Akau Tangi

It was great to get back to Akau Tangi for a day of sports. We used a Growth Mindset by trying new things and getting stuck in. Trying new sports is beneficial for our bodies and minds! When you learn new things, your brain grows. When you process a positive experience it enhances Positive Emotions too!

Thank you to Lext for putting this movie trailer together: 

Strengths

 

Research shows that character strengths can help children succeed at school and in life. Strengths are the positive qualities individuals have, as reflected in their thoughts, feelings, and actions. They promote the well-being of themselves and others. 

Have a watch of our latest little vignette - this time an introduction to Character Strengths 

Mathematical Superheroes

 

Our Year 3 and 4 students have been working together in Maths. We have been thinking about our strengths in Maths. 

These are our Mathematical Superheroes/ Avatars displayed in Māhutonga

We have been thinking about our Mathematical Superpowers so that we can build our Community of Inquiry. We all have different strengths in Maths. If we collaborate and use our different strengths then we are stronger! We have created our own Maths Justification League...

The Justice League have their individual strengths: Together they are stronger!

Walking from Cape Reinga to Bluff!

This is the Year 3 and 4 students on our walk

School Kits challenged us to walk the length of New Zealand in a day! We needed 278 people, walking 10,000 steps each to walk from Cape Reinga to Bluff. We reached out to the community to ask you to "donate" 10,000 steps. We also did our own walk (it wasn't quite 10,000 steps but we know that we would've done 10,000 each by the end of the day!) 

This activity was designed to help us connect with the community and to promote healthy activity. 

Thank you to everyone for your donations. We made it! Now for a holiday... 

A map of our walk

Kia Ora #4

Art Recreations

Even though we can't visit Museums and Art Galleries at the moment, we can still enjoy the art in other ways. People across the world have been recreating famous paintings. If you would like to add to our Art Gallery, please post your recreations to the Padlet below.

Kia Ora #3

Monday Morning Message from Jude

Kia ora 3

Kia ora 2 from Jude

Link to: Kia ora 2 from Jude

Year 3 and 4 Beach Day

As part of our Positive Education programme, Year 3 and 4 spent a great day on the beach reconnecting with each other and employing some Positive Purpose. We did a clean up, a walk, play in the park and a sand castle competition. Our Learner Attribute focus this term is "Being Connected." What a great way to be connected. 

From the Institute of Positive Education at Geelong Grammar School: "Positive Purpose: The Positive Purpose domain explores understanding, believing in, and serving something greater than the self and deliberately engaging in activities for the benefit of others. It encourages students and staff to draw on their character strengths in ways that contribute to the welfare of others and the wider community. It also recognises that belonging to a supportive school community is a strong pathway to purpose and to wellbeing." 

Worser Bay Orchestra at Assembly

Music enhances our Positive Emotions. Research shows that Music improves brain health and function. It makes you smarter, happier, and more productive. Listening is good, playing is better! When music enters our brains it triggers the pleasure centre that release dopamine (a neurotransmitter) and that makes you feel happy. Playing an instrument increases some gray matter volume in the brain and can improve brain function. 

Rhosyn: I play the ukulele in the orchestra. We practise on Thursday afternoons. It is fun hearing all of the different instruments at once. Practicing together has been fun because I am part of a group. I used perseverance and bravery to perform on stage. I have a sense of gratitude that I can be part of the performance.

Evie: It was fun to perform on stage. I play the violin. I have played since I was four years old. This shows my love of learning and how I have stuck with it! Thanks Kirsten, Vicky and Sarah for helping!

Edward: I play the saxophone, some people mistake it for a trumpet! I used zest in the orchestra performance at assembly. The audience looked really happy and some have said that they want to join now.

Emelie: While I played the guitar I stared at the audience while playing with frozen fingers. I used my bravery, perseverance and zest. I am proud of myself because I made some mistakes but kept going and not stopping.

Positive Education: Positive Emotions and The Mood Meter

The Mood Meter

Excited or hungry? Calm or tired? Emotions come in all types so we have been learning about the different types of emotions and how they can be felt in our bodies. Some are high energy or low energy. Some are more pleasant than others. All emotions have a purpose and by learning how to label emotions it can help us to regulate them (link here).

We have been learning how to use a Mood Meter and how to describe a wider range of emotions.

Source link

We are spending some time thinking about what creates different types of emotions for us and how we might be able to self-regulate them.

This has also helped us to learn new words in Te Reo Māori to help us practise asking and saying how we feel in Te Reo.

Inquiry Learning: Parent Workshop

On 4th April, we held a parent workshop on Inquiry Learning.

Purpose of workshops:

• to show that Inquiry is authentic and is about deep thinking

• to unpack the Inquiry process

• to encourage conversations about learning to continue at home.

Being a Goal Setter and using Character Strengths

Our Learner Attribute for this term is I am a goal setter. We've spent time thinking about where we would like to take our learning next and what we will practise to get there. Reaching a goal involves practising specific skills like writing more sentences to write longer stories, but we also thought about what character strengths might help us. We often talk about how character strengths are like superpowers that we can use to help us achieve our goals.

Some of us have been using rākau music patterns as a Wake Up Your Brain activity and we wanted to challenge ourselves and perform at our school assembly. This was going to be a real challenge because we only had 3 sessions to get the item ready! What character strengths might we need?

Teamwork would be useful because we were working as a group and had to collaborate and share ideas, as well as contribute- everyone had to do it! Bravery would be very useful because we were performing in front of the whole school! Love of learning would also come in handy. We spent extra time practising at lunchtimes and some of us even took rākau home to practise because we were challenging ourselves to do even trickier moves with the rākau. Some people also used their Judgement because we had to think carefully and choose the challenge level that was best for each of us. Leadership helped us to understand that even if I am not at the front I can also be a leader from the back and support my group by helping to keep the rhythm.

How did we feel afterwards?

Sasha- I felt proud and happy because I had done the performance and last year I was too scared to get on stage.
Anneke- I felt excited because I had never played rākau before.
Nicolas- I felt happy and brave because I had practised and I did it!
Darragh- I felt proud because I felt happy that I went up in front of the whole school.

Positive Education - Games

On Wednesdays we have some Autahi children and some year 4 buddies come in to Tautoru to work with us. This afternoon as part of our inquiry into play, we designed a game together with our buddy, then tested it. Finally, we were able to teach it to another buddy pair which was lots of fun!

It is nice for us to connect with other children across the school and great to see all of the positive relationships and connections being developed.

Sleeping Tigers

It was so hot yesterday after lunch, that we lay down like sleeping tigers to rest our bodies. We did some relaxing breathing and focused on resting our bodies.

Wellbeing Wheel

What I can do to help increase my wellbeing and keep my Thinking Brain strong? What can I do every day to help me relax and feel well? This term, we have learned many different ways to relax, activate our body and help our Thinking Brain stay strong like listening to music, finding places to relax, making positive relationships, and tapping into our emotions and creativity.

We've we made our Wellbeing Wheels to help us think of small ways to relax and feel great that we can use every day. We have chosen four different things we could do to help us stay in our Thinking Brain and added them to our Wellbeing Wheel. Everyone has different ways to stay well.

What would you put in your Wellbeing Wheel?