we use the internet and digital technology.

Netsafe has created an Online Safety Parent Toolkit so parents, families and whānau have all the information they need to talk about online safety.

If you or anyone in your whānau needs support, you can contact Netsafe.

All You Need to Know About TikTok:

Tiktok is one of the fastest growing social media apps. It’s a platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos – and many young people love it! From new dance crazes to funny clips to animal videos, Tiktok can inspire creativity and bring joy.

But it’s important that parents and whānau help their tamariki navigate Tiktok safely. Today we’re sharing the Netsafe Tiktok Family Safety Toolkit so you can help guide your whānau to a fun and safe digital experience.

We wish you all the best for a lovely weekend, everyone, and we look forward to seeing all of those beautiful, wide smiles at school again on Monday.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Stacey and Georgia

 Kia ora e te whānau,

It feels very hard to believe that here we all are, at the very end of the 2023 school year. Your children have all settled so beautifully into life at school this year, and their learning has been impressive, to say the least. 

It's been very exciting for us as teachers, and you too, we're sure, to witness the social, emotional and physical progress, as well as the progress in academic learning that the children have all made since starting at school. What a wonderful group of tamariki they are! We're going to miss them terribly over the long summer holiday, and will be looking forward to seeing them back again (mostly as members of the Kahikatea team), with their beautiful smiles at the start of next year.

Thank you all so much for the unstinting support you have given both your children and the teachers this year. Their progress would not have been such as it is, without your backup on the home front. You can be absolutely certain that we have appreciated this enormously!

Final two days:

Please do ensure that you check that you have all of your child's belongings, before leaving on Tuesday:

• all clothing, including sunhat, polar fleece and socks 
• their lunchbox and drink bottle (there are often drink bottles left behind on the last day!)
• and any other personal items belonging to your child.

Kia ora e te whānau,

How is the holiday break going for you all? We do trust that everyone is having a wonderful, relaxing time, and finding plenty of opportunities to recharge and re-energise for the final term of the year!

We wanted to be in touch in advance of next week, with a few reminders and notices for the term ahead:

• Hats - firstly, a very important reminder for all, that sunhats are to be worn every day throughout Term 4, whenever the children are outside at school, so now is the time to ensure that your child's named sunhat is packed in their school bag, ready to go on Monday.
• Library books - we realise that there are a great many overdue library books at homes around the Beckenham area, and would like to urge you to hunt out any library books which might be at your place and pack them into your child's schoolbag now, ready to be returned to school on Monday (we'll be asking children to put their library folders into the library container first thing on Monday morning, if they're not there already!)
• Friendship List - once again, our Friendship List will be updated at the start of this term, so if you would like your name and contact details added to this list, please email Georgia (georgia.mckenna@beckenham.school.nz) by the end of the first week and she will send the new list out in Week 2; if your name is already on the Friendship List, please don't worry about emailing again.
• Stacey and Elizabeth's days in Term 4 - throughout Term 4, Stacey will be teaching on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and Elizabeth will be teaching on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays; occasionally there may be an adjustment made, and if you do need to double check to know for sure on any particular day, a good idea is to look at the whiteboard when you arrive at school, as the photos of the adults who are going to be at school that day will always appear there!
• Sarah's Home Group: throughout Term 4, the children in Sarah's Home Group are going to be starting and finishing the school day in Kōmanawa which is the building facing the courtyard and closer to the park; these children will still leave their bags in the blue cubbies, and will need to unpack their Literacy folders and leave them in the usual Literacy folder containers, and take their lunchboxes and drink bottles over to the set of shelves just to the left inside the door into Kōmanawa; these children will be leaving from Kōmanawa at 3:00 p.m. each day
• Junior Park Explorers: you will have received information through Hero about this outing which is taking place on the Friday of the first week back (Friday, October 13th), and thank you so much to those parents who have already emailed to say that they can parent help with this; we still need several more helpers (some for each of the 3 Home Groups) so please do email your child's Home Group teacher if you're able to come along and support on this day (a reminder that the times are as follows: Elizabeth and Stacey's HG - 9:00 - 11:00 a.m.; Sarah's HG - 10:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.; and Georgia's HG - 12:30 - 2:30 p.m.) 

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

Once again, our grateful thanks to those parents who were able to join us on this outing and support the tamariki as they engaged with particular art works and then participated in the lesson which Jackie and Julie, the Gallery Educators, ran for us.

Please see below, some photo highlights of our time at the Gallery:

For now, though, all that remains is to wish you all a very safe and happy holiday ahead, as we sail through towards Friday.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia and Sarah

Kia ora, e te whānau,

It's been a very busy couple of weeks for us all in the Koru team: we've been completing our Calendar Art; we've had Book Character Dress Up Day; and we've continued to have fun with our Literacy and Maths learning, all the while embracing new friends into our team.

We are very excited to have welcomed Sarah Junghen as the teacher of our third New Entrant class at the start of Week 5. Most of you will have seen Sarah this past week, in the hub, but if not, please do introduce yourselves to her. Sarah has been teaching at Beckenham te Kura o Pūroto for some years now, and we feel incredibly lucky to have her with us in the Koru team!

We also welcome the new children who have transitioned or are transitioning into the Koru team, and are in Sarah's Home Group: Iyana, Lailah, Esther, Ariella, Molly and Mason. Ngā whetu koutou katoa - you are all stars!

Calendar Art:

The children have been working incredibly hard this term on their artworks, which will eventually be available for purchase as calendars, notebooks, cards, etc. We know that you're going to absolutely love these works of art, and we do urge you to support our PTA with this fundraiser. Please keep an eye out for more information about ordering calendars, etc. We will be adding information to our daily whiteboard notices as it becomes available.

Keeping Ourselves Safe:

This term as part of our Health Curriculum, teams are teaching the programme called Keeping Ourselves Safe, in Years 0 - 6. In the units, the Koru children will be: 

- describing where they live; identifying things that make them special and explaining when they feel safe and unsafe

- learning to use the correct names for body parts and describing whether a touch is one they like, one they don’t like, or one that is confusing

- learning to say ‘no’ to touch, behaviour and words that worry or confuse them and talking about moving away and seeking help

- identifying the difference between good surprises and bad secrets

- identifying people they trust and understanding family safety rules. 

We will be starting the teaching in Week 8 (the week beginning Monday, September 4th) and over the course of the lessons we teach, there will be some information and activities which will be coming home in your child's school bag. This is for you and your child to complete at home, and does not need to be returned to school. Please keep an eye out for more information about KOS in the weeks ahead, and if you have any questions, please just ask.

Exciting outing ahead for the Koru team:

We are very excited to be letting you know that on Monday, September 18th, the Koru team children will be visiting the Christchurch Art Gallery. 

The purpose of this outing is to give the children the opportunity to engage in discovering and exploring the work of artists whose work is held by the Christchurch Public Art Gallery. Teachers will explore the Gallery with their students, discuss a range of artists’ work and explore ideas of navigation, belonging, identity and how we are connected across time and place. During the guided tour, students will use signs and symbols to create a pictorial map of their own identity and journey through the Gallery which they will then complete, using watercolours and pastels, in the Education Centre.

Please note that there will be no cost for this outing, as your school donation covers all costs involved.

We will be needing parent help, so please do email your child's Home Group teacher or teachers, if you're able to come along with us on the day. 

Elizabeth and Stacey's Home Group will be leaving school at 9:30 a.m. and arriving back at school at 12:00 noon.

Georgia and Sarah's Home groups will be leaving school at 12:00 noon and arriving back at school at 2:30 p.m.

We are desperately seeking all budding talents out there: singers, gymnasts, dancers, ventriloquists, magicians...!

Teachers have been talking with the tamariki about this fun whole school event, being held on the last day of term in the school hall. Prior to this date (on Friday, September 8th, for us in the Koru team), each team will hold their own team event and then one 'performance' from the Koru team will be selected, to be part of the whole school show on Friday, September 22nd.

Ideas for performances might include:

• a dance
• a song
• a gymnastics performance (with accompanying music)
• a hula hooping display to music
• a set of magical tricks

We have noticed, and many of you will have as well, that the children's folders, purchased when they first started school, are not 'hanging together' very well at all. We have noticed that the light blue folders, in particular, have been breaking down and deteriorating really quickly. We contacted Qizzle and sent photos to illustrate our concerns, and they immediately responded by saying that they were going to change their supplier, and asked how many folders did we need to replace those affected. Some folders (yellow ones, purple, red, orange, etc.) have not deteriorated as quickly but generally look as if they will, soon enough, so Qizzle told us that they just wanted to replace them all! We shall be sending home the replacement folders in the children's schoolbags next week. We thank Qizzle for responding so quickly and positively on our behalf.

Fun with Maths (we love numbers!):

• click on these links and join in as your children sing one of their favourite songs, Sprinkle a Little Sunshine (here with the lyrics, and here, without, but with very cute images instead!)
• for those new families to the Koru team, a link through to the National Anthem which we sing each morning - your children are doing an awesome job with this, participating and trying their very best each morning
• clicking here will take you to a variety of links for those of you who would like to read more about The Science of Reading and Structured Literacy.