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Kahikatea News: Term 2 Week 9

Posted on 19 June, 202619 June, 2026 by https://www.beckenham.school.nz/index.php/category/kauri

Kia ora te whānau,

It is hard to believe that we are almost at the end of another term.

Kahikatea performed in our whole school assembly last week. The parent turnout was amazing, the kids were so thrilled, and they did so well.

The Kahikatea staff have been delighted by the progress our students have made so far this year. It has been wonderful to see their learning and development flourish, with this growth clearly reflected in their reports.

Reminders:

Learning conferences are on Tuesday, the 23rd and Wednesday, the 24th of June. School will close at 1:45pm both days.
A reminder to please bring reading folders on a Thursday, as this is the day when we switch books and children take them home. We will collect all readers over the break, so no books will go home in the last week of term. If you have any books at home, please bring them back in so that we are able to do a stocktake.
Friday, the 3rd July, we have a wacky hair day. Please bring a gold coin donation.

Here are some of our recent learning celebrations:

Literacy:

The children continue to work hard and remain focused during our whole-class and small-group reading and writing sessions. The writing they are producing is outstanding! Below are some images of students' writing and of Amber running a whole-class reading session, which the children enjoyed immensely.

Maths:

The use of the Numicon mathematics programme is proving to be a great success. Students are more clearly able to articulate their ideas and findings using mathematical language. They can translate the use of Numicon shapes and rods into problem-solving tasks. Below are some examples of Numicon work we have been participating in this week as we work with recording addition and subtraction problems.

Geography:

We are well into our Geography topic and have spent the past two weeks looking at maps of New Zealand and studying the North, South and Stewart Islands. We have looked at where Christchurch/Otautahi is located, the region of Canterbury and other towns and cities that are important to our tamariki. We have looked at keys and how mountains, rivers, forests, etc, might be marked on a map. We learnt about the name Aotearoa and where it came from, and have listened to the Māori myth of Maui and the Giant Ika (myth of how NZ came to be). Students have spent some time drawing their own maps of N.Z.

Look at the amazing felted banner our students have been working on with Nicky:

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 tamariki 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.

Kahikatea News: Term 2, Week 5

Posted on 24 May, 202624 May, 2026 by Talia Garrick

Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been a very busy and exciting couple of weeks in our classroom! We have enjoyed lots of awesome learning experiences and finished the week on a high with our trip to Hansons Park.

Reading Success

Following the Readathon, we have noticed some fantastic progress with our readers. It has been wonderful to see growing confidence, a love of reading, and improving fluency across the class. Events like these remind us just how important daily reading is, even just 5-10 minutes each day makes a huge difference!

Thank you for all your support and encouragement with your tamariki and their reading at home. We are incredibly impressed with the progress everyone is making.

Across all literacy groups, students take part in a mixture of explicit small-group teaching, whole-class learning, and independent activities. We have loved seeing the engagement and enthusiasm during our small-group sessions. We even used some “silly fingers” to help with tracking while reading!

Book Character Day

Book Character Day was a lot of fun! It was great to see the effort students put into their costumes and the wide range of book characters that came to life around the school. Thank you to all our whanau for helping make the day such a success.

Hansen Park Trip

Our trip to Hansen Park was an absolute blast! The walk there was lovely and much quicker than we expected. Although the weather was a little windy and cold, it certainly did not stop our tamariki from having an awesome time.

We spent most of the day enjoying the playground and playing games with the sports equipment from school. Paul organised some fantastic activities, including tennis, football, and races. It was wonderful to see students playing, collaborating, and making connections with different friends throughout the day.

A huge thank you to all of our parent helpers. We could not have done it without your help.

Calling All Lego and Small Boxes!

As the weather gets colder, we are planning more crafts and creative learning activities for Learning Through Play and wet lunchtime sessions.

If you have any small boxes at home that you no longer need, we would love to take them off your hands! A collection box will be available in the makerspace over the next week.

Lego Donations

A big thank you to Sarah S, who kindly donated a large box of Lego for our students. It has been an absolute hit! The creativity and imagination our tamariki show during play is amazing to see.

If you have any spare Lego or loose pieces at home that are no longer being used, we would greatly appreciate adding them to our collection.

Thank you in advance!

Kapahaka performance!

Exciting news! Our tamariki will be performing Kapa Haka at Assembly in Week 8 on Friday, 12th June. The assembly will run from 10:00–10:30am, and whānau are warmly welcome to come along and watch.

We will send out another reminder closer to the time. We are looking forward to sharing all of the hard work and practice our students have been putting in!

Here is a sneak peek of us practicing!

We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing weekend. We look forward to another fun week of learning ahead😊

Ngā mihi nui

Sarah S, Amber, Sarah J and Talia

Kahikatea Team News Term 2 Week 3 2026

Posted on 8 May, 20268 May, 2026 by Sarah Spence

Ngā mihi e te whānau,

Here in the Kahikatea hub we have enjoyed another wonderful week of learning.

The tamariki are very much settled back into our daily routines and activities and have all reconnected with their friends after the half term break.

Cross Country - Cross Country was a highlight of last week and it created a wonderful buzz in the hub and around the school in general. The tamariki showed many of our school values including We Love Challenge and We Get There Together. There were lots of wonderful displays of sportsmanship and supporting one another during the run.

Literacy - The tamariki continue to make steady progress through our structured literacy program
and have been enjoying practicing word recognition and creating their own sentences. Our shared group activities often create wonderful conversation full of rich language which the tamariki enjoy sharing with one another. As always our book swap day for Literacy is Thursday when the tamariki get the bring a new book home to share at home.

Maths- Our Numicon program continues to gain traction with the tamariki as they get to explore new Math concepts and different Numicon resources. This week our focus has been on counting from 1 to 100 and the different ways this can be represented through estimating, grouping and patterns. The tamariki have enjoyed working as a class and in small groups to problem solve those tricky questions sharing their knowledge and growing together.

Enquiry- Our enquiry has lead us to our local community this week and this has been an absolutely wonderful concept to work through with the tamariki. They know their community so well having the ability to name streets and parks they are familiar with as well as local amenities. We have talked through people in the community who help us such as police officers, paramedics and firefighters. The tamariki particularly enjoyed exploring their local area on Google maps and this created lots of animated conversation.

Kapa Haka - In Kahikatea we have been so lucky to have the opportunity to work with whaea Cath during Kapa Haka sessions on a Friday. The tamariki get the opportunity to learn about waiata, tikanga practice and what kapa haka is all about. The tamariki are loving this weekly activity!

Book Character Day!! Friday 15th May 2026 - Book character day is a wonderful opportunity for the tamariki to celebrate and share their favourite stories through visual representation, bringing fictional personalities to life for a specific occasion. It is such a fun day!

Cyber Safety - The HDCA for Parents and Whānau

The Harmful Digital Communications Act (or HDCA for short) is an act passed by the Government back in 2015 to help people dealing with serious or repeated harmful digital communications. It covers anything digital like text, emails or social media content. The most useful thing for parents to understand about the HDCA is the way the 10 communication principles define what is good or bad behaviour online.

If you’re ever concerned about your young person (or you just want to brush up on your knowledge!) visit Netsafe’s Guide to the HDCA.

Have a beautiful weekend everybody.

Nga mihi nui

Sarah J, Amber, Talia and Sarah S

Kahikatea News: Term 2, week 1

Posted on 24 April, 202624 April, 2026 by https://www.beckenham.school.nz/index.php/category/kauri

Kia ora te Whānau,

A big welcome back to Term 2! We have heard many amazing holiday stories and hope you all have had some lovely, quality family time together. Our tamariki have been so excited to be back, and there has been much chat and reconnecting with friends and teachers this week.

We have started off the term by delving into some new and exciting learning:

Maths in Term 2

This term, our Y0-2 ākonga (learners) are using Numicon equipment to support their maths learning. Numicon uses equipment which helps make numbers visible (see) and tactile (touch/use), allowing learners to see how numbers are composed (made up of), how they fit together and how they relate to each other.

The ākonga (learners) have been wonderfully engaged in these Numicon sessions. They have been highly motivated to complete the daily activities, explain their thinking mathematically and use their maths vocabulary.

Literacy:

Our literacy learning is back in full swing, and the tamariki have come back from a break refreshed and ready to learn. It has not taken them long to get back into our literacy routines.

A reminder to bring reading folders to school on Thursdays.

Inquiry Learning:

This term, our inquiry learning will be exploring the Social Sciences strand of Geography. Throughout the term, we will begin by looking at:

home
our school community
our wider suburb of Beckenham and the community
We will look at the geography and landscape features of New Zealand
Then, finally, looking at where we sit globally in the big, wide world.

There will be learning around mapping, key symbols and colours to recognise land and ocean features, knowing our immediate surroundings and where we sit in relation to the wider community and learning about simple services in our area.

We will be heading out into the community on a walk this term, and we will need parent helpers to assist. Please click HERE to fill in the form if you can assist us on this trip.

Cross Country:

Our whole school cross country is coming up next Friday, 1st May. Our year 1 and 2 students will compete from 11:30-12:00. They will run one lap of the park. We are getting out to practice when we can, so please ensure that your child is wearing appropriate footwear (sneakers) to school each day.