Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter Friday 7 February 2020

Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

What a great week it has been, seeing everyone back at school. What's hard to believe is that we are into the second month of the year already!
Our thoughts have been with our friends and the communities of Southland over the past few days. One of our past staff, Rebekah Stoop is now teaching in Tapanui and when I spoke to her on Wednesday they were on their second day of being closed due to the flooding. Not the way that you want to start the school year!

Staff update:

It is with great regret that I have to advise that Paulette Newton will be finishing her tenure at Beckenham at the end of Term 1. Paulette has been a member of the staff at Beckenham for many years, in both full-time and part-time capacities, and currently is the Team Leader of the Kōwhai Team.


Paulette has been successful in winning a position with the RTLB (Resource Teachers of Behaviour and Learning) Service where she will be able to both utilise and continue to grow her expertise in supporting diverse learners, not just in one school but in many schools.
Whilst we are extremely sad to be losing Paulette to our staff, we are very excited for her and the new challenges and growth that she has ahead of her. As a member of the Beckenham Community, and a parent of a child in the school, we know that she won't be a stranger to us.
The position of Team Leader is currently advertised, and we will keep you updated when we have new information about this.

Health Curriculum Review - meeting Mon 17th Feb, 2:30pm

At the end of 2019 we circulated information about our current Health Curriculum review. Thank you to those people who have already engaged with this. We promised to recirculate this at the start of the year, and to also provide a time that you could come and talk with us about it.
We will be holding a meeting on Monday 17th February from 2:30-3pm in the staffroom and invite you to attend.

The review material can be accessed via this link, and we will be going over this and discussing it at the meeting.

Annual Donations 

Earlier this week you should have received a special newsletter from the Board of Trustees about the new annual donation request. You can find a copy of that information on our website if you need it. Please note that we will NOT be requesting further donations from you this year (except for Camps) and plan to budget and work with the single, annual donation requested for each child. We appreciate whatever contribution you feel that your whānau can make towards supporting the rich educational experiences that we aim to provide for our children's learning.

School Website 

Our server is being upgraded this weekend, so the school website will be offline from 4pm today until 9am Monday morning.

Ngā mihi nui
Sandy Hastings
Principal - Tumuaki

Important Dates 

Citizen of the Week

Elsie O'Beirne - Year 4

Elsie, what a stunning role model you are! You strive to do your very best in all situations and show our school values in all you do. You willingly help those around you to achieve their best and we love the focussed and persistent way you approach any challenge or learning task. You regularly take on extra responsibilities and can be relied upon to fulfil these a high standard. You are a star, Elsie, and we are so proud of you. Tino pai!

School Notices

Allergies

Across our school, we have several children with different food allergies. To support the wellbeing of these students, we have the following guidelines in place which we ask you to follow:

For 2020, we have no specifically excluded foods. As always, we ask that no child shares their food with another, due to the anaphylactic risk for some our students. Whenever children bring food to school for shared kai occasions, please follow the guidelines provided by the teachers for that event.

We will inform you during the year if specific guidelines for your child’s hub change.  If you have any questions or concerns, please discuss them in the first instance with your child’s homeroom teacher.

Playground Update

Our playspace is beginning to take shape thanks to The Greenscape team. The double slide is sitting in the Library ready to be installed on the mound. The concrete river is flowing nicely with some natural rocks to be placed throughout. The digger has been in for the past couple of days getting ready to extend the sandpit, and extra drainage will be in place before our sensory play area is finished. Later in the term, we will need a little help from our children and community with the planting of a few hundred trees and shrubs before our official opening day.

We are all looking forward to having a play (including all the teachers!)

Smart Watches

CSM Outreach Band Programme

... starts this coming Wednesday, 12th February!
8am Training Band - in the hall, with your instrument and book.
3pm - Concert Band - in the hall, with your instrument and book(s).
Our new CSM Outreach Band co-ordinator is Jody Keehan, and she will be making contact with all enrolled students over the next couple of days. If you have any queries, or haven't heard from her and you think you should have, please email her at outreachband@csm.org.nz

School Policies - Concerns and Complaints 

It is always our goal to work with you to resolve any concerns before they reach the 'complaint' stage, and it is also important that our processes are transparent for you to follow.
You can access all of our School Policy documents through the 'SchoolDocs' website by entering the username: 'beckenham' and password: 'pride' (all lower case) and searching for either 'Concerns' or 'Complaints'.
You can also see a simple flowchart of the process below (also available on the SchoolDocs site:

Uniform and belongings

Some uniform reminders:

Please do ensure that children come to school in full uniform each day. This means black on the bottom (other than the checked skorts) and red on the top, or the dress. On Fridays, children have the option of wearing the House shirts (available from the office for $25).
If you don't have enough uniform for children to have 'one on and one in the wash', please remember that our second-hand uniform shop, run by our PTA has very cheap and good quality uniform items available.
Hats are compulsory in Terms 1 & 4 when children go outside. Please ensure that they have a hat at school each day.

Please name all uniform and belongings

It's barely the end of week 1 and the lost property is beginning to accumulate! PLEASE make sure that all of your child's belongings (uniform items, hat, lunchbox, drink bottle) are ALL clearly named so that they can be returned to your child rather than ending up in the lost property.

Student Health & Wellbeing

Our review of Health and Wellbeing teaching is underway. If you have not yet contributed your feedback and would like to do so, please go to this link before the 12/02/2020. -
We also welcome interested whānau to attend a Community Consultation session on our Health and Wellbeing teaching, to be held in the Staffroom on Monday 17/2/2020 at 2.30pm.
Click here to view the new Health and Wellbeing section of our website for parents. It is packed with useful links, information and YouTube clips you can watch with your child.

Parenting resources from the Canterbury Mental Health Group Alright? : Handy tipsheets on sleep, helping children manage worry, helping children keep calm and lots more.

PTA News

Let the Countdown to the Fair Begin!!  6 weeks today!

Mark your calendars - Friday 20th March 2020 will be our Twilight Fair. Let's showcase our new playground & celebrate with our community!

Calling all Artists, Musicians, business owners & generous souls…..We are on the hunt for donations of prizes, vouchers, cash, food, services & acts to help us to create an amazing Twilight Fair.

If you are a business/person that can help, please click on the link for more detailed information: Beckenham Te Kura o Puroto Fair Donation Form


All funds raised from the Twilight Fair will go towards much needed new school sports uniforms and for purchasing digital technology equipment such as beebots and spheros for our children to learn coding concepts and how to program robots so that they can become creators of digital technology - not just users.

Thanks to wonderful Gail Harris from Platform Design Ltd for our fabulous poster design.

Mindfulness for Children

Does your child struggle with anxiety or stress? Would you like to support them to learn skills to enhance their wellbeing?

The Psychology Centre is offering Pause Breathe Smile (PBS) a group for children (age 8-11 years) who struggle with stress and anxiety and their parents to develop skills of mindfulness.  PBS is an evidence-based program, developed by the Mental Health Foundation, found to improved focus and attention, enhance self-awareness and reduced stress. Our recent pilot group at the Psychology Centre also found that PBS is effective at reducing anxiety and improving coping in children.

The group will run from 4 - 5pm, starting Wednesday 19 February for 8 weeks at the Psychology Centre, University of Canterbury and requires both child and parent/ caregiver to attend and learn together. The cost of the program is $125.

If you would like more information or to register, contact Justine Brougham justine.brougham@canterbury.ac.nz

To hear kids talking about PBS watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awo8jUxIm0c



For more information about the research and benefits of PBS look at http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1707/S00094/pause-breathe-smile-mindfulness-training-will-help.htm