Kia ora e te whānau, 

What a wonderful, mostly sunny start we have had to our Fourth Term! We have had lots of fun, playing outside, soaking up the sunshine, and digging away in the sandpit. Everyone is settling back in well with the routines and showing lots of curiosity, kindness, and enthusiasm for learning. 

Athletics

We have started practising for our Athletics Day, which will take place on Thursday, the 30th of October. We are practising our jumping, running, and throwing. It has been wonderful to see everyone give it a go and cheer on their friends! Nau mai te wero! We love challenge!

Social Sciences - Our Kura, Our School

This term, our Social Science focus is Our Kura, Our School. We began by taking a walk around our school to visit all our favourite spaces around the grounds. We had a korero (discussion) about our cultural narrative and about what the name 'Beckenham te Kura o Pūroto' means. We will continue to learn all about our school, and the people in it, and what makes us so diverse and special. 

Sunflowers

The lovely teaching assistant, Lucy, took a group of students out to plant the sunflowers that had sprouted over the holidays. Tamariki enjoyed learning about how to plant them and are excited to watch as they grow into beautiful flowers, which will brighten up our kura. 

Earthquake Drill

On Thursday, we had a school-wide earthquake drill to practise keeping ourselves safe. We learned to drop, cover, and hold. Everyone did an amazing job staying calm and following instructions. We are proud of how sensible and confident ākonga were during this important practice. 

Literacy Reading Books

Please have a hunt around the house and return all Pip and Tim books to school. We love to look after our resources, and they are very expensive to keep buying and replacing. 

Hats and Sunscreen

A quick reminder that hats are required at school every day this term. Please ensure your child's hat is clearly labelled. Hats are kept in your child's bag (or blue cubby) and sent home each day.  Students without hats play under the hall veranda during break times. Please apply sunscreen to your child each day before they come to school. We have a bottle in the hub for reapplication in the day if needed. If your child requires their own sunscreen, please bring it to school in a named bottle that can be kept on the teaching station. 

Ngā mihi nui, 

Niquita, Katie, Stacey, and Elizabeth

 Kia ora e te whānau,

Wow! We have reached the end of Term 3! What an awesome term it has been! We have celebrated Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week). The tamariki have been looking at new kupu (words) and kīwaha (phrases). These have been pasted below, have a go at trying these out at home over the holidays! 

Our Beckenham Values:

• He taonga te ako - We love learning!
• Nau mai te wero - We love challenge!
• Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoa - We get there together!
• Nā mātou he rerekē te ao - We make a difference!
• Arohaina te tāngata me te taiao - We care!

Kīwaha (phrases): 

• Marama keke - a piece of cake, easy as!
• Kei runga noa atu koe! - you're awesome!

Kupu (words): 

• Kōanga - Spring
• Mīharo - wonderful!

Reminders for Term 4:

• Please ensure your child is only bringing water to school (no juice or other drinks). 
• Do not pack lollies, candy or chocolate in lunch boxes.
• It is important to help teach your child how to open and close their lunch boxes, so they can do this independently at the start and end of eating times.
• Thanks for remembering a spoon for yoghurt, as we do not have spare spoons to offer at eating time.
• Please pre-cut, pre-open or teach your child how to open packets and yoghurt in their lunch boxes (for example, chip packets, twisty yoghurt pouches, museli bars, etc.)

Literacy folders

Please bring literacy folders back every day. New books usually go home on Thursdays for a week.

Kia ora e te whānau,

Welcome to the Koru blog for Week 8. We have been enjoying the sunshine and warmer days this week... Yay for Spring! 

Inquiry (Change) - Digitech

Keeping Ourselves Safe

We concluded our Keeping Ourselves Safe sessions this week with a focus on 'Unwanted behaviour or touch - Kore e hiahiatia te whanonga me te pā kino'. We learned that we can stop touch or behaviour that is inappropriate or that worries or confuses us, or makes us feel unsafe. We practised saying NO confidently, and discussed how we can move away and report when things happen that we don't like. We also learned the difference between good and bad secrets. We were very excited to have a look inside Constable Meg's Police car! We even got to try on her Police hat!

Sunflowers

Te Reo Māori

Kia ora koutou,

It’s been another exciting and busy fortnight in Koru! Here’s a quick recap of what we've been up to.

Celebrating Maths in the Koru Team

Last week was Maths Week, and we had so much fun with numbers! We tackled tricky problems, solved clever riddles, and practised counting to 10 in Te Reo Māori. This week, we've shifted our focus to telling time, learning to recognise the big hand and the little hand on a clock and what they tell us.

Disco Fun!

We had a fantastic time at the PTA disco. A big thank you to all the whānau who came along. The children all looked amazing, and their dance moves were incredible!

Unlocking the World of Coding

We’ve started a new unit on digital technology, where we're learning all about coding. We discovered that coding is just another way of saying programming or instructing. 

We talked about the similarities and differences between humans and robots.

• We both have a brain: Our brain tells us what to do and where to go, and a robot has a 'brain' (a CPU or Central Processing Unit) that tells it the same thing. 

• We both need food: Humans need food for energy and to help our brains think. A robot's 'food' is the code we give it, which tells it what to do.

There are some big differences, too. A robot can do many things, but it needs a human to programme it. And unlike humans, a robot can't show kindness or care.

We've been using special arrow cards to help us code. An up arrow means forward, a down arrow means backward, and left or right arrows are for turning. We've learned that a turn card needs to be followed by a forward or backward card to make our bots move.

We’ve also been introduced to the bug card! We hold this up whenever our code doesn't work the way we planned. Finding a "bug" is a great way to learn, as we have to use our problem-solving skills to debug and fix our code.

Keeping Ourselves Safe

This week, we started our Keeping Ourselves Safe unit. Tamariki have been learning some important personal information, including their full name, home address, parents’ names, and their phone numbers. They drew pictures of their homes to help describe them and talked about what makes each of them special and unique.

We had a special visitor, Constable Meg, who taught us how to identify a police officer and the correct names for our body parts. It's so important that we know the proper terms for our bodies to help us stay safe.

Just a Few Reminders

To help our mornings run smoothly, please remember to:

• Have your child bring in their literacy folder and put it in the correct box.

• Give your child a happy "kiss and drop" at the door.

• Please check your child’s lunchbox to make sure there are no lollies or chocolates.

• Pre-open packaging or pack snacks unwrapped. It's a huge help for the teacher, who is often reading a story to the class during this time.

Thanks for your continued support! It's wonderful to see the children learning and growing every day.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Niquita, Stacey, Katie and Elizabeth

Kia ora e te whānau,

Welcome to Week 4 of the third term! 

We would like to extend a very warm welcome to Poppy Wallace-Bell. Poppy is with us for the final 7 week placement of her teacher training at the University of Canterbury. Please introduce yourselves to Poppy and help to make her feel at home with us here at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto.

There is so much wonderful learning taking place within our hub, including a focus on Calendar Art, a Digitech topic starting next week, amazing learning in Maths (including 2D and 3D shapes, repeated addition leading on to multiplication, skip counting forwards and backwards in 2s, 5s and 10s and learning the doubles, e.g., 3+3, 7+7, etc., all the way up to 10+10) and of course, our Structured Literacy group learning. Your children are fantastic learners and we're all very proud of them!

Eight of our Koru team members are going to be moving through to the Kahikatea team on Monday next week. We wish them all the very best and will miss them enormously. We know that as long as they continue to be guided by our Beckenham Values they are going to prove to the new Kahikatea team members that they are wonderful learners and loyal friends.

Maths Week Next Week!

To celebrate Maths Week, we will be having a daily joke and maths problem on a whiteboard, outside Hangere, for you and your child to solve! Come to school each day with plenty of time to spend with your child mulling over the joke and solving the problem together.

Mathematics & Statistics: Understanding your child's learning

The Ministry of Education's Parent Portal is a collection of resources for parents, families and carers. Here, you will find information about the learning your child is engaging in at school, within their year level, and how you can support them at home with their learning. Feel free to have a look and explore what you can do at home to support your child's Maths learning, while, at the same time, keeping it fun!

KOS:

Keeping Ourselves Safe

The Koru team will be participating in the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme during Weeks 6 and 7 of this term. Your child's homegroup teacher will teach six sessions and Constable Meg will teach two sessions.

What will children learn?

They will learn:

- to work out when their safety is at risk

- how to keep safe when they meet and mix with other people

- who and how to ask for help if they, or someone they know, is being abused

- to go on asking for help until someone does something to stop the abuse

- that it is important to make and follow personal, family, and school safety rules

Children will have some short activities to work through at home with you. Thank you for your support with this. Please click on this link for more information about Keeping Ourselves Safe.

Beckenham's Got Talent:

The Student Council members are organising a Beckenham's Got Talent event this term. If your tamariki are keen to sing, dance, play an instrument, perform some magic, drama or poetry, please sign them up by emailing your child's teacher. The maximum group size is eight people and the maximum performance time is four minutes. Auditions for the final event are in Week 8.

If your child wishes to audition for our school talent show, whānau are welcome to organise this with their child and/or a group of children. Any practices will need to take place at home after school. 

Structured Literacy:

Here are a few little video links below (some of which have been shared before, and are now being reshared for new families):

• The Sounds of New Zealand English

One of our teachers has recorded some videos to support our whānau with understanding what our literacy stages look like and what you can do to support your learner at home:

• Stage 1 & How to Help at Home
• Stage 2 
• Stage 3
• Stage 4
• Stage 4+

We hope you find these videos both informative and helpful as you support your child's learning at home!

And now for this fortnight's photo gallery:

Showing 'We Care', by helping with some planting in the Pūkaki play space.

Preparing the roots of this little tree for planting.

Wow - awesome building skills on display here!

More care and kindness being shown towards the environment.

Caring for this newly planted tree.

'We Get There Together'.

Wonderful teamwork, tamariki.

Inquiring into why our shadows change at different times throughout the day.

Making the link between repeated addition and multiplication.

...and learning that the multiplication sign 'x' means 'groups of'.

Beautifully formed letters at handwriting time.

Making the link between knowing the doubles and therefore knowing the two times table.

We know that a sentence starts with a capital letter, has spaces between the words and (mostly) ends with a full stop.

Learning about 2D shapes and their properties.

A hexagon...

A trapezium...

A parallelogram...

A triangle...

A pentagon...

A rhombus...

Showing 'We Get There Together' and 'We Care'.

More lovely teamwork.

Good friends working together on their project in the sandpit.

What a wonderful thing to do together in the warm sunshine - don't you just love a good book!

The audience grows...

Happy times with our Koru team friends!

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Katie, Stacey, Niquita and Elizabeth