Cheese Roll Containers

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This message is for everyone who has ordered cheese rolls.

To save on packaging and to be kind to our environment, we would love you to provide a container for us to package your cheese rolls in.

We will put collection boxes outside the hall each day this week.

Please label your container with:

  • The name of your child 
  • Their team
  • The number of dozen you have ordered
If you need to check on your order, email nicky.dunlop@beckenham.school.nz

We will provide recyclable containers for those who don't provide their own.

Your cheese rolls will be available for collection after school on Thursday this week. Many thanks for your support. 


Week 8 in Pōhutukawa

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Two weeks left before the school holidays! Doesn't time fly?!

Cross country training

At the moment the students are training daily in preparation for the school cross country, which is on Monday 6 May (Term 2 Week 2). We are encouraging individual goal setting, with regards to the amount of jogging and the distance being run in the time given. Wearing appropriate footwear certainly helps and we have impressed upon the students that long distance running is as much  mental persistence and perseverance as physical. A positive and can do attitude goes a long way to improving performance.


Winter Sport

Winter sport is coming up next term. On a Friday afternoon, a number of Year 5-8 students travel to Hagley Park by bus to compete against other schools. The range of sports offered to the students is dependent on the number of coaches we have for the teams. Whānau helping out with winter sports means we can offer more options to the students. Please click on the link below and fill out the form if you are able to help as a coach or manager.



Passions

In Week 10 we are offering five sessions of Passions. Passions are an area of interest the teachers have chosen to share with the hub. We have chosen six passions to offer the students: cooking, sewing, ball sports, tiki art, book creator and korfball.  A Google Form has been sent out to each child, and they will get to rate the options, in order to make the groups.
Gayle is taking the sewing passion, and would really appreciate help from willing adults on any of the days. She would also appreciate donations of material or thread.
Days and times of passion lessons:
Monday 8 April              2 - 2:50pm
Tuesday 9 April              12 - 12:40pm
Wednesday 10 April       2 - 2:50pm
Thursday 11 April           12 - 12:40pm
Friday 12 April                9:40 - 10:30am
Please contact Gayle if you are able to help out at any of those times.


Learning Through Play

Some fun learning took place this afternoon!




Koru Reading and Writing

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Learning to read is lots of fun! Our reading programme includes reading to children, reading with children and reading by children.

It is wonderful that reading folders are coming to school every day and the children are doing a great job putting them in the correct group box before school. Having your reading folder at school every day also ensures children can read their books both at school and home. Rereading familiar texts provides children with reading 'mileage', and helps enormously in the development of fluency, phrasing and expression.

Our guided reading groups enjoy their books together most days. This provides opportunities for children to learn the skills of what good readers do, like learning to decode unknown words, learning letter sounds and blends, making predictions about what might happen next, having great discussions about the books and asking questions.

In writing, we start with shared writing. This is when we plan and construct writing together. The teacher models and talks through the process of constructing a text. The children contribute their own ideas throughout this process. This provides a supportive setting to model the process of writing, focus on letters, words, and letter-sound relationships, model strategies for checking and improving and demonstrate the use of a range of forms and structures in written language.

There are opportunities in a guided writing group for children to try writing independently, to learn to write high frequency words, and to play literacy games together.

Kōwhai News Weeks 8/9

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Here is the latest updatete from our team

Supplies Wanted
We are on the hunt for some wooden pallets, old car tyres and house paint for our inquiry projects next week. Please email your home group teacher if you can help source some of these supplies.

Choir Performing
Dorinda has been working with a wonderful group of students who have been keen to create a Kōwhai Team Choir. Next Friday 12th April, theya re going to perform 2 songs at the school celebration assembly. If your child is in the choir, feel free to pop along. The assembly begins at 12.10pm. We will envevour to record the item and put in on the blog for those of you who are unabel to make it due to work committments.

Art Attack
Over the past few weeks, the children have opted into a variety of art workshops that they were interested in. It has been great to see their creativity flourish as they create unique pieces of art. We gave the children the options of paiper mache, digital art, totem poles and printmaking. Here are some pictures of the children at work.





Passions
The Green Group have had a fantastic few weeks weeding out the garden beds behind our hub, planting seeds and seedlings. Also last Friday we made porridge from scratch!

Cross Country
We are currently training for the school cross country. Each day we are working on improving our own performance by running for longer distances or running with a more positive attitude. Each day we record our efforts with the aim to be stopping less in each run and running further over time as we build our fitness up. The school cross country will be on Monday 6th May. We will send out our starting times once they have been confirmed along with the cross country route.

Swimming Lessons
Next term, as part of our annual swimming programme, we have been booked in for 9 swimming lessons at Aqua Gym. Each child will receive a 30-minute lesson in small groups. We will be travelling to and from the pools via bus and will be seeking parent help to support us without swimming programme. More detailed information will come out next week once prices have been confirmed. We noticed a huge improvement in the children's ability to swim last year due to the high-quality instruction and from having an intensive focus on swimming.


Leadership Roles
We like to grow the leadership skills of our tamariki. This term we have had some children being leaders in the Treemendous area at lunchtime and we have also established some learning buddies in our hub to help grow some of our spelling skills.
Art Gallery Trip
We had an amazing time last week when we visited the Christchurch Art Gallery. The children had a great time exploring Julia Morrison's 'Head Space' art installation. We were very impressed with the different heads that she had created. Susie, the Art Gallery teacher, took us all for a lesson where we worked with clay to create our own head. It was wonderful to see the children really exercising their creativity and demonstrating our school values, 'We care' 'We love learning' and 'We love challenge'. A HUGE thank you goes out to our incredible parent helpers who assisted us on this outing. We couldn't have gone without your assistance! Here  are some examples of what the children created.





That's all for now!
Kōwhai Teaching Team


Up and Coming Events

Term 2
Cross Country- Monday 6th May
Swimming lessons- 13th May-24th May (Aqua Gym)

Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 1 Week 8

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This week we are underway with training walks for camp and Show Quest dance rehearsals most afternoons. It was great to see how well the children coped with our first walk yesterday. Steady uphill climbing (and the heat) was challenging, and they showed good resilience.

We have an urgent request for parent help on camp. Over the past two days, three people have had to pull out as full-time camp parents due to work commitments. We don't expect, at this late stage, that people will be able to offer to come for a full week, but if you were able to join us for even a day or two, that would really help. It is a 90-minute drive to Wainui from the city. Please fill out this form if you have some availability from April 8 - 12.


Cheese Rolls:

We will be making 400 dozen cheese rolls next Thursday! A huge thanks to everyone who has ordered, especially those families who gathered high numbers of orders by asking friends and family. 100 of these dozen orders came from just 5 families. The children will be the workforce in this production business, but we need about 4 parents and some loan equipment. Please click here to indicate if you can help.

Bingo Night:

We have rescheduled our Comedy Bingo Night to Saturday, May 18th. Please promote this fundraiser among your family and friends. A new ticket order link will be sent out soon.

Camp:

Have you...

  • Returned your child's (Yr 7) Health Profile Form and those for camp parents?
  • Sent your child's raincoat along to school for checking?
  • Checked through the gear list that was in our last post and was also sent home in paper form last week?
If the answer is 'no' to any of these questions, please follow-up on this ASAP.

Many thanks to those who have offered to prepare a pasta meal for our first evening at camp. We have enough offers. Megan or Hannah will be in touch with you about this soon. Please also remember that we are asking each family to provide some baking for camp.

Camp Cost:

Taking into account the profits from cheese rolls and conservatively anticipating profits from our Bingo Night, we are requesting your contribution of  $170 per child to cover the costs of camp.  This will be added to your next account. This can be paid on a small weekly payment basis if that better suits your family.

Sport:

Winter sport relies on parent help to go ahead. So far we have no offers of help to take sports teams. Please fill in this form if you can help.
If your child would like to enter the Huxter Mountain Bike Race, please fill in this form and send money to the office by this Thursday.


Showing 'We Care':

Over the past few weeks, we have spent some time talking with groups of children about decisions they make when communicating via social media, out of school time. When poor choices are made, these have substantial repercussions for others. Our key messages are: if you wouldn't be comfortable saying this to them face to face, don't say it online, and do not post images of other people (especially ones that have been modified) without getting the person's approval. If your child is using social media, please reinforce these key messages with them often. Many of our children do not have access to social media. The legal age for a social media account at least 13 years. We totally see why this is necessary, through the dealings we have with our children under 13 who get into hot water through social media communications.

It was lovely to see many of our girls wanting to wear a headscarf last Friday to stand in support with Muslim women. Many thanks to Zeenat who came in and showed the girls how to wear these.