Kauri Whānau: Weekly Update Term 3 Week 6

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Lots to celebrate this week and a few important messages.

Te Whānau Mahi Tahi


Our senior kapa haka group are looking forward to their performance at the Cultural Festival on Monday evening. A reminder that these children have a rehearsal at Horncastle Arena on Monday afternoon. They will be leaving school at 2pm and the bus will return between 3:45 and 4pm.

Headphones at school


This week we will be encouraging a number of children to upload a google extension, ReadWrite, to support their learning in writing. This extension reads text, that the child has written, back to the child. It pauses for punctuation. By using this extension children will be able to pick up sense and punctuation errors in their writing more readily. In order to use this, headphones (or ear buds) are required. Please remind your child to have these with them at school.

Speech Competition


We had a very exciting and entertaining speech final at school on Monday afternoon. A huge well done to everyone who took part. The English teachers from Cashmere High, who judged the competition, were very impressed with children's enthusiasm and talent for public speaking. A special congratulations go out to Vienna and Lily who won their competitions. These girls will go on to the South Speech competition on Tuesday September 11, starting at 6:30pm in our school hall.





Cantamath


What an exciting day we had last Wednesday at Cantamath. A large number of our entries in the display competition gained Highly Commended and Excellence awards. In the teams section our Year 7s did a great job for their first time. The Year 8s were very pleased with their result, scoring 80 / 100 (double their score from last year) and with only 9 schools scoring a higher result. The official results sheet, certificates and badges are yet to arrive.






Mosaic Art Project


Last year in our term 4 passion session, one option was creating collaborative pixel art. The resulting mosaic squares have now been mounted on the heater box at the back of the school hall. The theme of the pieces is wellbeing in our environment. Take a look next time you are strolling through Beckenham Park.


GirlBoss Workshops


The girls who took part in the GirlBoss workshops last week, which explored future options in STEM subjects, came away very inspired. We will make the most of this opportunity in the future. Below is some feedback from the girls.



Kōwhai News Term 3 Week 4/5

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Here is the latest news from Kōwhai Team!

Parent Help Reading
We would LOVE the help of 1-2 parents each day to listen to children read. At the moment there are a few children that require some extra support. Having some parents to come in and listen to children read would greatly help their fluency and give the children some much-needed reading milage. If you are keen to help us please send us an email or pop in and see your point of contact teacher. This would only be for 20-30minutes and can happen at any time during the day! We look forward to hearing from you!


 Readathon
Readathon cards have been sent home and hopefully your child is all ready to go! The goal is for every child to read for 14 days consecutively. Each child has decided on a length of time that suits their ability and committments at home. 
All the money raised will go towards our outdoor spaces. We thank the PTA very much for having this focus and for organising events like this that will eventually provide fantastic outdoor areas in which our tamariki will be able to play and learn.
Miniball
We would love to offer the children in our team the opportunity to participate in mini ball at Pioneer next term.  For this to happen, we would need the assistance of parents who would be able to coach the team (teams of 8-9- they are 5 aside games). In the past, we have been able to enter 3 teams into the competition.
Miniball games are held on Wednesday (A and B Grade) and Thursday (C Grade). If you are keen to help, please contact Paulette

 Writing
At the moment we have been having a focus on persuasive writing during our literacy time. It has been great seeing the children creating sophisticated pieces of text to help persuade the reader to change their opinion on a topic. Here is one example of what the children have been writing:

Why dogs are the best pets!

One day we were walking in our classroom when we saw an AMAZING piece of writing about why cats are the best pets but we have different opinions dogs are the true best pets!
Why cats are bad!
My first reason is that cats are actually PESTS. Did you know that over 25 million native birds are killed each year by these carnivores and we wonder why are native birds are so hard to spot?
Second, cats are hard to train and if you give up your lifestyle could get ruined by a cat scratching up furniture and knocking over valuable and important objects.
You may think cats are cute and cuddly but the first time you do a job for them they think of you as there servant and they don't even give you a reward for it.
Now for the dogs!
Dogs really do deserve their title of, ‘mans best friend’ their loyal, intelligent, devoted and affectionate. Dogs are always wanting a good old pat and love to play games.
Another reason is dogs are really helpful towards humans e.g., they can be guard dogs ,sniffer dogs, guide dogs and search and rescue. How helpful is that?

If you are getting a new pet don't even consider getting a cat, get a DOG!

 Persuasive Writing about Rubbish in the Ocean:

 In Susan's literacy group we have been writing persuasive speeches about plastic in the ocean.
If you want to find out more about this here is a link:

Stop littering! It is bad for the environment and animals. They eat it and die. Did you know that a plastic bag looks like a jellyfish? That is why they are bad for the turtles.


Plastic is destroying habitats and scenery. If we all work together we can fix it by using boxes instead of plastic bags, or picking up rubbish whenever you can. Also, if you litter and you love animals,  stop! I would love to see the ocean with no rubbish in it.


By Annabel Grantham

Stop killing sea animals and stop putting   
Rubbish in the sea! If you throw away plastic bags turtles will think they are jellyfish and eat them. How would you like it? It destroys the scenery and every day more animals are dying.

We need to use reusable bags and honey wraps. Don't use gladwrap! If you throw away plastic it ends up in the sea! We need to do stuff about this! You should see the rubbish island in the ocean. Make the world a better place and stop using plastic.

By Violet Morel

Next week we will use these persuasive pieces as part of our Kowhai Speech Competition. It will be wonderful to see the children working on their speeches and developing the skills to effectively talk in front of others. We are planning to watch the Kauri team on Monday afternoon to help us know what to aspire to.


DMIC (Problem Solving) Maths

We have been having a great time learning about fractions at the moment. The children have really impressed us with their deep levels of thinking as they are solving problems. This term we have been working on solving problems with fractions. Here are two example of what the children have been working on:


Kowhai children went on a class trip to the Botanic Gardens. They searched the river for waterlife. 1/4 of what they found were eels. 1/3 of them were trout and they spotted 40 tadpoles. How many trout and eels did they see?

Problem 2
Image result for grass hockey clip art39 children in Kowhai are playing hockey. They spread themselves evenly into the thirds on the court. How many children are in each third? If another 14 children joined in, how many would be in each third? How many children are in two thirds?
Inquiry- Birds
As part of our Sustainability inquiry, we have been exploring the newly created Treemendous area and how we can make this more sustainable for birds and wildlife. Over the past few weeks, we have spent time in the Treemendous area, investigating the plants and birds that currently reside there. The children have been rotating around the teachers in the hub, participating in bird lessons.  Here is a sample of what we have been doing...

 Bird Beaks- Paulette's lessons have seen the children investigating bird beaks and their design. The children participated in a variety of experiments where they tried eating a variety of food using a tool (beak). This helped the children to determine why birds have a particularly shaped beak and how the beak enables them to eat a particular food in their habitat. 
 
Bird Feet- Anna's lessons have been all about the different types if birds' feet and how they are suited to different environments. For example, herons are wading birds and so they have long, thin toes which stop them from sinking in the sand and ducks have webbed feet which help them swim more efficiently through the water. We are now working on making posters which tell us all about birds' feet, what they look like and why. 


Image result for image of birds feet








Bird Identification- Susan
Image result for habitats bird nzBird Habitats- Rebekah's lessons have seen the children looking at the different habitats of birds. The children have demonstrated a lot of thought showing how the food available to birds vary, because of their habitat. We have also looked at how pests and predators effect our native bird numbers. We are excited to discover more ways we can get our native bird 


Hockey
Over the past five weeks, we have been lucky enough to have had Canterbury Hockey taking the children for hockey lessons. The children have learnt some basic hockey skills. This week, they were, 'put to the test' as they played in a mini hockey tournament. Here they are in action!


M.A.D. Time (Passions)
This term, the children have each chosen a passion topic to participate in on a Friday. The children were given the choices of Choir (Anna), Art (Mike), Drama (Paulette), Languages (Susan) and Dance (Rebekah). Each Friday the children have 45 minutes participating in these passion groups. It has been great to see the children so enthusiastic about driving their own learning and interests.

 That's all for now.
Have a great week ahead!
Kowhai Teaching Team

Term 3 Weeks 4-5

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Learning Conferences
Thank you for making the time to attend your child's learning conference. We loved meeting with you and sharing our students' successes. We value your feedback feedback to assist us with our ongoing evaluation and to help us to continuously improvement. 
Please share your thoughts here



Thank you 
...to parent helpers in reading (9-10.30am) and those who put away books. If you would like to assist with our reading and discovery time, or helping to organise resources, please see one of the Koru teachers.




Readathon 
Children are enjoying our Reading Challenge. Congratulations to Robin Reid for reading 10 chapter books!

The whole school Read-a-thon is also happening NOW. Your child will have a green card in their reading folder for collecting sponsors. Please see a teacher if you have any questions.


New Library Days 
Please bring library folders on Wednesday and Thursday from next week. 
Thank-you.

Magazines 
If you have any old magazines, please bring in to Charlotte for literacy and play activities. Thanks. 

Useful Websites 
Website with spoken books for children: https://www.uniteforliteracy.com
Healthy Kids Website, with healthy movement and eating ideas, and a downloadable reward chart 


Fun at the Park





We Get There Together in Discovery




Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 3 Week 5

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Our full on term continues, with a focus on Cantamath and speech delivery this week. After that things settle down a bit, which we are looking forward to. It has been a hectic five weeks so far!

Cantamath:

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, we head off to Horncastle Arena at 9am. We will be back by 10:30am. 33 children have individual entries in the display competition and all children have been involved in class projects. We are looking forward to seeing how everyone got on and to get inspiration for next year.

In the afternoon our teams compete in 30 minutes of action packed, noisy and exciting problem solving. Good luck to Kate, Freddie, Gemma, Daniel, Santi, Adam, Georgie and Gabriel. If you would like to come along and support the teams, you are most welcome. Parents and staff will be sitting in section H upstairs. Year 7s start at 4pm (meeting at 3:40) and Year 8s at 5pm (meeting at 4:40).

Speeches:

Tomorrow we start our speech deliveries in class. Hopefully your child has brought their speech notes home to rehearse. If not, these can be accessed via Google Classroom. Children who feel they cannot present to their home-group will be videoed delivering their speech. Our hub final will be on Monday afternoon next week, starting at 1:30. Parents are most welcome to attend. We will be announcing finalists this Friday.

GirlBoss workshops:

We have over 30 girls taking part in GirlBoss workshops tomorrow. We are excited to be able to offer this opportunity. The girls will be inspired to fulfil their  dreams in STEM (science, technology, the arts, engineering and maths).

Congratulations to our Beckenham ski team:

Winni, Boyd, Paolo, Ben, Freddie and Lena skied their hearts out on Sunday at Mt Cheeseman. They were competing in the Canterbury primary and intermediate ski champs. We were so proud of their third place intermediate team achievement. With the majority of the team being in Year 7, we have high hopes for next year when they will be a wee bit heavier and a wee bit faster!




Last winter sport:

This Friday is our final session of winter sport at Hagley Park. A huge thanks goes out to all of the parents who have committed to coach and manage teams on a weekly basis. The children would not have this opportunity without your involvement. Can you please wash and return sports uniforms early next week. There is a tub by the courtyard door for returns.

Term 3 Week 4/5 in Pōhutukawa

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Science

For science this term we are conducting simple experiments, looking at physical and chemical changes, changing a substance into another substance and the physical properties of a material. Katie is discovering the mysteries of Ooblek, Gayle is looking at popcorn, Nick has a focus of fizzing and foaming and Tracy is turning milk into ice cream. The children have had one session of science so far, and are looking forward to rotating around all of the teachers so that they get to experience a number of experiments.



Passions
Our passions this term have given the children opportunities to learn lots of practical skills, along with the key competencies of thinking, using language, symbols, and texts, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing. We are very grateful to the wonderful adults who have been popping along on a Friday to help us out. Cooking and sewing is definitely much easier with smaller groups being supervised by an adult. It's fabulous to see so much collaboration going on between the students, as working together harmoniously is such an important skill to develop.


















Gymnastics
Our gymnastics unit comes to an end this week. The children have enjoyed the sessions, setting themselves personal goals and using the gym equipment. We have seen a large increase in confidence for many of the students, and again it has heartwarming watching the groups support each other both physically and emotionally.











Readathon
Readathon cards have been sent home and hopefully your child is all ready to go! The goal is for every child to read for at least 15 minutes a day, for 14 days consecutively. The sponsorship money goes towards our outdoor spaces. We thank the PTA very much for having this focus and for organising events which will eventually provide fantastic outdoor areas in which our tamariki will be able to play and learn.

Market Day
This term a major focus has been small business planning, leading up to our Market Day in week 10. The idea is that the students form a business group which develops a plan to sell a product or run an activity at a market day in the last week of the term. The money raised will be used to reduce the cost of Team Pōhutukawa's camp in term 4 and to offset the market day's expenses.
The students are right into their planning, and hopefully you have heard some talk at home about what your child is doing. Many are baking, others are making products and some have organised an activity with prizes. In their planning, along with coming up with a product or activity, the children  name their company, plan a shopping list, create a logo, packaging, advertising poster, stall title sign, and work out the price and profit.
To enable the students to make the products we supply all stationery and art supplies from school. We provide the groups with a budget and they give us a shopping list. We buy their supplies (from Countdown) and then the money is recouped from their profit. We have been approached by several families wanting to supply the ingredients/materials themselves for their children, so that they succeed with a maximum profit. The idea is that we supply the money to 'float' the groups, so that they learn about the business world, and so that parents are not out of pocket, as this money is a fundraiser for camp. If you would like to contribute to your child's group by supplying ingredients or materials from home (please don't feel like you have to) could you please send an email to your child's home group teacher, so that we know you have given permission for home ingredients/materials to be used.



tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz
gayle.mcnaughton@beckenham.school.nz
nick.bruce@beckenham.school.nz
katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

Winter Sports
This is the last week of winter sports. We have had a great run of weather this term and it has been fabulous for the teams to head off to Hagley Park on a Friday afternoon. One more Friday of remembering a water bottle, boots, shin and mouth guards. Next week we will be collecting in the sports tops, so if they could be washed and returned to the teacher that handed them out, that would be awesome thanks.

Enrolment Intentions for current Year 6 students for 2019 School Year
If you have not filled in this form (and you are a parent of a year 6 student) we would be very grateful if you did, as this helps us to plan effectively for next year.
Enrolment Intentions for current Year 6 students for 2019 School Year