Kia ora e te whānau,

Wow, what a term it has been! Our Koru children have completed their first term at school - what an awesome achievement! There has been so much learning take place throughout this term, and we have noticed all our tamariki making great progress. We have learnt about: our Solar System, our sounds and how to decode to read words, counting and equations, problem solving in Maths, different cultures and traditions within our hub, waiata during our Kapa Haka sessions, and exploring different aspects of Art. Our tamariki have also learnt about our school-wide "Word of the Week", our daily routines, our expectations at school, and have continued to grow their social skills both within our hub and throughout the school. We are so proud of our tamariki!

We are also very excited to welcome Elizabeth back to the Koru team in term 2! She will be taking the second class. 

Word of the Week:

Over the last two weeks, we have had a focus on the words RESPONSIBILITY and KINDNESS. We have some ideas to korero to your your tamariki about over the holidays: How can we show responsibility and kindness both at home and at school? What are some examples of showing responsibility? What are some examples of showing kindness? How can we show responsibility and kindness in the school holidays?

Maths: Notice, Think, Wonder

A challenge over the holidays: What do you notice? What do you think? What do you Wonder?

Reminders:

• Literacy folders are staying at school over the holidays and will be handed back out next term. 
• If library books are at home over the holidays, please make sure these come back in the first week of term 2 so your child can get new ones. 
• Our tamariki won't be needing hats for Term 2 and 3 so these can stay at home, ready to be brought back for Term 4.
• The school term finishes at the end of this week and Term 2 will begin on Monday 29th April.
• Lunchboxes next term: Can you please ensure your children have minimal wrappers in their lunchboxes. This makes it more accessible for your child and easier for them to eat. If there are wrappers or yoghurt pouches, could these please be slightly cut/ripped so your child can independently open these. Thanks for all your support with this. 

Kia ora, e te whānau,

Reminders:

Our kura/school will be closed on Friday 29th March, Monday 1st April and Tuesday 2nd April. We will see you all again on Wednesday 3rd April. Our last day of Term 1 is Friday 12th April.

Word of the week:

Our word of the week last week was DETERMINATION. Are you a determined person? In what ways do you show determination? How are determination and resilience the same/different? Determination means the ability to continue trying to do something, although it is very difficult.

Our word of the week this week is COOPERATION. Cooperation means working together to get things done. To be good at cooperating with others, you need to be a good TEAM MEMBER. 

Learning Through Play

We are learning to show determination and cooperation during our learning through play time. Have a look at the photos, how do you think the children might be showing determination and/or cooperating?

Ngā mihi nui,

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

Wowzas! We are already at week 7! We have been very busy with all of our learning. Thank you to those who met with Georgia for your child's 6 week transition meetings this week. It has been so lovely to catch up and chat about your child's start to school. 

Parent Playground Helpers

Last year, we had a wonderful group of parents and caregivers who came along to school during lunch play to support our tamariki in the junior playground. We will be restarting this again from the beginning of Term 2. The benefits of being on the parent playground roster include being involved in the school day, and getting to know other parents and your child's friends. Please email Katie if you would like to offer your help for Term 2. 

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

Literacy

This week's Blog is about our Literacy learning. 

At Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto, we follow a Structured Literacy approach. Sounds are broken into stages, and these stages have heart words and books that align with each stage. In our Literacy learning at the moment, we have been focusing on learning our stage 1 sounds and characters. We have been working on learning the characters' names and the sounds that go with them, as well as learning some heart words. 

Below are some Literacy videos, which will be really valuable to have a look at to help with your tamariki Literacy learning at home. The Speech Sounds of New Zealand English is a great video to watch and listen to how we pronounce our sounds. The Stage 1 video was created by a kaiako from school, Lisa, and talks about how we teach our sounds and heart words for Stage 1. The last video is about activities you can do at home to help support your child.  

• The Speech Sounds of New Zealand English
• Stage 1
• How you can help at home Stage 1

Kia ora whānau,

Wow! We have been having so much fun in Koru and made it through the first 5 weeks of this term! 

Maths:

We are starting to learn some Rapid Routines to begin our maths lessons. This term, we have been learning about 'Notice, Think, Wonder' tasks. A photo is shown to the children and they are asked the questions: "What do you notice? What do you think? What do you wonder?" These tasks provide a visual stimulus for tamariki to discuss, notice, think, and wonder about. This could include graphs, puzzles, pictures or graphics. We are learning to act like Mathematicians, which means the children are learning to look for patterns; take a risk and explain their thinking. 

Here is the image looked at, and all the ideas the children thought about. 

• I notice a big diamond in the middle
• there is a pattern with the diamonds, they are red and white
• the triangles go together to make a diamond
• there are squares
• the triangles fit into the pattern
• the shapes are all joined together
• I think it is a floor
• I wonder if they are tiles?

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

What a wonderful start to the year it has been in the Koru team! The tamariki are doing a great job at independently completing their morning jobs of putting their lunchbox and drink bottle on the shelf, sliding their name up on the board and settling into a quiet activity before the bell, learning our school routines, and getting used to school life. Over the last two weeks we have been very busy! We have learnt some of our new Milo the Monkey sounds and characters (Little Learners Love Literacy), explored some different areas of Mathematics, completed different types of artworks, played with a range of equipment within our hub, and have started creating relationships with others in our hub. Our tamariki have settled in beautifully and we are so proud of the progress they have made already in the first few weeks of school. Some photos of what we have been up to:

What our year will look like: In the Koru team, we learn lots of amazing new things. Here is an overview of some of the things we will learn in our different learning areas:

Literacy: We will learn about our sounds, how to use these sounds to make words by segmenting and blending, and using our skills to read Sam, Pip and Tim books. We will also read different picture books and big books, and will look further at the different elements these stories have (sentence structure, vocabulary, grammar, big and exciting words, punctuation etc.)

Maths: In Maths this year, we will be looking at a wide range of elements within mathematics. We will explore problem solving, rapid routines, addition and subtraction, equal sharing strategies, counting, statistics, measurement, patterns, time and sequencing and much more. We will also practising writing our numbers.

Kinetic Letters: For handwriting, we follow the Kinetic Letters Handwriting Programme. We teach the children about different movements, strong body positions, and letter families. The letter families contain different letters that have similar movements, to help support the child in writing these. Once the children have learnt the different letters in lowercase, they then go on to learning uppercase.

The Arts:  We will be looking at a range of aspects of the Arts this year such as Visual Art, Dance, Drama and Music. In Visual Arts, we will look at different styles of Art such as painting, collage, pastel and crayon work, drawing, and will use one of these styles for our Calendar Art. In Dance, we will look at different ways to move our bodies in the time to a musical beat. In Drama, we will look at story telling and role play and this will be incorporated into our Learning through Play. In Music, we will explore different rhythm patterns, and finding different ways we can make sound using different objects/things. 

Te reo Māori: We will explore different aspects of Te reo Māori including learning our mihi, the words for colours, body parts, numbers, days of the week and months of the year, different instructions, and lots of waiata. 

Wellbeing/Health and PE: In Wellbeing/Health, we will learn about Hauora through Te Whare Tapa Whā, exploring the physical, emotional, spiritual, and whānau aspects of our wellbeing. We will also be taking part in Life Education this year. In P.E, we will learn different movement skills through games, ball skills, and fitness. We will also be partaking in our whole school Cross Country and Athletics.

Science: In Science, we will be looking at Planet Earth and Beyond and will learn about our Solar System, our Earth Systems and will explore their natural features and resources. 

Social Sciences: In Social Sciences, we will be looking into our school wide concept of Identity. This will be interlinked through our other curriculum areas, as well as learning about Matariki, who we are, and our stories. 

Technology/Digitech: Later on in the year, we will be exploring different concepts of Digitech. We will learn about coding, looking at what it is and how we can explore it through using unplugged and plugged resources. 

Friday Waiata sessions: We are so lucky to spend some time with Whaea Cath on Friday's singing waiata and learning some te reo Māori. It was such an awesome session, we can't wait for Whaea Cath to come back!

Friday Buddies: On Friday afternoons, we are very fortunate to be able to have 4 big buddies from the Kauri team come down and hang out with us. We have had two sessions with our big buddies so far which have been awesome! We have created some butterfly art, read lots of stories, played with the vehicles, and built really all towers with our Duplo. We had so much fun, we can't wait until next Friday!

Library: On Fridays during the middle block, the Koru tamariki get to go down to our school library and have a look at the different books there are on offer. In our team, we get to choose 2 books to take home that have a yellow dot in the top right hand corner. We get to keep these stories until the following Friday, where we can bring them back in to swap them for 2 more new ones. If we forget to bring our books back, that's okay, we just keep them for another week. If the Library books are forgotten a couple of times in a row, we will get an email from Anne to say these books are overdue and we need to bring them back. Here are some photos of what our Library looks like, the types of books we can get out, how we wait in the line to get our books issued from Anne, and where we wait with our folders once they have been issued. 

This box is where your child will put their Library Folder when they bring them back

Some Reminders:

Friendship List: On Friday 9th February, Georgia sent out the Koru Whānau friendship list to all families who wished to be on it. This will be updated every term as new tamariki start school. If you have not received this yet, please check your spam/junk folder as sometimes these emails end up there. Any questions, don't hesitate to email or ask.

Lunchboxes: A few reminders about your child's lunchboxes:

• Please ensure your child is only bringing water to school in their lunchboxes/drink bottles (no juice or other drinks). 
• It is also important to help teach your child how to open and close their lunchboxes, so they can do this independently at the start and end of eating times. 
• It would be great if you could also either precut or teach your child how to open packets in their lunchboxes (for example potato sticks, chip bags, twisty yoghurt pouches, muesli bars etc.)

We hope you have a lovely weekend ahead, and we will see you on Monday ready to go for another fantastic week!

Ngā mihi mahana,

Georgia and Stacey