Kia ora Koutou!

What a fabulous and busy 5 weeks we have had in team Kahikatea. We have been very impressed with the hard work from all of our Tamariki. Thank you for continuing to support us at this time, especially by keeping up to date with information being shared via HERO. If you are having any trouble with this or you are not recieving notices or news from school please let us know. 

Kete Focus 

This week we have been focusing on using good manners, including waiting for our turn to talk, waiting patiently in a line to wash our hands, saying thank you and being polite to each other. When we do this consistently we are showing our school values: We Care & We Make a Difference. 

You can ask your child/children: how and when do you show your manners at school? 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting Program

We are very excited to be starting our Kinetic Handwriting lessons. Keep an eye out for the Bounce and Skip monkeys as they may come home with your child. If Bounce and Skip come for a visit they will be accompanied by a book with instructions for their visit home.

Jerseys and Hats 

A reminder that as the weather starts to cool down, please ensure that your child’s jersey is clearly named.

Every child is expected to be wearing their hat when they are outside. If your child has lost or misplaced their sunhat please encourage them to look for it here at school first and if it cannot be found please replace it.

Literacy Groups

Our team is in the process of carrying out our assessment schedule for literacy and once completed we will look at our groupings. 

We are continuing to with our oral language programs, shared reading with follow up activities, poetry, writing, spelling, phonemic awareness, handwriting and spelling activities. 

PLEASE NOTE: your child will not bring a decodable text home everyday. These are teaching books which are used many times by the teacher. Only when we know your child can read it fluently and with expression will we send it home. 

CONTINUE to read to your child/children at home, enjoy reading aloud and encourage them to explore books in all forms, such as picutre books, nursery rhymes, poems, non-fiction, chapter books and magazines. 

Contributions

We love having recycling (boxes, newspapers, empty egg cartons ect) for box/construction activities. If you have any spare please send it in with your child - we would greatly appreciate it!

Finally, here are some photos of our hub and our gorgeous tamariki: 

Arohanui, Team Kahikatea 

Morning Drop Off 

We are seeing lots of happy kids arriving at the Sandwich Road entrance each morning. Thank you so much for supporting your child to do this with ease. A quick hug and kiss goodbye is working so well for many of our tamariki. If you think your child needs any extra support at this time please let your child's teacher know. 

Literacy 

From Tuesday we will be starting group literacy lessons. We will run literacy (reading and wrting lessons) 4x a week from 9.15am to 10.15am. 

Our literacy program includes: 

• shared reading
• poetry
• oral language and phonemic awareness
• handwriting
• alphabet knowledge and phonics
• writing
• spelling

Reminders

Please name your childs lunchbox (including any small containers), drink bottle, sunhat and school jersey

Sunhats must be worn during PE and breaktimes

Please remind your child/children to please keep their shoes on at school. Children who do take their shoes off are encouraged to place them on one of the shoe racks in the hub and to put their socks into their shoes. 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting 

We will be starting this program again soon (once our new staff have completed the online training). 

The Bounce and Skip monkeys are all in need of some new jackets. If you have some sewing skills and would like to make some new ones that would be amazing!

Please email amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz if you are able to help. 

Enjoy these gorgeous photos of our tamariki engaged in Learning Through Play...

Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been a busy few weeks in Kahikatea! Reports went online at the end of Week 5, and we loved connecting with whānau at Learning Conferences in Week 6. There were a few questions during these conferences about accessing reports. Please let your home group teacher know if you need any support with this.

Transitions

Over the last couple of weeks we have started transition visits for our learners. We enjoyed participating in Learning Through Play with Kōwhai learners, in their hub, and we also connected with Koru learners, who visited us. Lots of laughs were had and connections made.

A Teddy Bear Picnic!

Eels

We were lucky to have some learners from Pōhutukawa, Rose and Ashlyn, visit us to teach us about eels. They spoke passionately about why eels are special, the different types and what we can do to help them. They also provided this video link if you want to hear more about eels. The learners all had a fun activity sheet to do afterwards.

Notices/ Reminders

We are now doing a stocktake of all of our books. This includes our structured literacy texts ('Pip and Tim' books) and school library books. Please return these as soon as possible with your learner. No more books will be coming home before the end of the year. Many thanks!

Book Character and Rainbow Diversity Day

Wow, what an amazing response to our dress up day. We loved the variety of characters and colours of clothing in the hub! Thank you for your donation to the Child Cancer Foundation and Qtopia.

We read books, and spoke about what we liked about different characters. Here are some comments:

"I love how Elsa has frozen powers."

"Army characters have tanks and save other people."

"Wonder Woman can shoot lasers out of her eyes!"

"Velociraptors are so smart they can open doors."

"Horses have buckles on their saddle"

"Spiderman can shoot out webs"

"The Highway Rat has a sword."

"Melvin can make cool inventions."

"I like being a Gruffalo because I am scary!"

"Tinkerbell has wings!"

Have a lovely weekend!

Ngā mihi nui,

The Kahikatea Team

Kia Ora Whānau, 

What a busy start to the term it has been! We are loving seeing all the tamariki with their hats, drink bottles and bright smiles each day. Thank-you for all you are doing to support them and us, especially with the level 2 working conditions. A gentle reminder too, that if your child is sniffing, sneezing or coughing please keep them at home. It doesn't take long for even a little bug to spread.

Student Language Therapy Student Teachers 

We are very fortunate to have two student language teachers in our kura this term. They are working with tamariki in team Kahikatea and Koru. Lisa is overseeing their work with small groups of students and one to one to help build speech, language and literacy skills.

My name is Leianne. I’m one of the speech-language therapist student working with the children in the school. I’m in my final block placement block after 4 years of studying. I feel very privileged to be working amongst the most dependable and passionate staff.  I look forward to supporting the students through fun and interactive activities to advance them in their speech, language and social abilities.

My name is Gurleen Kaur and I'm a Speech Therapy student at the University of Canterbury. I'm currently working alongside the amazing staff of Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto and the lovely children as a part of my speech therapy work. This has been a great opportunity. I'm looking forward to learning from all the staff and giving back in all ways as I can.

Gurleen

Athletics 

We are working hard with our Athletics practises! We are enjoying hurdles, relays, long jump and shot put. Please make sure you send your child's named hat, water bottle and running shoes every day.  We will have our final athletics on Thursday if weather allows. We cannot invite whānau due to level 2 restrictions, but will do our best to take lots of lovely photos to share.

    

   

      

Calendar Art 

Calendar art order forms went home last week. Please return your order to the office. Thanks for supporting our PTA in this initiative.

Congratulations to our Kete Award Recipients!

Wellbeing this Week

We have been learning about and showing Respect, which is demonstrate through all our school values especially 'We Make a Difference'. We have talked about what respect looks like when we are speaking and treating others. We respect ourselves, others, our teachers and things. Watch this video and discuss with your tamariki. 

How can we show respect?

For our value 'We Make a Difference' we have been making an extra effort to notice and pick up the rubbish we see. We have made a special effort to do a rubbish sweep of the junior playground each day, and also look after our cubby area.

Discovery 

Enjoy photos from our recent Discovery sessions:

We continue to appreciate donations of: