The end of year already?

So here it is, our final blog post for 2020. It's been an eventful, challenging, surprising and inspiring year to say the least. 

Today we spent some time remembering and reflecting on our year. At the end of last year, we made some time capsules. This week we had a look and measured our hands again. We also reflected on some of the things we had hoped for last year. 

We've grown, we've accomplished some of our hopes and dreams, and some have some more time to go yet. We realised that we have so much to be grateful for: our tamariki have grown, have challenged themselves, and most importantly, have been kind to themselves and each other. 

On behalf of Team Tautoru, we wish you all a safe and joyful time with your whānau as we welcome a new year.

Gearing up for The Wrap!

 Each morning Tautoru have been busting down the walls with our voices and dance moves. We are practising, practising aaaaaand practising some more to get our wrap piece just right. We have had to employ many character strengths throughout this journey. Our wrap piece is pretty technical for our Tautorians but we are persevering! We make sure we use our Growth Mindset and Optimism to focus on what we are doing right and our strengths. At times, we've put on our critical lens to see how we can improve. What a learning rollercoaster it has been!

We'd love to share some photos of our practices but we're going to keep it a secret! You will have to wait until Tuesday next week.

Just know it has something to do with this....

(It'd be great to keep practising at home over the weekend so we can really nail our performance on Tuesday!)

3D shapes

This week we have continued to explore 3D shapes. We have been working on using the language of 3D shapes when building different models. We can now describe how many edges, vertices (corners) and faces there are!

We watched the following video to kickstart our discussion on the different parts of 3D shapes and what makes it 3-dimensional. Have a look if you'd like to continue the conversation at home!

Check out Seesaw and the photos below to see our mathematicians in action!

Beach Clean Up

 We headed to the beach on a windy Wednesday afternoon to do a spot of cleaning up. We are happy to report that Worser Bay Beach was pretty spotless before we got there and even more clean now!

After some fun beach time and a lot of windy sand we headed back to school. We found a lot of plastic rubbish such as, ice-cream wrappers, bags, and lids. Our sea creatures in Tautoru are not looking very happy about the amount of plastic in our environment.

Games for Learning- Plant Power

 

As part of our inquiry Plant Power we are designing games using some of the knowledge that we learned about plants. We are learning to share ideas and use feedback to make improvements.

This week we have been busy thinking of ideas, themes and how we will add some of what we've learned about plants to our games. We are working in groups and we used the feedback from other groups to help test our ideas and changing our designs.

Positive Purpose Mission! Sea Cleaners: How can we be Kaitiaki of our sea animals?

 This week we activated our Positive Purpose by practising being kaitiaki (caretakers) of sea animals. We know that a lot of rubbish goes to the sea and then gets eaten by sea animals who think it's food. They can get hurt or even die from it. We used our Positive Purpose and we went on a beach clean up at Worser Bay beach.

 We were very lucky that we didn't find much rubbish there but there were small pieces that can still end up out at sea.

Some of our year one buddies from Autahi who will be in Tautoru next year joined us as well. We used our teamwork and kindness by being kaitiaki to sea creatures. We know that we need to look after our environment so it can always be there for us to enjoy.

Year 3 students visit to the Seniors

 The Year 3's spent a day in the Senior area on Wednesday. Each senior teacher worked with groups and played different games. Students then worked in smaller groups to create a game based on a balloon. Feedback from the students was that it was so much fun because they got to test games and work with different people. Our Year 3's are so excited about the move in 2021 to the Senior area and are all looking forward to setting new goals, getting to know their new teachers and just being a Senior student. Awesome!

Geometry

 Tautoru has been exploring the magic of Geometry over the last couple of weeks. It has been great to work on our fine motor skills to create a range of 3D shapes. Lots of folding, concentration, and sticky finger have been involved. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog and seesaw for more 3D shapes in week 8.

Creatures BIG and small

 Writing this term in Tautoru has been fantastic. We have had a focus on developing our writing stamina so that we can get more of our ideas down during writing sessions. Our students have embraced the challenge and it has been awesome to see the volume and level of detail increase. In addition, there has been a focus on writing a clear beginning, middle, and end to our stories. It is important for us to take our readers on a journey to entertain, inform, and create stories that encourage our readers to keep turning the pages. 

This week we have been writing descriptions of creatures big and small, wide and long, scary and friendly. We started with a sketch and time to share the details of our creatures looks, life, and possibly an adventure it may have been on. Loads of fun!

Here are some examples ....