Passions on Thursday

This week, the Pōhutukawa Team's passion learning session will be held on Thursday instead of Friday. If your child needs to bring anything special for their passion learning project (e.g. Lego or other toys), please remind them to bring it to school on Thursday.

T4 W7 in the Pōhutukawa Team

Sexuality Road

On Tuesday we will be starting our Sexuality Road topic as part of the Health curriculum. 

We will be teaching the unit in pairs. Tracy and Katie will be taking the Year 6 students, while Gayle and Nick will be taking the Y5 students.

The Y4 students will be joining in with Kōwhai for the afternoons we have Health.

As discussed at the parent meeting at the beginning of the term, we will be covering the following topics:

 

	Year 5	Year 6
Changing bodies and feelings	Puberty - exploring changes Identifying external body parts Being unique	Puberty - exploring changes Identifying external body parts Reproductive systems Hygiene
Relationships	Friendships Respect and tolerance Personal opinions	Gender stereotypes - impact on relationships, roles and behaviours Defining relationships
Communication & decision making	Decision making - demands, practise, thinking ahead about possible consequences	Media - remaining unique and individual Passive, assertive, aggressive communication
Reproduction	Conception Eggs and sperm	Explain conception and stages of pregnancy
Where can I go	Support networks	Support networks

We will be encouraging the students to talk about their learning at home with whānau.

Staff Only Day on Monday 26 November

Tomorrow school will be closed due to a staff only day.

Camp helpers' reflections

Many thanks again to our fabulous camp helpers. Your assistance on camp was invaluable. If you have completed the reflection sent home with your poppet, it would be great to have that returned to Tracy at school. Thank you to the four parents who have already returned theirs. It is really helpful to have different perspectives on how the camp went.

Waltham Pool trip

We now have enough support for our trip to Waltham pool in the last week of school. Thank you so much to the volunteers!

Lost property from camp

We would love to reunite this property with owners!! Numerous socks, a single, blue, fitted sheet and a sleeping bag cover.

Beach Education trips cancelled

Unfortunately, due to not having enough adult supervision for both days of our surf safety trips, we have had to cancel.

Thank you so much to the adults who offered to help.

It will be school as normal, after the staff only day on Monday 26 November, on both Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 November.

Urgent request for adult helpers

Urgent request for adult helpers

We urgently require adult helpers for our Beach Education surf safety trips next week, on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 November.

At this stage we only have one volunteer, so need 19 more, 10 adults per day! If we don't have the required number of adults to support us on these trips will have to cancel, costing us over $800.

Please contact Tracy if you are able to help to make this learning possible for our students. Helpers will be required to stand in the water to ensure the safety of the children.

tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz

Parent Help for Waltham Pool Trip

Tena koutou,

We will be going on a trip to Waltham Pool on Tuesday 18th December. We will be leaving school at 11:00 and returning at 3:00.

This is to celebrate a very successful year in the Pohutukawa team.

We require eight parent helpers to walk with us there and back and to help supervise children. Please email your child's home room teacher if you are able to help.

Kind regards,

The Pohutukawa teaching team

tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz

gayle.mcnaughton@beckenham.school.nz

nick.bruce@beckenham.school.nz

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

T4 W6 in Pōhutukawa Whānau

Adult helpers required on Beach Education trip - Tuesday 27 Nov. and Wednesday 28 Nov.

As mentioned previously (via paper newsletter and a blog post) we have planned to undertake a Beach Education surf safety course on the above dates (week 7). This will involve all of our Year 4, 5 and 6 students (only the Y4 students from Pōhutukawa are involved).

To ensure the safety of our students we require adults to help with supervision. We require 10 adults for each day. As yet, we do not have enough volunteers to make this opportunity viable. Please consider your availability to help us out on one or both of these days and email Tracy if you are able to help.
tracy.inwood@beckenham.school.nz

We will be travelling to South Brighton over two days, splitting our children into two groups. The Year 6 students and those students competing in the Canterbury Triathlon will be going on Tuesday. The Year 5 and 4 students will be going on Wednesday.

Dates:  Tuesday 27th November & Wednesday 28th November
Time:  Leaving school at 9:00 am, returning to school at 3:00 pm both days.
Location:   South Brighton Surf Club

Training for some Year 5 students for 2019 road patrol with Constable Ross

On Tuesday Constable Ross will be training a group of Year 5 students who have volunteered to become part of the road patrol team for next year. Constable Ross takes a whiteboard session for an hour and then takes the students out to the school crossing so that can put what they have learned into practise.
We appreciate the students who take on this very important job of keeping our community safe in the mornings and afternoons of school days.


Last day on camp

As it did every day, the sun shone on us as we packed and cleaned on Thursday. After a delicious morning tea we headed off on a bush walk down to the farm park. Upon our arrival we were split into two groups. One group went horse riding and had a ride on a wagon pulled by a tractor, while the other group learnt about milking a cow and fed the farm animals. Once both groups had completed all activities we had a scrumptious BBQ lunch, followed by watching sheep shearing. After thanking our fabulous adult helpers we hopped on the bus for the ride back to school. There were a lot of tired children who headed home for a long weekend!
We do have a container of lost property if you would like to search for missing items. We also have a container of medication to be returned to owners.
We hope your children returned to you happy, tired and full of many stories. We had an amazing time!
Here are some photos from the final day on camp:

Living Springs Camp tomorrow

Camp tomorrow! We can't wait! Here are a few reminders:

• All children are to arrive at school tomorrow at the normal time, in mufti, with their back pack and one gear bag.
• Everyone is required to bring morning tea and lunch for Tuesday.
• Every child must have a water bottle and a brimmed hat.
• Please check that all gear on the list has been packed and named.
• Any medication that your child will require (such as inhalers, antihistamine cream, hydrocortisone cream etc) is to be in a zip locked bag, along with a medical form, and handed to Katie upon arrival at school.

We have a group of parents organised to come out to camp to support our whānau. Some are full-time and others will be part-time. We will be well supported and thank the rest of you for not visiting during the three days. Part of the purpose of camp is for your children to develop independence.

If you should need to contact us in an emergency, please use Tracy's cellphone which is  

027 363 0220 or the camp number which is 03 02998788 and after hours 0800 462732.

We will see you Thursday afternoon. Keep an eye out for updates on the school Facebook page to check out our adventures!