Planting Day at the Beckenham Park Ponds

Kia ora whānau,

Sally Airey (our Healthy Ōpāwaho faciltator) has organised and invited Pōhutakawa to complete planting at the ponds on Wednesday September 16th, supported by local CCC rangers and a river volunteer (and expert). It'll be an awesome opportunity to make a difference to our local environment, and is being held as part of our annual Clean Up Week at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto.

Groups of 30 children and their teacher will attend the ponds, listen to a local plant expert, and undertake planting at these intervals: 

9-9.45am: Group 1
9.45-10.30am: Group 2
10.30 - 10.50 break time (whole school)
11- 11.45am: Group 3
11.45am - 12.30pm: Group 4

We would be very grateful if we could have some parent help volunteers for some or all of this time. At least two parents per time slot would be very much appreciated. Please can you email Anne at anne.batchelor@beckenham.school.nz if you are available for some or all of this time. Thanks very much for your support.

Pōhutukawa News Term 3 Week 6

Kia ora whānau,

Just a couple of reminders about up and coming events for our learners in the next few weeks.

Wacky Hair Day

Next Friday, 4th September, is Wacky Hair Day

Wear mufti and wacky hair, a wig or  a hat

Please bring a gold coin or two to support the Child Cancer Foundation.

From the Student Council

Staff Only Day

As per our school calendar, school will be closed this coming Monday August 31st for a Staff Only Day.

Winter Sport

This week is the final week of winter sport - thanks to all of you who have supported our teams. Please remember that at Level 2 we are asking you to refrain from coming along to watch the games. Thanks for your understanding.

Winter Sport at Level 2

 We are following Sport Canterbury's lead on our decision around winter sport for the remaining two weeks. Secondary school sport has resumed with no spectators and contact tracing.

We have been in consultation with the other schools in our zone and we feel confident that we can go ahead with this week's games. We have existing systems in place that will enable us to easily identify who was where should the need for contact tracing arise. We ask that you refrain from spectating this Thursday's game. 

Parent Help for Pōhutukawa Term 4 Camp

Kia ora whānau,

Please complete the Google form below if you are available to come along as a Parent Helper for our Term 4 camp.  This form needs to be completed by Friday, August 14th please.

Parent Help Expression of Interest Form

Any questions, please contact your child's home group teacher.

Pōhutukawa Camp Term 4 2020

Kia ora whānau,

Great news! Planning is underway for our Pōhutukawa Camp at Living Springs. The camp will run for three days and two nights from Wednesday the 25th to Friday the 27th of November, which is in week 7 of Term 4.

The cost of camp is likely to be no more than $180 per child. You can start making contributions for this as soon as you are able to, by setting up a small automatic payment. If you set that up this week, $9.50 per week would ensure that your contribution towards camp was fully paid by the time camp happens. To set up an automatic payment, please copy the school’s bank account number:

12-3148-0131641-00 into your internet banking and use your child’s name and 'Y5/6Camp' as the reference.

We will be needing some parent helpers for the camp, and will be putting out the call for parents who may be interested and available early next term. Next term you will receive more information about the camp, as we firm up the camp programme of activities.

We hope you have a restful and fun filled holiday break.

Pōhutukawa News Term 2 Week 12

Kia ora whānau,

What a busy term we have had! 

Winter Sport
We've been very unlucky with the weather this term for winter sport. Thanks to all of you who put your names forward to help with winter sport development and competitive teams. We are continuing next term on Thursdays - if you are unavailable to help next term please let us know, otherwise we look forward to working alongside you again in term three. 

Learning Conferences
Thanks so much for booking in for the learning conferences. We are looking forward to supporting all our learners to share their learning with you.  The weeks since returning to school after the Rāhui have flown by. Below is some information on what we have been up to.

In recent weeks, our focus  at writing time has been on identifying, understanding the grammatical structure of and creating simple, compound and complex sentences. The children have been  self assessing their writing skills in this context and will share more with you about this at the learning conferences this week.

A large amount of time and focus has been directed at the area of place value in mathematics. Place value is an area of the mathematics curriculum that will be covered every academic year through primary and secondary school, with a view to building upon previous knowledge. An understanding of place value forms the basis of many areas of mathematical understanding. Initially the focus might be on place value columns and reading numbers accurately, then it develops to being able to quickly identify the number of tens, hundreds, thousands and so on in numbers, in conjunction with using place value knowledge and understanding to manipulate numbers in addition and subtraction calculations, for example.

Another area of focus in mathematics this term has been tracking both reasoning and recall ability in relation to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. The children have done a great job of assessing their abilities in this area, and setting some goals for future focus. They will be sharing this with you at their learning conferences, and we will have some work that you can continue at home to support our learners in achieving these goals. Rob has created a brief video below to help you to understand the tracker system that we are using. The children are experts at this, so they will also be able to help!

At reading time we have been working on a variety of activities in order to support our learners to accurately decode what they are reading, comprehend the author's meaning, and analyse the text to develop their understanding. The children are becoming more confident in discussing what they have read with others too.

Term 3

Our focus for term 3 and beyond is to support the children to become more "assessment capable" as learners.  This involves unpacking assessments of their learning in reading, writing and mathematics to look at strengths and next steps, and supporting each learner to develop confidence in assessing themselves against goals that they have agreed upon with their teacher. This will ensure that each child is being extended, whatever their level.

Hand washing

We are in the season for colds and flu at the moment, and we have had many children away sick recently. We continue to encourage the children to wash their hands before they eat, and hand sanitiser is available at school for those who wish to use it.  We are aware of the environmental impact of very regular had washing - if you would like to send your child to school with their own personal hand towel in their bag for use at hand washing time, we will support them to use it.

We hope you have a fun filled and restful holiday, and look forward to seeing everyone relaxed and refreshed next term.

Pōhutukawa Sport HELP WANTED!

Kia ora whānau,

WE NEED YOU! We are on the look out for some parent helpers to help with the development squads for football, hockey, netball. There would be NO REQUIREMENT TO REFEREE! We really just need extra adults to help encourage and run fitness drills and general ball skills so that the children get the support and attention that they need to improve.  This would be for the next three weeks from 1.45 pm to 2.45 pm every Thursday.  If you can help, please email anne.batchelor@beckenham.school.nz.  

We appreciate your support!