Category Archives: Kahikatea

TODAY’S TRIP IS CANCELLED DUE TO THE WEATHER

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 Kia ora whanau, 

Today's trip to the museum and gardens is CANCELLED due to the weather. We had a call from the CCC to say the combination of showers/rain and the wind will make the event difficult to run. 

This affects Amber and Charlottes home groups. 

At this stage tomorrow we expect the trip for Lisa and Katies home groups to go ahead. 


Kahikatea Newsletter Term 2 Week 3

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Keeping Everyone Healthy 

To help everyone keep healthy, we would appreciate if you can please:

  • Keep children home if they are coughing, sneezing or have runny noses or other sicknesses
  • Encourage hand washing with soap and water
  • Please ensure your child comes with warm footwear 
  • Please send jumpers to school every day
Our Trip to the Park and Museum

We are looking forward to our trip next week! Amber and Charlotte's groups will go on Mon 24th May. Katie and Lisa's groups will go on Tues 25th May. 
PLEASE NOTE: 
Because Charlotte is still recovering and there will be a lot of walking, Katie McFarlane will take Charlotte's homegroup. 

We would appreciate if you can go over our Trip Social Story at home. We will also view it in class and discuss with the students. 

On the day of your child's trip, please ensure your child is/has:
  • Wearing school uniform 
  • A named jumper, on or in their bag
  • A light jacket if weather feels cooler
  • Covered walking shoes, e.g. sneakers
  • An ample lunch and extra snacks
  • A named water bottle
  • If wetting / soiling may be an issue, please also pack a spare pair of underwear/pants
  • Their school bag, ideally named 
  • Any medications required (please contact your home room teacher regarding this, prior to the trip day).
Library Days 
We have NEW library days!
Lisa and Katie's groups go on Tuesday. 
Amber and Charlotte's groups go on Thursday.

Fidget Toys 
We are noticing that some children are bringing in fidget toys from home. We would like to remind everyone that all toys, including fidget toys, are to stay at home. If parents feel that their child needs a fidget toy, please talk with your home room teacher. 


Learning in Action








We are enjoying working with Ferndale students in some of our Discovery sessions. 











 

Thank you for the new paint shirts Nuttall whanau! 


Stacey, our Teaching Assistant 






Kahikatea Newsletter Week 1 Term 2

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 Welcome Back Everyone! 

We hope you have had time to relax with your child/children over the school break. There are some important events and activities coming up this term including: 

School Cross Country ( Tuesday May 11th) 

Visit to the Botanic Gardens (May 24th & 25th) 

Staff Only Day ( Friday May 21st and Tuesday 8th June) 


Autumn/Winter Term

As the weather begins to change we invite you to please send you child to school with a named school jersey. Your child/ren are not required to bring their school sunhat during Term 2 and 3. 

If you wish to send a pair of warm socks or slippers to school for your child to wear inside please ensure these items are clearly named. 

Raincoats/Jackets/Gumboots need to be clearly named also. 


Cross Country Practices 

Teachers will be taking their homegroups out to the big field each afternoon to practice running the cross country course. Year 1 and 2 students will run a single lap of the Beckenham Park. 

Please send your child to school each day in footwear appropriate for running. Thanks! 


Visit to the Botanic Gardens 

We still need adult helpers for our trip to the gardens in late May. If you are able to support Amber or Charlotte's homegroups (Monday 24th May) OR Katie or Lisa's homegroup (Tuesday 25th May) please email charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz 

Communication with teachers

Teachers are in meetings daily from 8.15am to 8.30am and again from 3.15pm three to four times a week. 

If you need to make a time to meet with you child's homegroup teacher please email them. 

It is so nice to see everyone! Here are some first day back photos...

















Kahikatea Team Newsletter TERM 1 Week 11

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Cross Country

Our whole school cross country is coming up at the start of next term. This will be held on Tuesday the 11th of May in the afternoon. 
Child/ren will run in Year Groups.
Kahikatea is made up of Year 1 and Year 2 students. Some of our Koru students will run with our Year 1s. 
Seniors will have an earlier lunch and start first. The Junior students will start later in the afternoon. Timings will be confirmed during Week 1 of the Term 2 and sent out to you via the school newsletter. 

We encourage all the students to embrace our school value "We Love Challenge" and to try their very best. While for the majority this will be participating as a runner, there will be additional ways to make sure all our tamariki are involved in the event. 
Teams have started our practices already and will continue during the first week of Term 2. We know that some children will enjoy practicing over the holidays. Happy running!


Upcoming Excursion to Hagley Park & the Museum


Team Kahikatea will enjoy a fantastic excursion to Hagley Park to undertake a 'Park Explorers' Programme with the Council's Learning in Action Team, as well as a visit to the Museum to learn about Canterbury's history within the 'Christchurch Street' area. 

Our learning focuses are: 
* change in our local community 
* change in nature 
* life processes in nature
* biodiversity  
* scientific skills: observation, categorising, describing
* working together, communicating ideas and reflecting on our growing knowledge

We would love to start organising parent helpers for this event. Amber's and Charlotte's home groups will take the excursion on Mon 24/5/21, and Katie’s and Lisa’s groups will go on Tues 25/5/21. The trip will take a full day. 

If you would like to be a parent helper, please email Charlotte on charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz with your name, phone number, and your child's name. Note: unfortunately, younger siblings cannot come.


Handwriting & How You Can Help Your Child

The first start of our handwriting programme, Kinetic Letters (TM) is making bodies stronger. We work on strengthening different areas of our body, which supports our ability to write clearly and easily. Here are some the activities we do to strengthen each part of our body, and you might try practicing at home: 
* Pelvic Girdle: crawling, jumping, hopping, climbing 
* Shoulder Girdle: plank, chair or floor push-ups, pull-ups (e.g. on jungle gym or bars)
* Forearm and Wrist: practice the pencil grip, pegging, blocks, playdough, making (construction), finger action rhymes
* Positions for handwriting: practice sitting properly with back on chair, and legs under table; sitting crossed legged with straight backs
See teachers if you would like more ideas. 

Wellbeing 

We have started learning about emotions and feelings over the last fortnight. 
We have discussed how emotions can change our facial expressions, practised showing, describing and naming different emotions. Simply by naming emotions, we can help ourselves to manage them. 
Children watched and talked about this video (you might like to watch at home) and we made our feelings monsters.




ESOL Learning 

Our ESOL students have been working on giving directions, location language and prepositions, by playing games and giving directions 
to peers during their classes with Jeanette. Key terms we have discussed include: first, last, after, next, up, down, under, on, beside, inside, 
underneath and behind. 
Students have also shared aspects of their own cultures, which we have collated into a display in our hub:


 
Thank you for all your support this term and for making time to meet us for learning conferences in Week 11. We wish you all a very safe and happy holiday! 


Amber, Charlotte, Lisa & Katie 




Kahikatea Newsletter Term 1 Week 9 2021

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Literacy in Kahikatea

It was awesome to see so many families at our structured literacy information sessions with Caroline Morritt (Resource Teacher for Literacy). If you were unable to attend, we hope to have a recording of the session available soon. Caroline reinforced the importance of comprehension, during these parent meetings, with reference to  'Scarborough’s Rope'


Reading with your child

This is always a great opportunity to focus on comprehension skills. Here are some great ideas from www.speechpathways.ca/2018/01/12/reading-with-your-child/

“Use a variety of words to talk about the pictures

This means stay away from nouns (naming objects) and talk about words that describe (rough), action words (jump), locations (under) and words about time (later)

Highlight important words

Stress the important words or new vocabulary by changing your voice (make your pitch go up or down, change the rate of your speech by talking faster or slower)

Build on your child’s understanding

A great way to help your child understand is to relate it to a similar experience in his or her life. This will help them build a better connection between the book and something that has happened to him or her in the past.

Think outside the book

Encourage your child to think beyond the pages of the book to expand his or her thinking. You can help your child predict what might happen next, compare and contrast an object from the story to real life, make an inference and draw a conclusion, identify a problem and solution and sequence the events of the story by retelling what happened. These discussions will help your child to think, solve problems and imagine.”


Here are some photos from our literacy lessons and our library time: 
















Team Hui 

Each week, we have a team hui. It is a special time, where we come together, connect and celebrate. As part of our hui, we say our karakia and waiata. We have noticed a number of our learners confidently reciting these off by heart, ka pai! We have attached these below, in case your child would like to practice at home.






Building Connections


This week we have been focusing on getting to know more about our peers. We have been connecting with a variety of people and finding out about our shared interests as well as our differences. It has been great to find out new things about each other and to practice our active listening skills.




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 the areas of focus they are working on in numeracy and literacy.






Have a fabulous Easter break, and we look forward to seeing you back at school on Wednesday 7th April.


Team Kahikatea

(Lisa, Katie, Amber, Charlotte, Michelle, Kate and Paul)