Trip to the Transitional Cathedral, City and Gardens

What a wonderful time we had on this trip! Our children sang beautifully at the cathedral. Their behaviour as we walked through the city was exemplary and our time at the Botanic Gardens was a welcome respite from the heat of the day.

As we walked to the Gardens, the children worked in teams to take photographs of items on a scavenger hunt. We were all amazed by the huge number of artworks and sculptures on display in our changing city.

We even had a student's aunty come down to the square to sing for us!

It was a great experience.

Quail Island

Yesterday, we had a wonderful day at Quail Island. The weather was perfect and we had a lovely time walking around the island, swimming in the safe beach, and enjoying ourselves in the outdoors. We would like to say a HUGE thank you to all the wonderful parents who came with us. You are awesome!

Volleyball

We are very lucky to have Angus from Canterbury Sport in our school for the next few weeks to teach Pohutukawa children some skills to play volleyball. So far our children have learnt to dig, set and spike the ball over the net. Check out some pictures from our first session!

Practicing our spiking technique

A powerful serve from one of our students.

Will she be able to hit it back? 

Rugby World Cup 2015 - Victory!

At the end of last term all the hubs at Beckenham School were given a country to represent. We were challenged to learn about the history, language and culture of that country and present our work to the RWC judges (Sherrilee and Michelle!). Hub 14/15 were given Fiji and although we were kicked out of the tournament very early on, it did not stop us from going all out. We transformed our hub into a Fijian paradise complete with a coconut tree, ocean, ice cream bar and 50 children in their togs lounging on their beach towels reading. Jamie also did an amazing job at playing some relaxing tunes to really set the mood. We all had a fantastic time and to top it all hub 14/15 was voted by the judges the BEST in the senior school. The only thing that can beat that is if the ABs bring the cup home again!

Rugby World Cup 2015

At Beckenham School we are getting right into the RWC by celebrating and learning about the different countries the teams come from. In hub 14/15 we are celebrating Fiji and have begun by creating a beautiful mural of the beach. Here you can see two students relaxing underneath the coconut tree whilst doing some reading. Alex has to keep his sunglasses on because his future is so bright! 😎☀️

Cantamaths & Basketball

Hi Everyone! The past few weeks the Pōhutukawa Whānau have been busy, busy, busy! The children have had some awesome learning opportunities lately that have challenged and encouraged them to work together. Everyone has been doing an outstanding job of working hard in their learning and upholding our schools values. Here is a little bit about some of the things we have been doing at Beckenham School.

Cantamaths

Some of our brilliant mathematicians were given the opportunity to compete in the Cantamaths Year 6 Problem Solving Challenge this year. These children spent weeks calculating and creating these projects based off a problem presented to them by Cantamaths and you can see below just impressive the final products were! We are so proud of how hard these children worked and want to give a big shout out to Alex and Hannah who managed to score an excellence, the top honour in Cantamaths. Ka pai Alex and Hannah!

Basketball

On Friday we were lucky enough to have a year 5/6 team from Somerfield School visit us during lunchtime to play a game of basketball against our own team. All players from both schools played extremely well and our audience cheered hard for both teams. It was a fun and exhilarating atmosphere with Beckenham getting the win 18-5. We are looking forward to the possibility of visiting Somerfield School next term for another rematch. Until then... GO BECKENHAM!

OUT OF THIS WORLD FIRSY DAY BACK! 🌎🚀

Today was a very exciting and action-packed day. We kicked off our inquiry studies for term three by taking the children on an intergalactic journey across the universe. Unfortunately our spaceship crash landed so now the children must plan how they will explore this new and unfamiliar planet whilst building a functional society. Who knows what challenges are around each corner! Stay tuned for some very exciting updates on our inquiry throughout the term.

The children in hub 14/15 also had another very new experience that was just as nerve wrecking as space travel. Speed dating! What better way to get all your holiday goss out and get to know your hub mates better? We provided the children with a list of questions to help them on each of their two minute dates before they were rushed onto the next. Highlight - When asked what his most precious possession was one young man answered "my brother" (awwwwww!). I think he must of known I was listening! Check out this great picture of all the fun below.

Halswell Quarry Trip

Team Pohutukawa were fortunate enough to go on a day trip to the Halswell Quarry this week. This trip ties into our geological studies about Beckenham 'looking back' at the people who came here and the land many years ago. Each class within a hub got to spend half a day with a ranger learning about the quarry and how millions of years ago it was an active volcano! For the other half of the day we walked up and around the quarry before playing an awesome game of animal survival. Thank you so much to all the parents who came and supported our children's learning. It was a great day!

Food Gathering

What did the Maori use to carry food away from the river and ponds? This was a long time before supermarkets and plastic bags. They used the harakeke that grew by the river to make kete. We were lucky to be able to learn how to make our own kete. Does this mean we'll never have to go to the supermarket again?

Thank you to Pam or showing us how to weave harakeke.

Geometry Fun

We have been very busy learning all about geometry for the past three weeks in team Pohutukawa. Here is a picture of some of our brilliant children designing their own 3D shapes using nothing but sticks, blutack and determination!

Gallipoli

BANG…   

“Look out!”

We run across the cold soft ground, dodging bullets. My heart pounds out of my chest, while people drop dead around us.

“We better go back!”

Suddenly my life-long friend drops dead. I run back. Blood, sweat and tears fall down my ice cold cheeks. I jump back into the trench. I feel like going home, but I know I must go on.

All of a sudden a horrible stench flouts up. I vomit. It just makes it worst. I can’t take it any more. My stomach rumbles. It sounds like a earthquake.

By Hannah

The light flashes. Red. Red. Green. The ship’s door opens. In two seconds I hear gunfire. The guy in the front is shot. Luckily I was at the back. I had to trample over him.

Suddenly I look at the bombers flying overhead. “Boom!” A grenade is thrown  I see a grenade is thrown again. I am right by. It deafens  me! I wipe the mud on my face. Red blood fills the beach and the water. We make progress. At 5pm we take over their trenches.

I see a head get blown off.  I don’t really want to get up and shoot but I have to.

By Reuben

Exploring ANZAC

This week in team Pohutukawa we have been exploring the importance behind celebrating ANZAC day and why we must pay our respects to those who gave their lives to protect our country many years ago. Hub 21/22 have been busy conducting an inquiry on World War 1 and have even been building their very own trenches in the classroom! In hub 14/15 we have been looking at some of the famous poetry and letters written about the soldiers' experiences on the battlefield and recreated our own. Below is one of the poems our students wrote. Enjoy!

Pointless

Have you ever wondered, for what purpose is the war?

The fighting, the killing, there should be no more!

Nothing good comes out of it, on both sides people die!

Do you really think you’re doing a favour by killing without knowing why?

If we made a compromise the ANZACs would be your friends,

but instead you choose to fight so this war must come to an end!

This stupid war is pointless, there’s no reason we should fight!

We both just want to be back home in our beds all  tucked up tight.

You realise we have family back home, looking up at the starlit sky,

hoping that when we went to war it wasn't their last goodbye.

We know you have family like us and probably lots of friends,

so for them and for us, lets put down our guns, and both of us make amends.

Written by Sadie

Term 1 Learning Celebration

Team Pohutukawa has had an incredible afternoon sharing some of the awesome things we have all been working on and learning about from hub 14/15's radio show on Plains FM to hub 21/22's Starfleet Academy. Check out these fun photos of us celebrating how much in team Pohutukawa we LOVE learning, we LOVE challenge and most importantly we get there TOGETHER!

At Beckenham School we get there together!

In maths we undertook a statistical investigation on how children feel about learning in hubs rather than single cells. We used a google form to survey the children in Hub 14/15.

The information we gathered from these fifty students, shows their opinion on learning in the modern collaborative learning space, or the old formal classrooms, which are also known as single cells.

 

The first question we asked was: Where do you prefer to hang your bag?

When we were back in separate classes there was space in between the rooms to hang our bags. But when the walls got knocked down there was no room so the bags went on hooks outside.

Our investigation of this question shows that 60 percent of the hub likes their bag inside and only 40 percent of the hub likes their bag outside.

We asked kaia her opinion on bags.

She prefered it when we hung them inside.

Kaia prefered them inside because if you had yogurt in your lunch it goes slimy and yucky  when it gets warm.

The second question  we asked was how do you like to do your literacy?

Beckenham school has developed a new way to do literacy. This new way is called self directed learning.

Self directed learning in literacy looks a bit like this: At the beginning of the week we are given tasks which we need to complete by the end of Friday. We do this independently and self manage our time.

We have discovered that three quarters of the hub prefers self directed literacy over non self directed literacy.

Another question we asked was: How do prefer to be taught? By one teacher or two teachers?

It was interesting to find that 60% of the hub prefers having two teachers, and only 40 % prefers one teacher.

Another question we asked was Where do you like to work. The options were: outside, the learning cafe and the focus factory. Twenty three people prefered to work outside, six people prefered the focus factory and nineteen people prefered the learning cafe.

Also we asked how do you prefer to do P.E as a hub or in a single cell. Four fifths of the hub like to play P.E as a hub and only one fifth of the hub likes to play P.E as a single cell.

By Daisy and Rosie