Te Wā Mahi Tahi

 Each Monday morning, we start the week with Te Wā Mahi Tahi. These sessions are designed to spark our creativity, develop our teamwork and problem solving skills as well as springboard ideas for further learning during the week. We put out a range of different loose part materials that are able to engage us in creating, collaborating, adapting, measuring, testing, as well as a variety of other types of problem solving.

To begin each session, the teachers teach us about a specific skill they have noticed during past Te Wā Mahi Tahi sessions that could be an opportunity for learning. Some examples of this has been lessons around trading resources when we are stuck on what to do next, using the phrase "Yes and..." to build on each others ideas about the play, asking ourselves "what else could this be?" to spark creativity on using the same resource in different ways. These lessons are all about elevating the play or learning new social/emotional skills.

Today as I was walking around whilst the students played, explored and created, many stopped and mentioned to me, "Mikayla, I traded this rope for this tarp!" and "we're working together to build this hut". One group of children even mentioned, "___ is the plumber so we can have showers. We're working on building the roof at the moment."

As the year has gone on and we have been doing more and more Te Wā Mahi Tahi sessions, the students are collaborating and problem solving together more. They work together to solve an issue they're having whether it be not being able to reach the rope around the tree yet, not having the right resources, a disagreement between students or roles within the play. Teachers are noticing that we are able to support them by asking questions and students can problem solve together from there. What independent problem solvers!

Here are a few snapshots from this weeks Te Wā Mahi Tahi. We had a lot of hut building and rope swings after our safe rope tying lesson last term (students tie the knots and teachers check the safety once it's built).