Monthly Archives: November 2022

Kōwhai News Term 4 Week 5

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Kia ora whānau

It has been a super busy start to the term...which is flying quickly past! Enjoy reading about our latest learning and activities. 

Quynh's News 








Quynh has leave, as of late next week, to go and visit her family in Vietnam. We wish Quynh a wonderful time with her family and thank her for all her hard work this year. We will miss her! Kathryn Moore will be covering for Quynh's class until the end of the year.

Cricket 

We have been fortunate to have a series of cricket sessions with Southern Districts Cricket Club. These sessions have been provided free for us, and there was a real focus on ensuring all children got a turn at batting and fielding. Many children were surprised by how far they could hit a ball! The club run after-school and weekend cricket teams for all ages. 
































House of Science Learning

 







We have access to an amazing set of science kits from The House of Science, an educational organisation established to help teachers, students and schools teach and learn about key science ideas. This fortnight, we are learning about Plants, Pests and Produce. Our activities include learning about some key beneficial insects and pests in New Zealand, the six parts of a fruit/vegetable plant and their functions, transpiration, pollination and pest control such as pheromone traps. Many aspects of the living world, the nature of science and the material world are covered through the lessons.

Raised Garden Beds

The PTA has kindly given us funding to have two raised garden beds, like the ones by the hall, built in the garden behind our hub. Thank you, PTA! Tony will be constructing these over the coming weeks. We will then need to fill them with usable garden waste (tree clippings etc.) and soil. If you happen to be undertaking landscaping or maintenance at your house at present and have any usable garden waste or soil to donate, please email charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz.  

Swimming 

The children loved our water safety sessions at Pioneer. They learnt a range of key skills at their point of need. This included: 

  • Floatation and water familiarisation
  • Swimming strokes
  • Kicking techniques
  • Key water safety skills, including how to put on a life jacket, what to do if a boat capsizes, how to keep warm in cold water, how to stay in a group and how to signal for help














Assembly 

Congratulations to our Week 3 Celebration Assembly award recipients. A big thank you to Isaiah for creating and sharing his cultural presentation about Malaysia. 






Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 4 Week 5

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 In the post:

  • Production reminders
  • Reports
  • Relationships and Sexuality
  • Fabulous trips

Production

A reminder that our production, 'A Walk Through the 80s', will involve all Year 7 & 8 children on the two performance nights, Monday, November 5th and Tuesday, November 6th. The shows will start at 7pm and we think they will take 90 minutes. Teachers have talked with the students about costume requirements and children should be organising these with your support. 

Reports

Reports go live tomorrow. Please keep an eye out for the link on Hero.

Relationships and Sexuality

We are still working our way through the relationships and sexuality lessons and are currently looking at the changes that take place at puberty and how to manage these.

Trips

We have been hugely impressed with how the children responded to the last two days of education outside the classroom. This is the first time we have organised trips to Adrenaline Forest and Waka on Avon and they both provided fabulous and well-organised experiences. There were plenty of opportunities for the children to step outside of their comfort zone and challenge themselves. A huge thanks to the parents who joined us and to Tim who ran the activity at Spencer Park. The behaviour and positive attitudes displayed by the children were commented on by all of the providers we worked with. We were very proud of your children!







































Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter, Rāpare (Thursday) 10 November 2022

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Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

I hope that you are all enjoying the long weekend. 

Attendance Matters

You will probably have heard a discussion on the news this past week about the declining school attendance rates of NZ students, both in the primary and secondary sectors. This conversation was prompted by the release of a report by the Education Review Office this week, and you can read the summary or the full report here.
Regular attendance (90% or more) at school is something that we want to see for all of our tamariki.

Please do look carefully at your child's attendance when you get their report next week. 'Regular attendance' is classed as being 90% or more. We know that there can be specific reasons why a child's attendance may drop from time to time including illness and, this year, Covid being very likely reasons. However, when average, yearly attendance drops below 90% year after year, this has a significant impact on your child's ability to access the education they deserve and are entitled to get.
  • If a student has an average of 90% attendance, over ten years they will miss a year of school.
  • If a student has an average of 80% attendance, over five years they will miss a year of school.
  • If a student has an average of 75% attendance, they are missing a term of school each year.
  • Being at school every day matters because of the sequential nature of learning, especially in literacy and numeracy.
  • By law, students must attend school.
  • One of the highest predictors of education success is attendance levels at school.
We know that every family wants their children to be successful in learning and in life. As whānau, you play a huge role in ensuring your child attends school regularly.  If you have concerns about your child's attendance, or would like to discuss ways that we can support you to improve your child's attendance, please make contact with your child's teacher and we will be happy to meet with you.

Upcoming Roadworks - closure of Sandwich Road...

From Tuesday 15 November the intersection of Sandwich Road and Norwood Street will be closed for roadworks. This is likely for the remainder of this term.

Vehicle entry into Sandwich Road, from Eastern Tce, will be for residents, school staff, and those with accessibility needs.

To help keep the traffic flowing as easily as possible at school drop-off and pick-up times, there will be two drop-and-go zones on Eastern Terrace, on either side of Sandwich Road. The map below also highlights other areas near the school that would make good drop-off places if you usually drive children to school where you could park and walk or, for older children, drop them off.

Pedestrian access will still be available from both ends of Sandwich Road.

We encourage whānau over the coming weeks to walk or bike to school as much as possible. Alternatively, park on Fisher or Martin Ave and walk to school.

Seipp Construction Ltd is aware of the changes this will have to morning and afternoon routines. To thank the school community for their patience and understanding they are providing a prize draw next week. Everyone who walks some or all of the way to school will receive a token to go into the draw for a prize. 

The following week Seipp Construction Ltd will be providing spot prizes to be given out at the school entrances to people who are walking, scootering or biking. 

Please see the map below and the attached information from Seipp Construction Ltd.


End-of-Year Reports

These are being proof-read at the moment and we expect to publish these through HERO this coming Friday, 18 November. 

Reminder - school closes at 1pm this Thursday 17 November

Our teachers are expected to attend a paid union meeting this coming week, along with all of the other teachers in Christchurch. Due to us having almost 100% union membership, finishing at 1m on Thursday 17th will allow them all to attend at the same time; the most workable option with releivers also attending the meetings. 

Year 7/8 students are on a trip that day - they will continue with that and return to school for the usual 3pm finish. The Y7/8 teachers have the option of attending another meeting. 

If you have a student in NE-Year 6 who:
  • needs to stay at school after 1pm on Thursday, OR 
  • is being collected by someone else, OR 
  • is going to BOSCO, OR
  • you give permission to travel home independently...
...please fill in this survey so that we know which children are not being collected by you. We will provide supervision for those who are staying at school until the usual pick-up time of 3pm. 

Whole School Picnic and Kapa Haka Performances Wed 30 Nov

On Wednesday 30 Nov, from 5pm, we invite you all to attend a school picnic which will then be followed by three kapa haka performances. (NB if the weather is wet, the picnic will be cancelled but the kapa haka performances will continue as outlined below)

Everyone is welcome to attend all of the kapa haka performances and, we have scheduled each group in it's own time slot, so that families can just attend the one that their child is in if that works better for them. We also know that our hall can't accommodate everyone if we run a single concert with all of the groups performing! Each groups' performance will run for approximately 20 mins

The timetable for evenng will be:

5pm onwards - Whānau Picnic in front of the Admin area and beside the hall. The Student Council will be runing some activities for children, using games that the PTA had made for the school fair 2 years ago!

 6pm - Year 3/4 Kapa Haka group performance

 6:30pm Year Y5/6 Kapa Haka group performance

7:00pm Te Whānau Mahi Tahi kapa haka performance

Ngā mihi nui
Sandy Hastings
Tumuaki (Principal)

Important Dates

Thu 17 Nov - School finishing early at 1pm (Union meetings)
Thu 17 Nov - BOT Meeting (5.30 - 7.30pm - Rūma Kaimahi/Staffroom)
Fri 18 Nov - Celebration Assembly (10 - 10.30am)
Fri 18 Nov - Student Council Dress Up Day (PJs or as a teacher)
Wed 23 Nov - PTA Meeting (7.30 - 9.30pm - Green Room)
Fri 25 Nov - Celebration Assembly (10 - 10.30am)
Wed 30 Nov - Whole School Picnic and Kapa Haka performances (see info above)
Fri 2 Dec - Celebration Assembly (10 - 10.30am)
Thu 8 Dec - BOT Meeting (5.30 - 7.50pm - Rūma Kaimahi/Staffroom)
Fri 9 Dec - Final Celebration Assembly (9.45 - 10.30am)
Wed 14 Dec - Year 8 Leavers Graduation - 11am-12noon, followed by Leavers' Lunch
Thu 15 Dec - Last day of Term 4 - School closes at 12:30pm

Term Dates

Kahikatea News Term 4, Week 3

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Kia ora e te whānau,

Our huge highlight this week has been swimming! We are so proud of our tamariki showing our kete values, 'We Love Challenge' and 'We Love Learning'. They have also demonstrated our key competencies of 'managing self' and 'participating and contributing'. Each day the changing process has become faster and lost property is becoming slightly less!

The focus of our swimming lessons has been on safety in the water:


For some of our tamariki, swimming has been a new experience that was initially a little scary. A VERY exciting comment heard from one of our learners was: "Look at me, I'm doing bubbles in the water and it's only my third day in the pool!!"

Thanks again to our wonderful parent helpers, for supporting our learners at the pool.

Here are some photo highlights from the week:


































Have a lovely weekend. We look forward to four more days of swimming next week and Canterbury Show Day on Friday.

Ngā mihi nui,
Team Kahikatea

Katie McFarlane 
katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

Emma Hayes-Smith
emma.hayes-smith@beckenham.school.nz

Krystal Hunt
krystal.hunt@beckenham.school.nz

Megan Harris
megan.harris@beckenham.school.nz

Lisa Collier
lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz










Koru Team News, Term 4 Week 3

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Kia ora e te whānau,

We have had a busy first few weeks of the term! We all had fun practising for, and then participating in, the school Athletics Day. We loved seeing the Koru children displaying our school values, 'We Love Challenge' and 'We Get There Together', as they challenged themselves, and supported their friends by cheering them on at each event.













Our Learning Through Play focus, for this fortnight, is 'Habitats', for bugs, birds, and animals. We have been talking about different types of habitats and thinking about how we can create some in our garden spaces at school. We would love to make some more bug hotels, so if you have any plastic bottles destined for your recycling bin, please send them along to school instead. 

Creating a bug hotel out of an old plant pot.

We were lucky enough to have a parent come in to help the children plant some Little Garden packs. 

We are amazed at how fast they have grown already!

This week we have been exploring a science topic called 'A Load of Rubbish'. We sorted through the contents of a recycling bin, looking at the different materials that items were made out of. We looked closely at the recycling numbers on plastics, explored the density of different plastics, and explored ways to reduce food wastage.









On Thursday, we all enjoyed our first House Games session. The house captains of each house did an amazing job of teaching us some new, and some well-loved, games. It was lots of fun, and we are already looking forward to our next house games!





We are so proud of our tamariki performing in yesterday's Celebration Assembly! They all did an amazing job, singing, and doing the actions to the songs, in their first ever assembly performance.




Reminders:
  • Your child needs a named hat at school each day.
  • When arriving and leaving school each day, we ask that you do not walk your child through the carpark area. Many thanks for your support with this.
  • Please send your child to school with sunscreen on, and we will help the children to reapply before their big playtime.
  • Next Friday, 11 November, the school will be closed for Canterbury Anniversary Day. This also means we'll be missing our library time. Children are welcome to bring their books to school and change them during lunchtime next week, if they wish.
  • The children have been enjoying using the very cool water pump in our sandpit, especially in this beautiful weather we have been having. Having a change of clothes in their bags would be useful for those days when the water is flowing!

We hope you all have a safe, happy, and relaxing weekend and we can't wait to see you all back at school on Monday!

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Nicola, Georgia, Tracey, Stacey and Jeanette