Showcase

Kia Ora Whanau

RE: Showcase

We welcome you to attend our Pohutukawa and Kauri Team Showcase on Thursday 6th July 2017 at 7:00 pm - 8:15 pm. This event will be held at Hillview Christian School, in their hall (150 Wilsons Road, St Martins, Christchurch).

The following items will be presented during this evening:

  • Pohutukawa Kapa Haka
  • J-Rock Performance
  • Pohutukawa Team Jump Jam Dances
  • Pohutukawa and Kauri Team Citizen of the Week certificates
  • Year 7/8 Choir
  • Band (a group will be decided upon this week)
  • Leadership awards 
  • Intermediate Hub video 
  • Te Whanau Mahi Tahi 

All of our children have been involved in learning a Jump Jam dance throughout this term to share. We are encouraging them to wear:
  • a black, red or white t-shirt or long sleeved top
  • dark shorts or pants 
  • a hat and/or sunglasses (optional). 
It is fine if this outfit is the school uniform. 

If you are available to help set the hall up and pack down, please let your child's teacher know. We will meet at Hillview Christian School at 3:15 for set up and pack down after the showcase. It will involve putting mats and seats out and then putting them away and ensuring the gym is tidy afterwards. 

We look forward to seeing you there. 

Pohutukawa Newsletter – Term 2 Week 8

Kia Ora Whānau

Hub Opening
We had a high level of excitement around our new hub opening yesterday. Here are some of the comments from our students:

James - "I've never seen anything as awesome as this before!"
Brayden - "The inside was amazing!"
Winni - "There were lots of good cubby holes to hide in and it was good because there was a place where you could be noisy and places to be quiet."
Hayley - "You could have fun there and there were heaps of places where we could do work and it was soundproof. I'm really excited about going there."
Nina - "I liked the heated floors."
Angus - "I liked the big stage with the steps where we could sit on. I like the bathrooms. They were so clean! I'm ready to get into it."
Grace - "The kitchen is nice and big and we can cook and bake there easily."

Team celebration day 

We are planning an end of term celebration afternoon on Wed 5th July. Children are invited to bring board games, card games, devices, toys or crafts. These will be locked away in the staff office for safety until our celebration starts.  If they would like to wear a onesie, they can bring it along to get into after lunch.

Lost Property 

We have had a number of school polar fleeces go missing in the last couple of weeks. Can you please help your child check their name tags and ensure all items are labeled. We check our lost property boxes and and return named items daily so items may have been returned to the Beckenham site lost property box outside the office.

Writing

We have been writing collaboratively, motivated by hybrid animals. Part of our writing process was to choose a hybrid and a text type. Here are some examples of our animal hybrid writing:

The EliFly

I can’t help but stare at the deep, bold, teal greeny and golden colours of its elephant ear shaped wings.. flapping like a flightless bird. It puts its long snake like snout into the water for a drink. Splash! The water gets sucked up from the ground like getting taken from a UFO! Slurp!
He must have heard me!

At this moment as his eyes connect with mine and blind me, as bright blue and red rays burst from them, shining directly towards me."'Ahh” I scream. The creature races away from me in fright and as it turns I can see its shimmering golden tail swinging from side to side catching and reflecting the sun's rays. It starts running faster as I chase it deeper into the South Korean jungle. We end up running into a cave.

Just then I see flashes of eyes in the pitch black cave. It’s the elephants pack! I dash off like Usain Bolt, never coming back again.

By Joel and Connor

Pōhutukawa Team Newsletter – Term 2, Week 6, 2017

Dance

The children have begun practicing their dance routines in groups, with the help of our Jump Jamp team leaders.  Enthusiasm has been high with many children also practicing at home.  The routines are looking sharp, with high involvement and lots of smiles all round.




Writing

We are continuing with our descriptive writing.  This week, children have selected two animals and combined them to produce a hybrid animal with a unique new name.  The children have been focusing on using paragraphs correctly and including figurative language to add interest to their writing.  Here are some examples.


Cheamouse Hybrid
The Cheamouse is a cheetah and a mouse, all mixed up together.  The Cheamouse is a part of the Caouse family, which means big vicious cats and tiny little mice are all mixed up together like slime, mixed up in your hair.  The cheeky little Cheamouse has heaps of relatives like the pumping Puamouse, the terrifying Tiamouse and the leaping Lynamouse.
  
The Cheamouse loves to pounce on beautiful butterflies and loves to eat lovely luscious red cheesy meat from the best deli’s in Tokyo and the greenest caterpillars.
  
The Cheamouse is very spotty like a lady bug and is the size of the sweetest, medium sized, babies’ fist.  The Cheamouse makes the sound “meack”, a squeak and a tiny meow, mixed up together like a cake in a mixer.

The enemies of the Cheamouse are little rock-crawling crabs, birds and chickens.  They are from the deep, deep South of Hawaii. 

I am really glad that they aren’t so big, or we would probably all be dead by them violently smashing everything in its path.

By Hebe Butland.

The terrifying Chragon
A Chragon is a ferocious creature that lurks in the shadows of the African savannahs. It is rarely seen, but they are usually found in the rocky mountains where they sometimes live. They are a breed of dragon and cheetah.

They have deadly and dangerous abilities like their poison tipped tails and saliva. They are flying creatures with enormous wings making them powerful fliers. They are as fast as lightning in the midnight sky, but unlike their relative, the cheetah, they can go for hours on end without tiring.

They have light sand coloured scales with black spots and splashes of colour on them help to blend with the soft sand and grizzly grasslands.  They usually have hazel brown or yellow eyes but can have any colour.  They also have thick spikes down their backs, necks and tails and they have spots that glow like lightning in a midnight sky.

They like rocky mountain caves and cracks, boiling African plains and grasslands.

Now you have learnt about these terrifying creatures.  Would you want to go looking for them?
Probably not!

By Kate Dunstan.

The year 5 & 6 Basketball team

The year 5/6 backetball team have been playing on Thursday nights at Pioneer Stadium.  As a newly formed team they are really working very well together and have had some fantastic break aways and baskets.  What a team!  The Pioneer Basketball club are offering a July School Holidays clinic for boys and girls aged 6-13. The focus will be on shooting and footwork.  Please see the link below for more information.







Pōhutukawa Team Newsletter – Term 2, Week 4, 2017

Science

As part of our Science/Art/Health interchange, many students in the Pōhutukawa Team have been identifying and learning about organs and systems of the human body. As part of this topic, the children have been dissecting hearts, eyes, kidneys and other organs to find out about their structure. The children have also been involved in a research project on the system or organ that they were most interested in.


A future surgeon in the making.

Rhythm Interactive

Recently, we were visited by Rhythm Interactive - a special drumming group that tours New Zealand. As part of the show, each student was given their own drum to play. The students had lots of fun learning to keep in time with the beat. Here's a video of the drumming in action:


Hockey

As part of our winter sports programme, we have had guest teachers from Small Stix Hockey come to school every week. During each session, the students have been learning about and practising lots of different hockey skills such as; passing, trapping, dribbling and tackling.



Dance

Next week, the children will start to learn a new dance routine as part of our dance/fitness programme. We will be showing off our dances as part of the Year 5 - 8 Showcase on the evening of Thursday, 6 July. More information to follow. We look forward to seeing you there!


Term 2 Week 2

Kia ora whanau!

Welcome back to Term 2. 

We have had an action packed programme for our concept-based learning approach this term, with children involved in either Science, Health or Visual Art. Each teacher is leading in a curriculum passion that they have to ensure that children get amazing experiences and deep learning opportunities. Each home room will have the opportunity to be involved in each of the different learning areas throughout the course of the term.

Hub 14 have started the term off with Amy for Health. They are focussing on understanding:
-what a good friend is
-what a bad friend is
-what bullying is and what to do about it
-what by-standing is
-the effects of negative self-image and tools to change our thoughts.

Hub 15 are starting the term off with a crime scene investigation with Gayle. The children are learning the basics of forensics and DNA.

Hub 21 have been very engaged in their Science lessons, in which they have been learning about identity through dissecting different things such as hearts and eye balls. 

Hub 22 are underway with their learning about 'Cubism', a style of art made famous by Georges Braques and Pablo Picasso. They have learned pencil techniques, had a play with fragmenting their drawings with different lines and shapes, and are now beginning their cubist style artwork.

Reading and Maths Groups

Term 1 provided a great opportunity for us to get to know the strengths and next steps of all of our children across reading and maths. Some reading and maths groups will be changing in the coming weeks to reflect the learning that children have achieved during Term 1. 


Sport updates


Winter Sport


We have now finalised teams for Winter Sport and communicated these to the children. The interest in playing sport was really encouraging and making up teams was a challenging task due to the level of skill and positive sportsmanship displayed by all the children. Unfortunately, we are limited to entering a maximum of two teams per sport in each age group and so can not take all the children who want to go.


Children participating in Winter Sport will have an early lunch each Friday (starting in week 3). They will be bussed to their game location at 12.30. Games start at 1.15 and should be finished by 2.15. On completion of their game they will be bussed back to Sandwich Road via Champion Street, arriving back at Beckenham by 3 pm.


Locations for matches are as follows:


  • Netball, Rugby and Year 7 and 8 football - Hagley Park
  • Hockey and Year 5 and 6 football - Nunweek Park


Children attending Winter Sport should ensure that they bring a warm jersey or jacket and a water bottle to their game. The following safety gear is also required:


  • Hockey - shin guards and mouthguards
  • Football - shin guards
  • Rugby - mouthguards


All players should have short nails and are not permitted to wear any kind of jewellery.


Of the children competing we have a mixture of highly able, competitive players and children who are trying out the sport for the first time. While there is a competitive element to Winter Sport, the primary focus is on participation and good sportsmanship. We look forward to seeing our school kete values on display.