Beckenham School Newsletter, Friday 5 August, 2016

Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

Today we are emailing you the link to the newsletter, so that you read the newsletter by clicking on the link, and going to the website.
This is different to last week, where the newsletter was in the email. We expect the reading experience to be better from the website, and offer you the opportunity to visit the new website at the same time!
Please let us know if you have any challenges with reading or receiving the newsletter - our goal is to make it easy for you to access.
We know that winter is well and truly upon us with the possibility of snow being mentioned in current forecasts. Of more concern to us, are the very cold early morning temperatures that are being predicted for next week, along with clear days. Therefore we are predicting possible ice hazards at school. Tony has been preparing the best he can today, getting in extra stocks of salt, and we will be using cones on pathways next week to identify hazardous areas.
Please would you ensure that your child(ren) are dressed appropriately for these winter temperatures. We are noticing a small number of children coming to school wearing just a short-sleeved shirt and no other layers to put on. A polar fleece is a minimum requirement and gumboots (along with a spare pair of socks in their schoolbag) is strongly encouraged.
If you don't have gumboots - the second hand clothing shop has been given some pairs to recycle - if you have spare children's size gumboots that you can pass on to the second hand clothing team, please bring them to the office.
The second hand clothing shop will be open next Friday, before and after school.

Ka kite
Sandy Hastings
Principal/Tumaki

Important Dates

Upcoming Events

Tue 9 Aug
6:30-8:00pm, staff room - Positive Parenting Workshop first of 6 weeks of free workshops sign up by clicking on link above

Thu 11 Aug
6:00 - 8:30pm BOT meeting

Fri 12 Aug
8:45-9:15am & 2:45-3:15pm PTA Uniform Room open.
9:15am-9:45am Celebration Assembly - All Welcome!
12:30-3:00pm - Winter Sport

Tue 16 Aug
ICAS Maths

Thu 18 Aug
Yr 7 & 8 Ski trip to Mt Hutt

2016 & 2017 Term Dates

Citizen of the Week

Sadie McLoughlin - Year 7

Sadie, you are a motivated, energetic student. The enthusiasm and creativity you bring to your learning, has seen you achieve outstanding results across the school curriculum. You are an empathetic member of our school, one who leads by example and regularly shows that she cares. You demonstrate a desire to immerse yourself in challenges and have developed an impressive work ethic. Keep embracing big mistakes, and celebrating your well deserved successes. Tino pai Sadie!

Sharing our Learning

Koru Hub

A very warm welcome to our newest Hub 12/13 students and their families - Karda, Flynn, Harper, Ashleigh, Stella, Jack, Robin, Justin, Maggie, Bobby, and Davish.

We love learning

“Depriving young children of play experiences, the reverie of imagination, and open-ended explorations with the world around them contributes to the acceleration, fragmentation, and deterioration of young children’s developmental possibilities”  

Thomas Armstrong, “The Best Schools” 

Our lovely New Entrants begin each day with self selected learning activities to help make the transition from preschool to school a reasonably easy one. As well as direct instruction, we incorporate many guided play learning activities into the day based on children’s current interests. Recent favourites have been watercolour painting, retelling the Mrs Wishy Washy story using toy animals,making puppets, constructions using blocks and cars, playing teachers.Playing teachers is an age old favourite! Xavier decided to get a group of children around a table today and play word games.



Our children enjoy drawing and writing on a daily basis. They can often be found making their own little books and writing messages.


Little penguins can be found incorporated into playful activities. Through play (guided play) the children are finding out about their world and developing their oral language and social skills. Music and movement are also a large part of our day too.



Through drama we can be any character we choose.  

Play

There are 5 types of functional play; physical, language, exploratory, constructive, fantasy and social. All of these feature in the day of a NE child.

What the Research Tells Us About Play

Play serves as a mediator between what is possible and what is actual “Being playful” – is the drive to play. This compliments the curiosity drive. Curiosity motivates children to seek new knowledge, playfulness allows them to practice new skills and use them creatively through meaningful conversation.

To be able to do this, children require the freedom to engage in authentic play. “This process of play may be the single most important thing that humans do.”

(The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice)

Parent Education Opportunity 

Last chance to register - starts this coming Tuesday

We are excited to be able to offer six, free, Positive Parenting workshops that are going to be held starting next week.
The sessions will run from 6:30pm to 8pm each Tuesday evening, starting on Tuesday 9 August and finishing on Tuesday 13 September.
The sessions are being facilitated by trained staff from the Christchurch Methodist Mission, and funded through their funding streams.
The school will provide supervision for children, if you need to bring them along to enable you to attend the workshop.

Please register by clicking here.

These are some of the topics that will be touched on:
  • Building strong and healthy relationships, 
  • Tips on managing fears and worries in children, 
  • Establishing routines, 
  • Strategies to manage behaviour positively, 
  • Stress management
These are the key messages that will be woven through the programme:
  • Uncertainty about parenting and ability to parent well
  • Feeling judgment as a parent, yet also being judgemental of other parents
  • Child wellbeing not being well understood
  • Isolation, which appears to be self-perpetuating
  • Being tired as a Parent
  • That there are still on-going effects of post-earthquake stressors
  • Fathers needing to find their place and role as parents.

School Notices

Can you help?

We are currently on the lookout for planks of wood, plastic tubing, wool and cardboard tubes. So if you feel the urge to donate these please let anyone in the Koru team know.

Eastern Terrace:

There are roadworks on Eastern Terrace which means there is very limited parking. Please avoid if at all possible.

Sports News

Winter sports:

Another fine day for the travelling sports players at the park, although a cold wind ensured we remembered we are playing winter sports. Congratulations to these players for being selected as Player of the Day for their team:
Y 5/6 football red - Aram Peek
Y 5/6 football black - Daniel Smith
Y 7/8 football red - Oskar Frampton
Y 7/8 football black - Zak Morrison
Y 5/6 hockey red - Bella Reddecliffe
Y 5/6 hockey black - Tyler Chesterman
Y 7/8 hockey red - Lachlan Smythe
Y 7/8 hockey black -  Liam Clancey
Y 5/6 netball red - Keira Tough
Y 5/6 netball black - Jessie Leask
Y 7/8 netball red - Olivia Cochrane
Y 7/8 netball black - Emily McDonald
Y 5/6 rugby red - Noah Harmer-Campbell

Orienteering Success

In the July holidays, Rosie Zinzan-Dickie travelled to Cambridge, in the North Island, to participate in the NZ Secondary Schools Championship for orienteering. Rosie competed in the sprint and long distance events for Year 7 and 8 girls champs. Out of a field of 54, Rosie placed 4th in the sprint and 5th out of 36 for the long distance races. Given that she was the only member of Beckenham School competing, she represented our school admirably and in fact our school placed 9th out of 15 schools. Awesome work Rosie. We are very proud of your love of challenge!


FIFA - Live Your Goals Week - 12-18th September 2016

Come and experience the beautiful game in a friendly female only environment, at Canterbury’s home of football - English Park.
Football is not only a fun and exciting sport, it’s growth rate is rapid amongst our young females, so get along to one of our girls only events this September.
We will have skills sessions, small-sided games, and even a chance to have Q&A time with one of our very own Football Ferns.
All you have to do is get your students to the ground, we will take care of the rest!
Venue: English Park – 127 Cranford Street, Christchurch

Monday 12th September - for years 5&6 girls
Tuesday 13th September - for years 3&4 girls 
Time: 1:30 – 3:00pm

We are not able to take a group from school to this event, so if your child is particularly interested in participating, and you are able to take them, please email Jacky in the office by this Tuesday 9 August, and we will register them for you.

PTA News

Click here to order your Comedy Bingo Night Tickets!





Community Notices

(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)


Canterbury District Health Board

Make your GP team your first call 24/7.  It’s always important that people access the most appropriate health care. In most cases this is provided by general practice teams, even after hours.  You can call your usual general practice number 24/7 and when they’re closed, a team of nurses is available to answer your call. The nurses provide free health advice, and if you need to be seen urgently by a doctor, they can tell you what to do and where to go.  When a child is unwell it's always good to seek medical attention sooner, rather than later.
It’s best to phone your own general practice team any time of the day or night.

If a child does need to have an appointment, most practices in Canterbury have free consultations for those under 13.




Storylines Free Family Day

Sun 28th August 10am-3pm at the Upper Riccarton Library.
The Storylines Festival is a great time to celebrate the joy of reading.  Come and share the excitement of NZ books with children, families and the Christchurch community at the Storylines Free Family Day.  This year's authors, illustrators and performers include: Jane Bloomfield, Steve Gurney, Leonie Agnew, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Whanau Tahi Kapa Haka Group, Scott Tulloch plus many others. http://www.storylines.org.nz/

Free High Tech Vision Screening for all Children.

The free iscreen service is available on Wednesdays and Fridays from 10.00am - 2.00pm. It is a drop in clinic so no appointment required. Our address is: The Children's Specialist Centre, 58 Colombo Street, Cashmere, Christchurch, 8022. Phone: 03 3379470 fax 03 3327630.

The iscreen service will determine if a child will require a full eye test or not. We will advise at the appointment if the screening is a pass or a fail or if a follow up test is recommended in 6 months time. Our friendly reception staff will be on hand to make any follow up appointments required to see the Eye Specialist Dr Antony Bedggood if your child receives a failed result at the iscreen. The clinic has a child friendly team approach (Surgeon, Orthoptist, skilled tech staff)and the best technology.
If a child has a failed result, full assessment and treatment is available for family's with a current community services card, if it hasn't already been used in the last year at another optometrist.

Beckenham School Newsletter, Term 3 Week 1, 2016

Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

Welcome to the first edition of our blog style school newsletter! We are really excited about the new look and format, and hope that it will enable you, our readers, to access information more easily, on a range of devices, with more interactivity.
We hope to bring you more images, videos, links to the school website (check out the amazing new look here too), team blogs, surveys, external websites and social media such as the school Facebook page.
Our enormous thanks to Nick Bruce who put the new website and newsletter blog together, and to the small group of parents who volunteered to be a focus and testing group for him during Term 2
We'd love to get your feedback - tell us what you like, and, if something isn't working for you, how you think we could improve it. We do expect that there will need to be some 'tweeking' as we go!

New Security around the school, and particularly for bikes and scooters

Over the school holidays, we had a new security camera system installed in the school. Our old system had been steadily falling over, so it was very timely. The cameras will be able to be moved, as buildings and our site changes with the rebuild. We hope to be able to capture a time lapse of the building process through this system as well.
We have been aware of increasing concerns over security of scooters and bicycles at school. To that end, we have now asked children to park all scooters and bikes in the gravel area in front of the hall. We have a security camera on that particular area which we anticipate will help with security. We still request that all scooters and bikes are locked. 

Free, 6 week Positive Parenting Course 

We have worked with the Christchurch Methodist Mission to enable a Free, 6 week Positive Parenting Course to be made available at our school. The course is open to anyone in the community. The sessions will run from 6:30pm to 8pm each Tuesday evening, starting on Tuesday 9 August and finishing on Tuesday 13 September.
The sessions are being facilitated by trained staff from the Christchurch Methodist Mission, and funded through their funding streams.
The school will provide supervision for children, if you need to bring them along to enable you to attend the workshop.
Please click here to enrol as places will be limited.

Does your child have a water bottle at school every day?

Drinking plenty of water throughout the day is critically important for healthy hydration that promotes brain function, and therefore learning. We request that every child has a drink bottle (preferably a clear bottle, so that they can monitor their drinking) at school every day, that can be refilled with water throughout the day.
Apart from water, and milk (available through the Milk in Schools programme), we request that no other drinks be brought to school.
Click here for an interesting NZ article on water at school

Building Update

Whilst we were hoping that the building programme would begin this term, we have been advised that the earliest it will now start is the beginning of Term 4. The Board are determined that we will not begin moving students and teachers to the Champion St site until we are guaranteed that work will begin here at school. We do not want to be moving off-site and have nothing happen for a long period of time. We will keep you posted.

Ngā mihi
Sandy Hastings - Tumuaki/Principal

Important Dates

Upcoming Events

Fri 29 Jul
8:30am - 9:15am
2nd hand Uniform Shop Open

Fri 29 Jul
9:15am
Welcome Assembly

Fri 29 Jul
9:30am
Celebration Assembly
(Sir Peter Blake Award)

Fri 29 Jul
2:30-3:15pm
2nd Hand Uniform Shop Open

Mon1 - Fri 5 Aug
Cook Islands Language Week

Mon 1 Aug
11:30-3:00pm
Y5-8 Winter Tournament
Hagley Park

Tue 2 Aug
ICAS English test

Wed 3 Aug
7:00pm, staffroom
PTA AGM, then normal meeting

Tue 9 Aug
6:30-8:00pm, staffroom
Positive Parenting Workshop


first of 6 weeks of free workshops 
sign up by clicking on link above

Thu 11 Aug
6:00 - 8:30pm
BOT meeting

Citizen of the Week

Billy Murfin - Year 2

Billy, you are an outstanding role model who consistently demonstrates our Beckenham School values. Your kind, thoughtful and humourous approach to learning and social situations is appreciated by everyone around you and your peers look up to you. You put 100% effort into everything you do and help others to achieve alongside you which is evidence of your caring nature. Your smile and positive attitude to life brightens our day and we are very lucky to have you in our Kahikatea Team. Tino pai, Billy!

Sharing our Learning

Kahikatea 

Kahikatea have enjoyed a fabulous start to the term with children arriving refreshed and excited to be back at school. Something that has been generating excitement and interest is ‘Discovery Stations.’ This is a new element to our daily routine that runs alongside our Reading, Writing and Maths programs. You will be aware that schools are changing and adapting to the needs of the 21st Century. Discovery stations is our way of meeting those needs and developing soft skills such as creativity, confidence, collaboration and problem solving. Discovery Stations is all about giving children agency through offering a variety of stations, which provide coverage of the curriculum while fostering the development of ‘soft skills’.


Stations are 'good to go' from the moment the children arrive at school with most children choosing to start their learning right then and there. This week the children have been working collaboratively to: create a bridge out of string and paper; work in pairs to write their name using the binary code; take on the role of teacher and curl up on the bean bag with a good book.


Each day we focus on a reflective question to support the children to make connections between the stations and their learning. This week we have thought about how we choose a station and what we can do to help others.
“I like Discovery Stations because there is a lots of learning. My favourite one is making codes so you can talk to a computer. I taught Sandy how to write her name in code!” James


“I like the building station. My bridge didn’t work at first, but I kept trying.” Lyndsay
“I have been doing the Impossible Bridge Station. I have been trying different things to see what will stabilise my bridge.” Dan
“Discovery Stations is really fun. I like having time to read my book in the Quiet Zone.” Vida
Stations change and adapt to meet the needs and interests of the children and to link in with our current learning contexts. You can be sure that there will always be opportunities for Reading, Writing and Maths on offer! 

School Notices

Lost and Found

The badge below has been handed in to the office.

Immunisation Records

If you have already brought in immunisation details to the office for your child(ren) many thanks. If you haven't then please have a hunt for the plunket book or contact your GP and get a copy of the immunisation details. If your child has not been immunised I also need to know this. If you can take a clear photo of the relevant page with your phone, just email it through to me with your child's name in the email.
Many thanks - Jacky

Junior Neighbourhood Support:

Welcome back to school, I hope you have all had a fun and safe break. Last term seemed very busy but the Junior Neighbourhood Support Leaders have worked on the focus- Be Fair and Helpful. You may have seen the colourful chalk messages in the playground. I also presented 6 Awards to children who have shown assistance, caring behaviour and given their time to help the community. Please remember to nominate any children that you feel have done something that shows a community spirit, an act of assistance or care. The forms are by the JNS mailbox in the office.
Check out the Junior Neighbourhood support website.
Regards Elissa Smith 

PTA News


Save the date! This is one you won't want to miss if you love a good belly laugh and lots of fun,
Comedy Bingo Show,
Friday 26th August.
More details to follow in term 3.

Community Notices

(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)

ADHD - University of Canterbury study - opportunity for your ADHD child...

The Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group at the University of Canterbury are currently running a study testing a vitamin-mineral formula to treat ADHD in children. If you have a child 7-12 years old with ADHD symptoms (an existing diagnosis is not required) who is not currently taking medication, see the study website: http://bit.ly/childadhd, or contact Kathryn Darling Kathryn.darling@pg.canterbury.ac.nz or 03-364 2987 ext. 7705. We only have a few spaces left and will only be taking new participants until the end of term 3, so get in quick!”

O'Callahan Dance Studio

Ballet, Jazz and Contemporary classes held in Fisher Ave and Domain Tce. Exam and Performance opportunities for all students. Enquire now to join us for term three!
ocdancestudio@hotmail.co.nz

Christchurch City Council and Community Boards...

Do you know passionate people who care about their community and want to make a difference in their area or in the City, who could be interested in standing for the Community Board or for Council?
Council needs a wide variety of skills and different perspectives, not unlike a school board.
Nominations are now opened, until the 12th of August.
You can find useful information here:
Nomination forms
http://www.ccc.govt.nz/the-council/how-the-council-works/council-elections/candidate-information/nomination-forms/
New wards
http://www.ccc.govt.nz/the-council/how-the-council-works/representation/
Timeline
http://www.ccc.govt.nz/the-council/how-the-council-works/council-elections/elections-timeline/

After school art

Monday's 3.30 - 4.30, 5-9 years. Tuesday - Thursday 3.20 - 5.30 10 years and up. Saturday arts and crafts sessions in Opawa.

Contact Ira on 0274489932 iraartist@hotmail.com www.artbyira.net

Andy Griffiths is coming to town...!

National Scout Scarf Day

Friday 5th August is the 3rd annual National Scout Scarf Day which encourages all present and ex Scout members to wear their scarves to School, work etc.


International advocate and speaker Melinda Tankard Reist, speaking on the sexualisation of children...

...at Hillview Christian School on Sunday August 7th (7-8.30pm) and we would love to invite your school community to attend. (see flyer here)
Melinda will be speaking on the sexualisation of children, how this is impacting the global exploitation of children, and looking at practical things we can do in response.
There is an interview about this event on page 5 of todays press, and another article on Stuff
Stuff - Sexualisation of Children - an issues that needs to be faced
www.hagar.org.nz

Insulation Subsidies for Landlords

Community Energy Action can provide a 50% insulation subsidy for landlords whose tenants either
  • Have a community services card OR
  • Are low income and have a health condition that is affected by the cold
Conditions apply. Subsidy includes ceiling and underfloor insulation, and installation.

Call us now to arrange a free, no obligation quote.

Please be aware that funding is limited for these subsidies. We are currently experiencing a high volume of enquiries, and there may be a waiting list to have your property assessed.

0800 GET WARM ● 03 374 7222 ● info@cea.co.nzwww.cea.co.nz