Ngā mihi e te whanau, warm greetings to you all. We've been lucky with some amazing weather for the start of our Winter Sports programme, with all of our students receiving netball, football, and hockey coaching and tautoko, support from our parent coaches and Year 8 student leaders on Tuesday afternoons. We have more than 70 students participating in the South Zone competition and proudly representing Beckenham. A huge mihi, thanks to the amazing parents who are helping out on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. We couldn't have that number of students involved in the inter-school competition without your help and support. We hope you all enjoy the photos. Please read on for some important updates - including a revised date for the Food for Thought programme and our visit to St. Martins New World.

New dates for Food for Thought and Parent Help Required

The Food for Thought programme has been rescheduled to take place in Week 8 on the 17th, 18th and 19th of June. Food for Thought is a free nutrition education programme offered to all New Zealand primary schools, and provides Year 5 and 6 classes with three Nutrition Sessions with a qualified nutritionist. This will be an invaluable learning experience for the tamariki who always learn so much about nutrition from this programme. It will also be a golden opportunity to ask questions around the dinner table about what the tamariki have learned in this programme and about the new knowledge they have acquired about sustaining their health. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning.

Parent help will be required for our trip to New World on Wednesday 19th June.

Each Home Group will walk to and from New World and receive an in-store lesson to consolidate what they have learned from the programme over the previous 2 days. The schedule is as follows: 

Steve's home group: 8:30 am - 11:00 am

Gayle's home group: 9:30 am - 12:00 pm

Megan's home group: 10:30 am - 1:00 pm

Rae's home group 11:30 am - 2:00 pm

If you think you may be able to help out at any of these times, please get in touch with your child's home group teacher. It is possible to accompany your child with a buddy with your buddy and a different home group depending on the time you are available. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Have a great weekend everybody,

The Pōhutukawa Team

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all on this chilly Friday. The grey day was certainly made more colourful with all of the creative Book Day costumes! The Media Team has been busy today taking photos of the array of characters, so keep an eye on Hero for those. Thank you for reading on as we have a lot of news to share, as well as some upcoming events.

Food for Thought update... and a "Super" Special Guest

As we posted on Hero earlier in the week, the Food for Thought program that we had planned to do this week was unfortunately cancelled due to their instructor being unwell. We are looking to rebook the program for later in the term, and will keep you all posted. Thank you again to the parents who had initially given up their time to come and support the trip. We do hope you can come along if it goes ahead next month. 

As it turned out there was a silver lining to this cloud, as we were lucky to have a visit from Jon Nabbs - a self-described 'life enthusiast' who came to talk to us all about his incredible endeavours. Jon enthralled the students (and teachers too) with stories of running across Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, a journey of approximately 8,000Km (around 195 marathons), with winter temperatures as low as -50 degrees Celsius! 

Jon also shared that the motivation for his journey is to raise money in support of child cancer patients across New Zealand and Canada to have access to services so they can continue to feel in his words "they have some control as they fight a fight they shouldn't have to fight". His talk was a wonderful example of our 'We Make a Difference' value for the kids, and we're sure they will remember the story of the muesli bar and the grizzly bear for the rest of their lives!

Jon is currently attempting a Guinness World Record for the fastest person to run the length of Aotearoa, and is again using this as a chance to raise money and awareness for children fighting cancer. We will be following his journey, and we wish him all the very best! Nau mai te wero, Jon.

You can find out more, donate, and follow his journey on his website https://www.jonnabbs.com/ and also watch the clip that he shared with the students by clicking here.

Winter Sports

Starting next week, we will be running our winter sports programme on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The tamariki will be either participating in non-competitive or competitive hockey, netball, or football.

Non-competitive sports will take place at school on Tuesday afternoons and will be supported by the Year 8 Sport Leaders. 

Competitive sports teams will play in the South Zone Winter Sports competition on Thursday afternoons. If your child is on one of these teams, you will soon receive a Hero post with all of the information you need to know. Students who are not on a competitive team will be doing alternative sports programme here at school.

Cross Country

We were blessed with beautiful weather for this year's Cross Country, and it was so great to see the students out there giving it heaps! Amazing also to have the chance to send 24 of our keen bean runners to the Zones.  A huge congratulations to all of our students who embraced the chilly challenge on Wednesday morning at the Zone Cross Country. It's a big achievement to qualify for this race, and the nervous excitement that accompanies the build-up is such a great opportunity to live our value 'We Love Challenge'. Well done to all of the competitors for representing Beckenham so admirably, and a special congratulations to Laura, Lily, Jayme, Max, and Haydn, who will be representing our kura at the Canterbury Cross Country next month. A massive achievement! Watch this space...

Latin American and Pasifika Musical Extravaganza

Yesterday the students were treated to an eclectic performance of Latin American Music by a visiting musician, supported wonderfully by our very own budding musicians Ben and Noah . The concert ebbed and flowed as the audience listened to, and sometimes participated in musical numbers from Chile, Brazil, Samoa, Aotearoa... and more. What a wonderful way to show 'We Love Challenge' for Ben and Noah who embraced the challenge of getting up in front of their peers with very little preparation to perform. Tau ke, awesome.

Muddy Months

As we head into winter we are noticing the inevitable increase of muddy shoes and clothes as students come back from play and lunch, having played sports and games on the Park. We will be asking students to take off muddy shoes before entering the Hub and lining them up neatly outside the door. We are lucky to have wonderful underfloor heating in the classrooms, so feet stay nice and warm, and as an added benefit our carpet stays mud-free! In addition to this, we suggest that if your child is coming home with very muddy clothes, please consider supplying them with a spare pair of school shorts and a spare school top for them to change into once they finish their games. We appreciate your support with this.

Have a great weekend everyone, whatever you get up to. Kia pai tō rā whakatā.

Ngā mihi e te whānau,

Warm greetings to you all. We have had a wonderful week back in Pōhutukawa. The weather has been mostly welcoming, and the students in great spirits! We've hit the ground running this term (literally) with some Cross Country practice. We all noticed how enthusiastic the students have taken to their practice, as you can see from the photos. Long may it last! Please read on for some news from the team, and some updates on the term. Have a great weekend everyone, kia pai ngā rā whakata.

Food for Thought

We are excited to be working with House of Science again this term! Please watch this video to give you an overview of what House of Science is all about.

Each home group has just completed the first round of hands-on, practical experiment-based scientific workshops focused on the concept of ‘food science’. We learned that each ingredient in a product formula or recipe adds different functionality. Adding or removing an ingredient can alter the structure, texture, colour and taste of food. Some of the questions the students investigated were: What is curdled milk? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What is the difference between baking powder and baking soda? How do you add or remove moisture from food? How do salt and sugar absorb moisture?

The activities in this kit allow students to explore the answers to these, and many more, questions in a hands-on engaging way. Lots of mess, but lots of fun too! We hope you enjoy the photos of our scientists in action.

Cross Curriculum Classes

We love alliteration in Pōhutukawa, and our "cool curriculum classes" continue with some changes for Term 2. Gayle is continuing with Visual Art this term, Rae is covering Digital Technology and continuing with Coding. Steve is delving into Health/Hauora with a look at the mātauranga Māori concept of ‘mana’ and how we can support it. Megan is continuing with the Learning Languages area of the curriculum and teaching French, German, and Spanish. There is a lot of learning happening over the term in CCC, so we encourage you to keep chatting about what we are covering in these courses with your tamariki. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning.

Winter Sports

Our winter sports programme kicks off in Week 5. Every student has elected to join, and will be involved, in either competitive or non-competitive hockey, netball, or football. We still need parent assistance both on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons (approx. 1:30 pm - 3 pm) to help support our tamariki in the winter sports programme. In particular this year we have a large number of students who have signed up for the football competition and require parent help to make sure every team is supported at their games. If you think you could help us at this time, please get in touch with your home group teacher. Your support is hugely appreciated. We get there together, mā tātou kātoa te waka e hoe!

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

As the term races on it's time to catch up on what we've been up to in Pōhutukawa, and also let you know some information about a couple of upcoming events. Please read on!

PB4L

Beckenham te Kura o Pūroto is a PB4L (Positive Behaviour for Learning) school. PB4L looks at behaviour and learning from a whole-of-school as well as an individual child perspective. Our particular team's PB4L focus for the start of the year is “being an upstander”. We have been discussing how we can show the values ‘We Make a Difference’ and ‘We Care’ by being upstanders. We have discussed with the students the different actions we can take to be an upstander (as opposed to a bystander) if we see someone being mistreated. We have linked the Slideshow ‘How to be an Upstander’ here, and encourage you to take a look so that you can continue these very important conversations at home, too. You could also read Oat the Goat (bilingual interactive online storybook), which teaches how to show acceptance, empathy, and tolerance by being an upstander. Mā tātou kātoa, te waka e hoe, we are all in the waka together.

Kapa Haka Performance this Friday

Our fabulous Kapa Haka rōpu have been working on a few items with Whaea Cath Milio, and have been called upon to perform this Friday at 10:00 am at our Celebration Assembly. As in years past, each team has a turn at performing at Celebration Assemblies during the year with the intention being to showcase what the learning has been, and to get used to performing in front of an audience. It would be wonderful to see you there. He taonga te ako.

Pioneer Basketball Year 5-8 Primary Winter Competition Registration of Interest

Please fill in the Form if your tamariki is interested in playing for Beckenham on a Wednesday (Year 6) or Thursday (Year 5) afternoon in the Pioneer Basketball Competition in Term 2 and 3.

Games are played at Pioneer Stadium, with schools and individuals from around Christchurch South. There is a cost involved and the team will require parental support to manage the team at the games. Please fill in this form before the end of the term (April 12) to indicate your child/ren's intention to play. https://forms.gle/4xHt41FrUmHYEiiBA

This year Pioneer have changed the competition to differentiate between Year5 and Year 6. Once we have collected the responses we will be in touch if we have enough players for a team for each Year level.

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

Huge congratulations to all of the Swimming Sports competitors who represented themselves so admirably yesterday. Such a fantastic way to show 'We Love Challenge'! Keep an eye out for some photos of the event from our Media Team. Thank you also to the parents and whānau who supported the tamariki at the pool, and in the preparing them for the afternoon. A special mention to those who have qualified for Zones. Nau mai te wero! And so, on we swim into the second half of the term. Please read on for some important information about what we are learning in Pōhutukawa.

Pepeha

Maths and Reading Groups

Maths and Reading groups have now started and everyone has been allocated a teacher for these core subjects - the final stage of our regular daily timetable. We encourage you to take some time to ask your tamariki to show you what they are now able to access through their  Maths and Reading Google Classrooms and Sites. These are a great way to keep the learning going at home, too. The treasure is learning, he taonga te ako!

Kia tino pai ngā rā whakata. Have a great weekend, everybody.

The Pōhutukawa Team