Thursday, 21 September 2017

Character Day with Wanwan and Gabrielle's whanau group



 Today we got into whanau groups to learn some more about character strengths. We created some plays showing different character strengths and others watching gave us feedback and told us what character strengths our plays had. Humour was a strength of everyone - come to assembly on Friday for an example.






We also watched this video about two frogs... can you work out what character strengths they were using?



Then, like the frogs, we also made butter from cream. Ask us how! Some groups used real perseverance because they were trying and trying with milk instead of cream!!

Lastly we made up our own games especially focused on one or two of the character strengths. It was a fin day together.


Character day.
Today was character day and we did all sorts of fun activities in our whanau group which in case you don't know is a group with our siblings and some people from a Autahi, tautoru, mahutonga and matariki. My whanau group made butter from cream and we made up our own games and demonstrated how to play the games we made up and the last thing we did was make up our own plays.
By Nela

today was really fun we got jars fulled of cream all of us shakes the jars into butter. I loved it when one-one gone and PRANKED US!!! filling some of the jars with milk instead of cream it was cool and annoying we did this in groups of course my group was one of the pranked groups!
By Ruby

today we had whanau day and we got into our groups and what we did was we made cream and also ate it, we made our own games and we played splash.I learnt that it is really hard to make up your own games.
By Cruz

Wednesday, 20 September 2017

Character Day - Gillian and Susie's Base Groups

Today we got together in our Whanau Groups to spend most of our day exploring and using our Character Strenghts.

Gillian and Susie's Whanau Groups started the morning off sharing the story "Beautiful Oops". This book was all about turning mistakes into something beautiful using the stregth of creativity.

We used all sorts of material to create "mistakes" and turn them into something awesome. We added all of our creations to a collaborative mural.

Experimenting with dye. We used straws to blow the dye into different patterns, shapes and objects.


We used watercolours and turned torn newspaper into animals, volcanoes and many other things.

We folded card and origami paper and used the folds to create lots of different art pieces.


Some of us tried this Imagination "Warm Up" where we had to use our creativity to turn random lines, squiggles and marks into other things.

We used circles, holes and other craft scraps to create pictures and mini stories.

And here is the final product...our collaborative mural celebrating all of our creative "mistakes".

After morning tea our group listened to the story "The Most Magnificent Thing" which was all about perspective. After unpacking what perspective actually is we worked in groups to create a movie showing people when, how and why they could use this character strength (you can find these on Seesaw).




Positive Accomplishment in Tautoru!

Over the last week Tautoru has been a hive of activity as we have been diving into Student Led Conferences and sharing our wonderful learning and achievements with our whanau.



It was great to see the children leading their parents in conversations around their learning, discussing their goals and showing their whanau many of the things we do at school. The teachers and parents were so impressed with the leadership that we saw!

We enjoyed teaching our parents some Te Reo.



We spent some time reading and sharing stories that we had written.

Lots of us enjoyed creating an obstacle course to challenge our parents!

It was nice to teach our parents some Rainbow Breathing, we enjoy breathing exercises after a busy lunch.

Here are some comments from our children about SLCs:


"It was good because I enjoyed the feedback that my mum and dad gave me about my goals".




"It was fun because Dad doesn’t often get to see what I do at school. He was impressed".





"So great! I had fun with mum making and doing a tricky obstacle course".






"I enjoyed teaching mum the rainbow breathing that we do at school and I was proud of the goals I am working on". 





"Dad came to see me at school for SLC's it was really nice because he doesn't get to come and see what I do very much".






"I liked playing tennis with mum and dad, it was a challenge on the Scavenger Hunt".






"It was so cool to have mum and dad stay at school with me so that I could teach them rainbow breathing. It was fun".





"I loved showing mum the work I have been doing because she said she was very proud".



Nic and Scott's Whanau Group: Character Day 2017- Our Movies

Wednesday, 13 September 2017

Te Reo Maori

Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori



We have been celebrating Maori Language week ....  all year!

Here are some videos of the students asking each other how they are feeling. It is has been great to see the students confidence growing when speaking in Te Reo.





Use the information below to practice with your children at home.







No Toy Swap at the Disco

Hello!

We have decided that we are going to save the TOY SWAP for a different event in the year.
This is so we can enjoy all the other things that our beautiful Worser Bay Disco has - like the epic dress up theme!!!

Come along in your best 80's costume!

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

How different are animals to humans?

The Plasma literacy group are working on their own mini inquiries.

They have selected a number of animals to investigate. Our inquiry into the power of our own bodies has inspired this reading group to inquire about animals.



The cat team is investigating the following questions.


Are cats intestines different to ours?
How long does it take for them to digest food?

"Coco has found out that a female cat is either called a Molly or a queen."
"Emily research led her to the fact that all male cats are called Toms."

We also have a team investigating Gorilla. They are keen to find out the following.



Do they have the same number of bones?
How much bigger are gorillas to humans.



Nuala is interested in sharks. "An interesting fact about sharks is that they are partially warm blooded!"

The shark team is also interested in what a shark brain looks like.





There is also a humming bird team that is interested in the following questions.

Why can they fly backwards and upside down?

What is a hummingbird?


Space Place - Learning Celebration

We had a great learning celebration -  Our students got to share all of their learning with whānau.  We also topped off our Inquiry with a v...