T3 W2 in Pōhutukawa

Winter tournament

The weather hasn't been very kind to us over the last two weeks with regards to our zone's winter tournament. Jenny has made the call to cancel the tournament due to the weather and the impact it would have on the students returning to school. Unfortunately the tournament is unlikely to be rescheduled.

Year 6 morning in the Kauri hub

Our Year 6 students have a fabulous opportunity next week. On Tuesday, when the Year 7 & 8 students are off site at technology, the Year 6 students have been invited into the Kauri hub to have some fun with the Kauri teachers. They will get to experience some of the passions of the Kauri teachers, and be able to see what happens in the senior part of the school. When the Year 7 & 8 students return from technology, the Year 7 students will join the Year 6 students for some activities and chats about their favourite parts of being in the Intermediate hub.

Bakery on Thursday

The Year 7 & 8 small business group will be setting up their bakery and opening at lunchtime tomorrow, 12:40. All items are being sold for $1. All profits are going to charity. Your child can purchase cookies, cupcakes, donuts and rice-bubble slice. If your child is worried about losing their money before lunchtime, they can hand it in to their home group teacher who will hand it back at 12:40.

Curriculum areas:

Writing - At the moment we are embarking on writing information reports. The students are able to choose an animal they would like to find out more about. The report is mostly being completed on Google Docs/Slides so you are able to view progress at home.
Maths - The topic we have begun looking at this term is proportion and ratio. Most classes have started looking at fractions. Any talk at home around fractions (food being cut up, baking, sharing etc) to reinforce what we are doing at school would be great.
Science - This term on Friday we have Science for 50 minutes, and each home group will have two lessons with each teacher. Our overall topic is The Living World, and we are covering adaptations, classification, habitats, life cycles and human body processes.
CCC (Cool Curriculum Classes) - This term our classes are Culture (the cultures of the students in our home groups), NZ sign language, Jump Jam, Te Reo Māori and coding.

Culture

As mentioned, our focus for Culture this term is on the variety of cultures we have within our team. This will be an opportunity for all students to share their culture with their home group. So far we have located the countries of the children in home groups on a world map and have coloured in a flag from the identified country, which will be displayed around the world map on the wall. Every student in the Pōhutukawa hub will be represented by a flag on the wall. The students will be given an opportunity to gather information about their culture, whether that be from talking at home, from what they experience at home or what they look up on the internet.
On top of what the students can find out, I wondered if there might be anyone from or connected to our Pōhutukawa community who would like to and be able to pop into school to share any aspects of their (and their child's) culture? This might include teaching dance, sharing cultural experiences, teaching language, making food or anything else to do with your culture. If this sounds like something that you would like to do, or something you could convince someone in your whānau to do, please contact Tracy on tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz
We have so many experts within our community, and it would such a refreshing change for the students to have a different adult sharing what they know. I'm sure your child would also feel very proud to have their culture highlighted in such a way!




Extra Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter Thursday 31 July 2019

Kia ora koutou

This is just a brief newsletter with a couple of important bits that can't wait until next week!

Staffing Update - Farewell and Best wishes to Dorinda

We are sad to have to let you know that we will be saying farewell to Dorinda Hampton from our teaching staff at the end of Week 8. Her last day will be Thursday 12th September. Dorinda has been on our staff in various fixed-term capacities since April 2016. Whilst we are very sad to see Dorinda go, we are thrilled that she has secured a permanent, full-time position at the newly opened Knights Stream School in Halswell.
We are very grateful to Dorinda for the care, expertise and commitment that she has contributed to our school and our tamariki, and we wish her all the very best for the next exciting chapter in her teaching career.

Staff Only Day - Monday 12 August - SCHOOL CLOSED

We have an important day of professional development planned for our staff on Monday 12th August and the school will be closed for instruction that day.
We have had this date published on our calendar and website since March when we were able to get confirmation of the date from the external consultants coming in to work with us.
If you need child care, BOSCO may still have places available - please contact Yvette Cleall at manager@bosco.org.nz or call her on 027 645 6632

During the morning we will be working with staff from the University of Waikato from the Developing Mathematical Inquiries team as part of the second year of our development in this area. Just this week, we have various observers/coaches in from this team, observing and coaching teachers whilst they are teaching maths. The team then deliver another module of the professional development through our teacher session on August 12th.

In the afternoon, we will be working on developing our understanding and competency with the new Digital Technologies part of the Technology Curriculum, which all schools need to be ready to be working with in 2020.

From the Ministry of Education Website:

Digital Technologies in the national curriculum (from the Ministry of Education website)

All schools and kura are expected to be teaching the new digital technologies content from 2020.

The Technology learning area has been revised to strengthen the positioning of digital technologies in the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. This is for all students from year 1–13. Students have the opportunity to specialise from year 11–13.
The goal of this change is to ensure that all learners have the opportunity to become digitally capable individuals.

The change provides a greater focus on students building their skills so they can be innovative creators of digital solutions, moving beyond solely being users and consumers of digital technologies.

In 2020, the Ministry of Education expects that schools will be using the revised learning area to provide students with even broader opportunities to learn in and about technology, informed by the new content around computational thinking and designing and developing digital outcomes.

“The digital curriculum is about teaching children how to design their own digital solutions and become creators of, not just users of, digital technologies, to prepare them for the modern workforce." Chris Hipkins, 2018

Ngā mihi nui

Sandy Hastings
Principal - Tumuaki

Bakery open at lunchtime tomorrow, Thursday

The Year 7 & 8 small business group will be setting up their bakery and opening at lunchtime tomorrow, 12:40. All items are being sold for $1. All profits are going to charity. Your child can purchase cookies, cupcakes, donuts and rice-bubble slice. Many thanks for your support.


Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 3 Week 2

It was lovely to see everyone back at school last week. We missed Megan, who is still getting her life sorted and recovering from her ordeal with the gas explosion over a week ago. We may see her back at school towards the end of week 2, or it may take a bit longer. Fortunately, we have been able to have a consistent relieving teacher, Leanne, to fill in for Megan.

Many thanks to those of you who took the time to fill in the parent survey that was shared last week. We have pulled a number of things to work on from the survey results. If you would still like to fill in this survey, please click this link.

Wainui Camp Book:

Over 40 people have ordered Wainui camp books and those who have paid should have received these. We will be putting a second order in this coming Wednesday, 31st July. If you would still like to order a camp photo book, please click on this link and arrange payment by Wednesday.

Home Learning:

We have set up a calendar that all students have access to via Google Classroom. This calendar will include due dates for work this term (these will be put on this week and updated as the term progresses). It will be important that children check this calendar each week and ensure work is up to date. This may mean completing tasks at home.  We will be following up on incompleted work at school.

Current home learning is working on Canatmath individual projects and spending time on Maths Whizz, as well as daily recreational reading.

Common Sense Media

We'd like to draw this very useful website to your attention. Common Sense Media is a great place to check out the age-appropriateness of books, movies, and games.

What's coming up in term 3 for Year 7 & 8?


  • Literacy: Speech researching and writing will be our focus for the first part of the term.
  • Maths: We are currently working on class Cantamath projects. By week 4 we will be back into our regular problem solving with a focus on algebra to start with. There will be a slight reshuffle of maths groups.
  • Science: This term we are focusing on the Living World strand of science. We are starting with learning about classifying living things. 
  • Inquiry: Our technology and social studies focus will be investigating self-driven cars. As part of this inquiry, we are hoping to take students on a field trip. 
  • PE: We will be finishing off our football unit (a focus last term) with a football festival. Korfball, yoga, ski day, Koru Games and athletics are planned for this term. Friday winter sport continues until August 23rd. 
  • Health: Towards the end of term we will be teaching the DARE (drug abuse resistance education) programme. Every week we have circle time discussions on Friday mornings. These focus on current issues for the children. We are currently learning about being assertive.
  • The Arts: We start working on our end of year production very soon. This year we will be sharing a selection of well know musical theatre items.
Thursday, August 1st: Zone winter sport tournament. Bakery sale at lunch, items $1 each.
Friday, August 2nd: ICAS payments due (register your child here)
Thursday, August 8th: Peer mediator big day out
Friday, August 9th: Cantamath individual projects due.
Monday, August 12th: Teacher Only Day
Wednesday, August 28th: Cantamath trip in the morning. Team competition after school.
Monday, September 2nd: Speeches will be presented this week.
Tuesday, September 3rd: ICAS Digital Technologies test
Thursday, September 5th: ICAS Science test
Friday, September 6th: Mt Hutt Ski Day
Monday, September 9th: Hub speech final. DARE programme starts
Tuesday, September 10th: Cashmere High School Year 8 testing 
Monday, September 16th: ICAS English test
Tuesday, September 17th: Koru Games day 1. This will involve about 30 children.
Wednesday, September 18th: Koru Games day 2
Thursday, September 19th: Koru Games day 3
Friday, September 20th: ICAS Maths test. Sir Peter Blake leadership award will be presented at assembly.
Monday, September 23rd: Zone speech competition in the evening. 




Kōwhai News Week 2 Term 3

Welcome back!
We would like to welcome three new children to or team Jaiden, Jenna and Audrey who have joined the Kōwhai Team this term. It has been great to see our new children making friends and it is hard to believe they have just started.

Kōwhai Kid of the Week
Each Friday as part of our team hui, we will be identifying children who have been leaders in the hub, living our school values consistently during the week. These children will be able to make pizza on a Friday for their lunch. If your child is a 'Kōwhai Kid of the Week' they will bring home a certificate  (see below) and we will send an email to the parents to let you know. All you need to do is to provide pizza toppings for your child's pizzas. We will make the dough at school and provide the sauce base. The children were really excited to learn about this today!


DMIC- Maths
Our focus at the moment is on learning about fractions. The children have been working in their DMIC groups solving fractions of numbers. Each Friday we are providing the children with the opportunity to participate in Fraction Workshops. These lessons extend the skills and knowledge that the children currently have enabling them to have a stronger skill-based when working on group problems. It has been impressive to see the children's' understanding grow each week. This week we provided workshops on:
1. Basic Fraction Knowledge- How to read, write and represent 1/2,1/4, 1/3, 1/5 etc.
2. Ordering Fractions
3. Finding the fraction of a number, e.g., What is a 1/4 of 24?)
4. What is a proper and improper fraction?

Here is a cool website with fraction games.

Discovery- Learning through Inquiry
We are lifting the level of thinking and learning this term during our Discovery sessions and it has been exciting to see the children really challenging their thinking when learning during this time. The children have been learning about electrical circuits, how to create stop motion animations, using the sewing machine to make clothing, playing and creating new sports to name a few. This component of our programme not only gives the children agency to explore and learn about personal topics of interest but provides opportunities to problem solve, work and cooperate with others, take risks by trying new things and how to self-manage, to name a few skills. Here are some of the children this week.








Inquiry- WEARABLE ART
Next week we will be beginning to introduce our Wearable Art Inquiry. The children will be learning about the wearable arts, what makes them innovative, how people can communicate their creativity through wearable arts and how wearable art could be an ethical option in the future. If you have any items that might be of use for our inquiry (he children will be designing and making their own wearable art), please feel free to send items to school. We will be sharing our learning with you in Week 7 this term, with a performance in the hall.

Calendar Art
This week we have all been exercising our creativity by producing incredible artworks for our calendar art. We will have these on display in our hubs and will send out a blog post showcasing what we have created next week.

PE- Gymnastics
As Term 3 is often wet, our focus for the first half of the term is on gymnastics. Each Thursday afternoon, the children are participating in a variety of gymnastics activities aimed to develop coordination, balance, confidence and control of movements. At the end of this scheme of learning, we will go to the Christchurch School of Gymnastics. A notice about this trip will be sent home closer to the time,

PTA Cheese Rolls
On Monday, the children will be bringing home order forms for cheese rolls. This is another one of our amazing fundraising activities organised by our incredible PTA. It would be great to have as many people supporting this as possible. The cheese rolls are DELICIOUS!

Kapa Haka
This term, we have started our own Kōwhai Team Kapa Haka as Sherrilee is working predominately with Pōhutukawa and Kauri due to her availability. This has provided us with the opportunity to provide all of our tamariki with the opportunity to perform in a Kapa Haka group. Over the past two weeks, we have been learning the role of Kapa Haka and what skills you learn through performing as a group. Over the past two weeks, the children have been learning two waiata;
ehara e te mea and Tōia Mai
We hope to share our learning with you all later on in the term.

That's all for now
Have a great weekend ahead
Kōwhai Teaching Team