Kia ora Kōwhai whānau, 

We hope you all had a lovely long weekend last week. The teachers had a very productive staff only day on Tuesday, learning about many different things. This week the students have been learning more about Changes during our science lessons. They have also been exploring how to code during inquiry as well. We have some future master coders in our hub! 

Literacy Classes

With our structured literacy approach the teachers are constantly monitoring and checking students understanding of letters and sounds. Throughout the year, as we look at where the students are at in their learning, we may reshuffle of our literacy groups to best meet student needs. Your child may not necessarily bring a reader or journal home each night. On these nights, they can choose a book from home to read. 

Small containers

If you are a family that uses My Food Bag or something similar and have many of those little sauce containers around, we would love to have these in the hub. These are great for some of our science experiments and storing paint (with the lids on). If you have any spare please send them in! 

Four Square 

Some of our students have recently started playing four square during Discovery and play breaks. We are still learning the rules, and how to manage ourselves when playing. 

We are focusing on the following:

Kia ora whānau,

 As part of our science inquiry we have been investigating chemical changes. Below are some photos of our " Moving Milk " experiment and the reactions of our little scientists in action.  The children were asked to predict what they thought would happen. They conducted the experiment and made ongoing observations. 

In our technology inquiry we have been learning about creating algorithms and debugging them. 

During literacy some of our tamariki read an article about GAP (Greyhounds as Pets) which is an organisation that finds homes for ex-racing greyhounds. We then had a very special visit from Frida's greyhound Millou! 

In Te Reo lessons we have been researching and writing our pepeha to share our cultural backgrounds. 

 

Have a lovely weekend!

Laura, Rowe, Nick, Meagan, Quynh 

Kia ora whānau, 

We have had a lovely start to our term. On Tuesday the students all took part in our school Cross Country. It was so awesome to see so many people trying their best, and cheering people on from the sidelines as well! The students definitely showed our school value Nau Mai te Wero - We Love Challenge!  

 New Team Members

This term we have welcomed our two lovely new teaching assistants,  Sonya and Charmaine  into the Kōwhai hub. They have already become a wonderful part of the Kōwhai whanau. 

Kapa Haka

We have started our Kapa Haka classes for this term. We are going to be focusing on the students pepeha for the beginning of the term. Pepeha are a way of introducing ourselves by identifying with geographical features such as rivers and mountains, as well as parts of our history. It would be very helpful if you could assist your child with researching theirs where needed. Your child will bring home some information for you to help them fill in, so they can complete this. Please help us by sending this information back with your child. 

Term 2 Inquiry topic

Our inquiry topic this term is split into two areas in which we are exploring the idea of Change. These are Kitchen Chemistry and Coding. We are looking forward to exploring both of these areas across the term. 

If you child has some wired headphones they could use when using technology, please name these and send them in. They will stay in their tote trays. 

Reminder

Just a quick reminder that school will be closed next Friday the 21st of May for a Staff only day. 

Discovery

Here are some pictures of the fantastic learning through play that our students have been doing during our Discovery time. This play involves learning robotics, practicing oral language with headbands, life drawing of the hub fish, creating new different species of dinosaur and many more other activities. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

Ngā mihi nui, 

The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Nick, Quynh, Meagan and Rowe. 

Kia ora whānau, 

What a fantastic and busy term we have had with so many awesome activities throughout the term. Thank you to all those parents and students who came along to the student-led conferences this week. It was lovely to touch base with everyone and reflect on our learning so far this year. 

Cross Country

Our whole school cross country is coming up at the start of next term. This will be held on Tuesday, 11th of May in the afternoon. 

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 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 practising over the holidays. Our course distance is around 1km if you would like to start training. Happy running! 

Structured Literacy 

Here is our structured literacy scope and sequence which forms the basis of our literacy programme. We check all students on their sounds and teach spelling patterns with this.  

A reminder that some students will be bringing home sound cards in their reading folders, and some will bring home books. If your child does not bring home a book, then they can choose a book to read from home. 

We also do not send books home if the student does not have their reading folder, so please help your child by reminding them to bring their reading or library folder each day. 

Learning conferences were a great opportunity to chat with you about structured literacy. Remember if you have any further questions, your child's literacy teacher is the best person to get in touch with. 

laura.williamson@beckenham.school.nz                            

rowena.barker@beckenham.school.nz

nick.bruce@beckenham.school.nz      

quynh.nguyen@beckenham.school.nz

meagan.mathers@beckenham.school.nz                              

Art 

We have been creating some amazing art over the last week. Some homegroups have focused on emotion-based art and some have been exploring the artist Piet Mondrian and making Mondrian inspired art. 

Here are some examples:

We hope you have a lovely and relaxing holidays. 

See you next term. 

The Kōwhai team - Laura, Nick, Rowe, Meagan and Quynh

 Kia ora whānau, 

It was a gorgeous day today for our first house games of 2021! This week we finished our inquiry rotations exploring historical change in Aotearoa. Over the last five weeks the students have investigated our first travellers to Aotearoa, housing, toys, technology, fashion, transport and created their own ships and pa's using Minecraft for Education. We explored the past, the current day and talked about how things could change in the future as well. We will be focusing on art for our final few weeks of this term during Inquiry time. 

Some of our Kōwhai kids have been taking part in various sporting events over the last few weeks. Jenny has shared a few photos of miniball practise and the students who participated in a mountain bike race in Hanmer. Well done to Laura and Ben Stoney, Archie Chapman, Izzy Clark, Kaio Herangi, Kawa Taylor and Nick Reedy.