Koru Team News: Term 2 Week 8 (21/06/2024)

Kia ora e te whānau,

The time really seems to be flying by with just a fortnight now until the school holidays, the last day of term being on Friday, July 5th. We have some exciting events planned for the final part of the term, including our Art Gallery trip on Monday, the Matariki evening on Tuesday next week and some Matariki baking on Thursday of next week just before the long Matariki weekend. Please see below for reminders about the dates on which these events and some others will be taking place.

We warmly welcome Aylah who has had her first full week at school (what a wonderful first week you've had, Aylah!), and we're also excited to be welcoming Millie who is going to be starting school on Tuesday next week. We're so glad to have you both in the Koru team, tamariki!

Important dates to remember:

• Monday, June 24th, 9:00 - 12:00 Koru team Art Gallery outing
• Tuesday, June 25th, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. our whole school Matariki evening
• Thursday, June 27th, Koru team Matariki baking (we'll be baking plain scones with jam on them - please do let us know if you'd prefer that your child doesn't have a scone)
• Friday, June 28th, school is closed for the long Matariki weekend
• Friday, July 5th is the last day of Term 2

Cyber Safety at Beckenham Te Kura ō Pūroto:

In this Blog post, we have a focus on being Aware of Online Harm.

Many parents didn't grow up with the internet, so it can be hard to imagine how tamariki may use it. But these days, digital technology is a key part of our young people's lives. They use it for learning, communicating and entertainment.

Netsafe has released research that looked into parental awareness of children's experiences of online risks and harm. The research found a mismatch between parents' awareness and their children's experiences of upsetting online content.

To check out the research, and other Netsafe resources, visit this link.

Maths in the Koru Team:

In the Koru team, we just LOVE Maths! Our Maths takes the form of:

• a weekly problem-solving session
• Hot Spot warm ups, with a focus throughout each week on developing number knowledge, Move and Prove and Notice, Think, Wonder (see below for descriptions)
• small group lessons, during which the children are taught to use their number knowledge in order to strategise to solve number problems
• at times throughout each term, a focus on other Maths strands (aspects of Algebra, Geometry and Measurement and Statistics)
• and once a week on Fridays our handwriting lesson is devoted to specifically learning and practising the correct numeral formation.

During problem-solving, the children will be presented with a story and a challenge and will have the opportunity to work in small groups or pairs to solve the problem. The children will often use a whiteboard and other resources to support their problem-solving. Here's an example of an open-ended problem:

Here are three caves. There are bears in each cave. There are 12 bears altogether. If there are 2 bears in the first cave, how many bears might be in each of the other caves?

Notice, Think, Wonder:

This involves the children simply offering up their observations and thoughts in response to an image which we will have displayed for them. Here is an example of a Notice, Think, Wonder image:

Move and Prove:

This activity begins with the children being shown a slide such as this:

The question is discussed initially, as a whole group, and then children are asked to 'turn and talk' with the person beside them and discuss why they think the way they think. Once this has happened, the children are asked to move to a position on the mat which has been designated as either 'a', 'b', 'c' or 'd'. If a child finds it difficult to make a decision straight away, we have a space in the middle of the mat, which is the 'pause' area and children who are waiting there are given time to make their decision while others are asked to justify their choice. If a child who is sitting in the middle is persuaded by another child's justification, they are then able to move to sit with that child. As you will see from the image above, it's possible that there might be several 'correct' answers, depending on the way you view and think about the possibilities presented, and we inevitably notice that the children are able to come up with very interesting justifications for the choices they have made!

Here is a selection of photos showing aspects of our Maths programme:

We do hope you have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing all of those beautiful smiles back at school on Monday, ready for our outing to the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,

Elizabeth, Stacey and Georgia