We're exploring at Space Place!

On Monday we went to Space Place and it was quite simply out of this world!

There were loads of hands on activities.

     

Troy from Space Places taught us lots about The Sun, Earth and Moon. Did you know that The Sun is a star? And its not even a ‘large’ one, troy said its only a ‘medium’ star compared to others out there.

There was even an awesome theatre called the planetarium, where they could project the night sky onto and zoom in on planets, moons and even star constellations! They also showed us a short movie that was both educational and hilarious. A great combo.

      

Check out more of the cool photos from our big day!!   

Our Inquiry- The Earth, Our Home

We have begun our new inquiry: The earth, our home. This inquiry will take us to space as we explore our place in the solar system and learn about the changes that we observe between the sun, earth and moon. We will be focusing on growing our scientific skills of questioning, observing and recording like scientists using tools such as role play, diagrams and models.  Our character strengths of perseverance, teamwork, creativity and of course, curiosity, will help us on our journey.

Our Learner Attribute for this term is I am a goal setter. This attribute is about growing the capacity to clarify what I know, what I don't know YET,  think of steps to help me learn (such as asking questions, observing, creating and sharing ideas), and then share my new understanding when I've learned it.

So off we go in our new inquiry journey!

I Am Curious

First, we gathered our questions in the 'I Am Curious' stage. We are wondering about things like:

Why is the moon out during the day and why do you only sometimes see part of the moon?
Where does the sun go at night?
What is a star?
Why do we only see the Milky Way in certain places?
What are the seasons?
How do the seasons change? What causes these changes?

First Ideas

We then collected our first ideas: Where does the sun go at night? This will give us a starting point to see how much our understanding grows over time and how our thinking changes from what we thought at the beginning. Here are some of our first ideas that will grow over time as we learn:

I Am Exploring

Next, we will launch into our 'I Am Exploring' phase where we will experience information in different ways to grow our understanding and answer our questions, beginning with our visit to Space Place. I wonder what discoveries we'll make and what new questions we will have?

Blast Off Into Space!

If you had to travel our solar system, what would you take?

On Friday we used our character strength of creativity to design a rocket to take us to visit our solar system. We shared ideas and came up with a plan. We drew the outside then designed the inside with lots of detail to show all the things we would need to pack (plenty of our favourite toys of course!).

Our rockets are displayed in Tautoru so come in and have a look at what we have packed to travel to space.

Waking Up Our Brain

Starting the morning with a fun physical activity sets us up for our learning and helps to get our blood moving and brains turned on.

We started a morning this week with 'Go Noodle'. It is a high energy aerobic exercise. The students really get into the guitar riffs and turntable scratches. 

Teamwork

We have spent some of the time in the afternoons this week discussing and developing our ideas around teamwork. Each base group completed an activity that required teamwork, communication and, at times, a lot of resilience and perseverance!



This group are trying to cross a river of doom as a group careful to not lose anyone along the way.



Groups also worked on moving a hoop around a circle while holding hands. There were a lot of discussion and patience required with this one.

Global Play Day

How do we learn through play? How is play important? How can play help us to practise our character strengths? Those were some of the questions we discussed as we launched into celebrating Global Play Day.

Global Play Day is an annual event celebrated around the world where children explore learning through play. Learning about teamwork, kindness, relationships, perseverance, zest, creativity, curiosity and all those other important character strengths that also help us be great learners.

Zest and teamwork

Perseverance and bravery 

Creativity

Creativity

Love

Teamwork and creativity

Prudence, teamwork and love of learning

Curiosity, perseverance and love of learning- this puzzle was tricky!

We had a wonderful day getting to know new friends, trying new games, negotiating over ideas and enjoying the great spaces in our classroom and school. Play is one of the ways we learn and help our brains to grow.

If you haven't seen this video before, Professor Peter Gray describes how play is important for learning and wellbeing. Don't forget to make some time to play too!

Ready, Set, Go!

Nau mai, haere mai! Welcome everyone to the beginning of our new school year. Tautoru has been a hive of calm but excited activity to begin the year. It has been a lovely time to see all those Autahi buddies that we met last year move into our learning space.

We'd like to make a special welcome to Cat Bland who is completing her Masters of Education with us this year. You will see her joining in the wonderful learning space that is Tautoru throughout this year. Also a big welcome to James Kyle, our new teacher in the team, and to Leo Mishking and his whānau to Worser Bay school.

We have been busy making connections and revisiting the character strengths of Kindness and Perseverance. We have been thinking about how we can be kind to each other by becoming Bucket Fillers with acts of kindness, and we’ve been spotting each other being kind.

We have also revisited how a growth mindset and perseverance can help us tackle new challenges. These are a few images of us trying something new and using our Growth Mindset to persevere. We tried things like juggling, bounding balls, conquering the monkey bars and skipping. We know that new learning is tricky and we need to use our growth mindset as we launch into a new learning year.