The Great Game Challenge- Game Design

This term we have inquired into how play and games can help us to learn. We have discovered that games can help us to collaborate, connect and also learn physical skills like different sports games or strategies and facts like some board games. We also make friends and use problem-solving skills when we play together. Most importantly, games challenge us and they are fun!

Now it's time for...

We will become game designers by creating games for others to play using the Design Thinking process.

Here we are during the beginning phases of the process as we decided who we would create the game for and what they would need in a game. 

 We will keep you posted on our progress.

Innovation and Imagination- Fairy Tales and the Hero's Journey

The hero's journey describes a storyline that is very common in many stories we read, including many legends and fairy tales.

We have been learning how to use the hero's journey to innovate a fairy tale by changing some of the characters and events from the story to write our own version of a familiar storyline. You can come into Tautoru to read fantastic tales such as "The Three Little Werewolves" or "Red Riding Eraser" and their adventures that might remind you of some stories you know well.

Working with Coordinates

During maths, we have been exploring different ways to describe directions and coordinates. We are learning about finding our way to and from places, describing locations, reading maps and some of us have explored compass directions as well.

We have also made links to our inquiry about learning through play. We have been using coordinates to play Battleship on paper. We had to sit back to back sometimes so our buddy wouldn't see the grid. This game will help us when we design a map for a very special mission next week.

Elephant Toothpaste

We have been learning to write instructions. We have written very detailed steps to help people brush their teeth, getting ready to go bed and today we got scientific and created elephant toothpaste.



We had a group of very excited students prepared for the reaction of the century!



Shona was our super scientist today and carefully presented each of the steps.



We sat a safe distance from the experiment just in case things went wild!

Soccer Skills

Thursday is Soccer day. The junior school spends 40 minutes every week working on our soccer skills. The wind was wild this week but that was no barrier for our students!







Great to see students giving soccer a go. For a lot of our guys it is there first experience of playing soccer and they are all getting in and having fun.



Spot the Ball !?



Lots of fun with warm up games. The goal with this activity is to rip the vest from as many people as possible. We are developing our swerving and side stepping skills along with our running speed.

Senior Inquiry - Board Games

On Friday we were visited by a very enthusiastic group of students from the seniors to share their board games as part of their recent inquiry. It is always great to have students share their learning across the school and we were very impressed with how the seniors students included everyone and were obviously proud of what they had created and learned.



We had videos, scratch games and pyramids and links to maths, reading and secret codes of nature.





Thanks to everyone that popped in and we look forward to another visit soon.

Kapahaka Thursday

Every Thursday Autahi join us in Tautoru for Kapahaka. We have been practicing songs that have been part of our .... for a while and it has been great to see our students confidence grow with the songs and actions.




Our voices are beginning to show a lot of energy and enthusiasm as they become more familiar with the songs. We have also included a haka with one of our waiata and be sure to look out for future posts on the blog.