Wednesday 1 August 2018

Term 3 Week 2 in Pōhutukawa

Welcome back to the new term. We have had a mixed bag of weather so far. Now that we have hit August we only have one month left of winter, in theory, so bring on spring!

This term for physical education we have Canterbury Hockey delivering their Small Sticks programme to our whole school. For Pōhutukawa this means a half hour lesson for each home group on Tuesday, for the first five weeks of the term. It's great to have experts in, as it means that the teachers are learning new activities and skills too!

Our other physical education focus is gymnastics. We began this today and the students had a fabulous time using the apparatus and supporting each other at giving new things a go. The students rotated around eight activities - beam, vault with beat board, vault with mini tramp, skipping ropes, forward rolls, cartwheels, handstands and human pyramid.








After the amazing community effort of the mass planting, we have now opened up our Treemendous area for the children to play in, during break times on a Tuesday and Thursday (at this stage). Beach popped down to see what could happen there, and decided it was a pretty cool area to hang out in.



Our new writing topic of poetry was kicked off on Monday by a poetry reading motivation. This could have been quite a dry experience, however we had Jarred accompanying the teachers who were reading the poetry, by acting out the words in the poems using Jarred's very own style of sign language. Much hilarity ensued, and thus started the new writing topic. The students then made their own acrostic poem, using their name. Through Google Classroom, each child has their own Poetry Anthology Google Slideshow. As we learn about different poetry types, the children will be writing their own poems and publishing them in their anthology. At the end of the unit, each slideshow will be printed and made into a book. Today's poem was called the 5W poem, as each line described a part of a story - who, what, where, when and why. There were some excellent poems created throughout the hub.


Superman,  
cruising in the sky, at nearby Hidden Batcave,
close to midnight, trying to find Batman.

By Max Graham

Izzy,playing around,in her backyard,on a hot and sunny afternoon,so she could find her pets.

By Mahli Boreham

Nemo,Trying to get attention,
Lying in front of the couch on the soft grey carpet,While I am watching Britain's Got Talent,Because he wants food.

By Holly Rogers

On Friday we begin our next round of passion groups. On offer this term is coding, sewing, arts and crafts and cooking. We spend 45 minutes on a Friday, from 9-9:45am, in our passion groups. The students look forward to this time of the week, in order to participate in a variety of different activities, often selected because of interests the students have mentioned. Due to the hands on approach required for sewing, cooking and arts and crafts, we would love extra help on Friday mornings. If a family member is available for 45 minutes from 9-9:45am, and fancies joining in any of the activities we are offering this term (for 5 weeks), we would love to have you join us. Please email Tracy to offer your services if you can spare the time. We would also love any donations of material/fabric, needles, thread/cotton/embroidery cotton or wool. 
tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz

It has been a pleasure catching up with many of you on Tuesday night at learning conferences. We are very proud of the students who have had their learning conferences, showing that they are about to confidently talk about their learning, sharing goals and explaining how things happen in the Pōhutukawa hub. We look forward to seeing many more of you on Thursday, and remind you that school closes at 2pm to enable us to begin our learning conferences from 2:15pm.

Kind regards
Tracy, Katie, Gayle and Nick














No comments:

Post a Comment