Dragons Breath, Kittens, and Wild Horses

Scott's literacy group have been reading and writing poems this week. It has been fun to unpack what a poem looks, sounds, and feels like along with giving it a go in our writing sessions.

For our Arts Celebration in week 5 (more on that over the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes posted!) we are planning to write poems in teams to reflect our learning and the focus for our performances. So this week has been a great opportunity to get our minds and creativity buzzing after the break.

Here are some examples from this week with more to come soon!

Wild Horses

Wild Horses
Gallop past rivers and meadows and grasslands.
They stop to have a break

By Sammy M


When wild horses run the ground gets dusty.
Wild horses find food which is grass.

Samuel P



The horses gallop in the creepy, dark forest!
Then to water to all drink.
But then, which way to go out of the forest?

By Jugni


A herd of wild horses is fast.
But one day the herd went to a spooky forest.
It was quiet.
Suddenly, they were spooked.

By Raife


Wild horses race through the forest.
The ground shakes like an earthquake.
They run with their babies.

By Ava

Kittens

Kittens chase each other and fight each other.
They play with each other.
They rest and sleep and love each other.

By Arthur


Kittens play with their friends
And sleep with their mums.

By Esme-Rose


Cats scratch curtains.
Cats chase and catch mice.
They bring them in the house.

By Locky


Kittens feel like a really soft rag.
Kittens pounce like tigers.
They look like fluffy balls.
They like to take naps in the sun like lions.

By Lexi


Kittens start off as small as a chair.
They grow as big as a teddy.
They are soft as a hairy blanket.
They have fur like a lions.

By Alice


Wild horses race past rivers.
Wild horses run through high grass.
Their hooves thomp, thomp
as the sand flies up.
The horses speed through the woods and past trees.

By Milli

Dragons Breath

Dragon went hunting.

He was very hungry for a pig.

He smelt like rotten eggs.

By Frankie

My dragon does a flip.

He looks like a crazy dragon.

He can fly to the moon.

By Leo

The dragon is looking for food.

He is not good at making food.

So he searches for a road.

By Scarlett

Nic and Mikayla's Whānau Group: Learning about Puanga

In Nic and Mikayla's Whānau group, we wrote collaborative poems to signify the importance of Punaga. We also created some star art! It was great to learn with other people across the school.

Here are some of the poems that we wrote:

Marble Run

Wednesday this week Tautoru put on their creative, problem solving hats to create marble runs! Weta Workshop are running a competition to see how schools in the Wellington area can work together to create marble runs out of "stuff".

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We started the morning exploring our materials and there was a lot of experimentation with ramps and jumps, tunnels and turns. So much fun.

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We had a lot of success with getting our marbles to zoom around the classroom and with a bit of help from the teachers managed to share our runs at the end of the day.

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Positive Health at the ASB Centre

We are so fortunate to have a facility like the ASB Sports Centre so nearby. Our visit this term (our first trip for the year!) was filled with challenge and fun. The coaches took us through the skills of gymnastics, netball and cricket. It was a wonderful chance for us to use bravery and teamwork to learn together.

Cricket involved practising our underarm and overarm throws, as well as hitting with the bat.

For netball we practised ball-handling skills, shooting and then having a go at some mini-games. Trying not to run with the ball during the games was the biggest challenge.

Gymnastics was super fun as well as having some very good balance and coordination challenges.

Another great day working on our Positive Health while the rain and wind were blowing outside!

The Writing Programme - writing workshops

It was great to see many of you join for the Writing Webinar last night where Ximena, Carl and John discussed how we teach Writing at school.

We all know writing involves so many different skills. To deliver a balanced writing programme, we make sure we target each skill throughout the week, term and year. Sometimes this may be in the form of specific handwriting lessons and writing fictional stories, recounts and other non-fiction texts. Other times, we teach writing workshops that target specific skills. Writing skills targeted in writing workshops can include sentence structure, using wow words, editing and many more!

Below you can see snapshots of some Tautoru kids honing in on their editing skills. As there are so many different things to think about in Writing, writing workshops are used to target specific skills in isolation (well as much isolated practice as possible!).

In this writing workshop, Mikayla wrote an incorrect sentence on the board. The students corrected full stops, capital letters and spelling mistakes with a word card for support. This allows the kids to begin to develop editing skills which we then reinforce and continue to practise when editing their own writing pieces.

Whānau Day - Puanga

Today we enjoyed learning in different spaces, with different kids and with different teachers! We started the day saying karakia together as a school and then split up into our whānau groups to learn all about Puanga.

Puanga is a star that rises when winter is coming and signals that the Māori New Year is near. There are lots of different ways to celebrate Puanga such as reflecting on the past year, thinking about what we are grateful for and traditionally, harvesting crops.
Matariki is the cluster of stars and is when we celebrate the New Year. We plant new crops and make new plans/goals/wishes for the new year.
So in a nutshell, Puanga farewells the year and Matariki welcomes the New Year.

Many kids practised their character strengths today. Leadership and communication skills were seen across the school, right from Autahi kids all the way up to the Seniors. It was a great day to develop Positive Relationships with some new, different people and reinforce old friendships.

Becoming a Connected and Powerful Writer

"A word after a word after a word is power"- Margaret Atwood.

Do you remember learning to form the shapes that became letters? Forming the letters that became words? Forming the words that became stories? And don't forget those full stops and capital letters!

Next week Carl, Ximena and John will be sharing how this learning happens at Worser Bay School on our first webinar "Learners as Writers". We hope you can join us next Thursday at 6:15pm. Zoom meeting details will be sent through our school email on Wednesday so keep an eye out in your inbox.

At the moment, writing in Tautoru involves learning about creating stories. Some will be stories from our personal lives and some of us are beginning to learn about the structures of narrative texts and character descriptions.

Talking about our ideas helps us to construct the sentences before we write. Our teachers get small groups together to develop our language or to practice a writing goal that we need to focus on.

And then there is time for focused writing. Getting our ideas down and telling our stories.

An important part of writing, once we are more confident, is going back to check and edit our writing. What did I miss that I need to add? What needs to be changed or deleted? Improving our writing is an ongoing skill that develops over time.

Last but not least, practising our letter formation is also important. This helps our writing become more fluid. Just like learning any other motor skill like kicking a ball or tying our shoelaces.