Urban Eel Project/Tuna Tāone

Last Friday we spent a fantastic day of scientific inquiry down at our river/ awa investigating the health of our river and discovering many things about the habitat. Thank you once again to all of the whānau that made it possible by being there as tautoko, support, and guidance for the tamariki. Jenny Bond from the Waterways Trust made a follow-up visit on Monday this week and the students were able to reflect on their findings and look carefully at the data that they had collected from the immersion day. Our next step in Term 2 will be to analyse the health of the Ōpāwaho river and look at ways we can make positive changes to the health of our local waterway and its surrounding habitat.

Learning Conferences

It was fantastic to connect with so many of you at Learning Conferences this week. These conferences provided a valuable opportunity to be able to update you on how your child/children are going at school, as well as to give you an insight into the learning that we are doing. As a follow-up to these short catch-ups with your child's homegroup teacher, we do encourage you to have regular chats with your child/children at home about what they are doing, and the things we are learning about at school. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning. To help facilitate this, here is the link to our Pōhutukawa Learning Site for you once again. This site is a one-stop shop for a lot of the learning we do in the team; you can access our other learning sites from here, too! Remember, you will need to be logged in to a Beckenham email account to access the links so it's a perfect chance to sit down and take a look together.

Cross Country in Week 2

Our school cross country is coming up on Tuesday May 11th at 11:45am , which is in the second week of Term 2. We will be doing some cross country training every day in week 1 and going over the course. All students will participate in the cross country and we will be working together on basic running skills and personal goals for the event. Nau mai te wero, bring on the challenge!

Have a safe and happy school holidays, kia pai tō hararei. See you all in Term 2!

 Learning Conferences

Week 11 - Monday 12th April and Wednesday 14th April

School will close at 2pm on both days, to allow Learning Conferences to begin at 2:15pm.

Please go onto the School Interviews website and use the code kk64k to book your learning conference. The Learning Conferences are for 15mins each, except for Year 7/8 where you need to book a 15-minute slot, but allow 30 mins (it works!)

The focus of these Learning Conferences will be to update you on how your child has settled into the school year, and to give you a picture of the areas of focus they are working on, particularly in numeracy and literacy.

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all.

 Parent Help Needed: Te Tuna Tāone - Urban Eel

We are still looking for parents or family members to help us with our Urban Eel/ Tuna Tāone activity day on Friday April 9 from 9am - 2:30pm. The activities will be based around measuring water flow and quality, riparian zone habitats, macro-invertebrates and will include an 'eel encounter' with longfin eel/tuna from our  Opāwaho/Heathcote River. No previous experience or prior knowledge is needed. In fact, we expect to learn as much as the students from these activities and gain a much better appreciation of our local environment.

We will spend the day down at the Heathcote River beside our Ponds, learning about stormwater pollution and habitat destruction of the native longfin eel, and teaching students about the need to take action now to care for our unique ‘Tuna Tāone', or 'Urban Eels'. 

If you are able to help us, please get in touch with your child's homegroup teacher by email as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you! 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all.

It's hard to believe that Easter is just around the corner. We have some exciting educational events coming up to finish Term 1. Please read on to find out how you can be involved!

Parent Help Needed: Te Tuna Tāone - Urban Eel

As part of our concept of  'Change' for 2021, we are excited to have the chance to work with the Working Waters Trust on the Te Tuna Tāone - Urban Eel Project on Friday April 9 from 9am - 2:30pm. We will spend the day down at the Heathcote River beside our Ponds, learning about stormwater pollution and habitat destruction of the native longfin eel, and teaching students about the need to take action now to care for our unique ‘Tuna Tāone', or 'Urban Eels'.

The activities will be based around water flow and quality, riparian zone habitats, macro-invertebrates and will include an 'eel encounter' with longfin eel/tuna from our  Opāwaho/Heathcote River. We will need the support of a number of parents to make this day possible. If you are able to help us, please get in touch with your child's homegroup teacher by email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Parents and caregivers workshop - understanding how our children learn to read.

The structured literacy approach. Join us in the staffroom at 3.15 pm or 7:00pm on Tuesday 30th March 2021. Caroline Morritt, our Resource Teacher of Literacy will explain our new approach to teaching reading and writing. Based on the science of reading, Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto uses an explicit, systematic structured literacy approach to build a strong literacy foundation. Decodable books support targeted classroom teaching of phonological awareness and blending and segmenting skills for accurate, automatic reading and spelling. 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all.

The Canterbury Triathlon is an awesome event for children who have a good level of fitness and are after a challenge.  We are restricted to the number of entries that we can make and these will be done on a first come first-served basis. Entries close on the 10th March at 5pm.

This year, the event has a new venue at a private property close to Clarkville and will be held on Tuesday 23rd of March. Please note, the swim component is in a lake therefore it is very important that children are confident and capable swimmers. 

Due to the small numbers of children who compete in this event, we are unable to send a teacher to this event. Transportation and supervision of the children need to be arranged by each whānau. 

We are also required to provide an adult for set up or pack down in addition to marshaling duties. This person must be free of any responsibility to children at the event.  

Please fill out his Google Form if you are interested in entering your child/ren for this event:

https://forms.gle/E4PBaJZKMsQ9quVJ6

More information on this event can be found on the following link: 

https://www.sporty.co.nz/asset/downloadasset?id=948bff1b-3529-4668-a41b-29f5e1a434a8