Learning how to talk!

 

It sounds a bit funny, but yes we are learning how to talk and communicate effectively! Twice a week all of Tautoru mix up and head into our problem solving groups. 

During this time, we are learning how to share, explain and justify our strategies. At the moment, we are focusing on listening to our buddy. This is an important skill that we explicitly learn how to do. We must look at our buddy, listen to understand what they are saying and then ask some questions to check we understand.

After we have listened to our buddy share their strategy, we agree or challenge their idea. We talk about how to do this respectfully. In Tautoru, we call it friendly arguing as we are not arguing against the person, but rather discussing whether the strategy is the most effective for that problem or not.

This is the general process that we base our problem solving lessons around.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of learning going on during our problem solving time! Not just learning new maths skills and strategies, but how to communicate, listen and question each other.

To support the kids, we use talk move cards. We focus on one or two cards for a couple of weeks and then start on a new one once we feel we have that card safely stored in our talk toolkit.

Here are the talk move cards we use. Feel free to have a go at using them at home!

Celebrating the Lunar New Year

 We had so much fun creating beautiful lanterns and fish to mark the Lunar New Year which is celebrated in South East Asia. We invited our buddies from Autahi to join us too. We were very fortunate to have Ling and Huifang come to talk to us and share a special celebration.

The lanterns symbolise the wish for a bright future and are now decorating our new expanded Tautoru space. The fish (鱼 Yú /yoo/ in Chinese) sounds like 'surplus' and symbolises good fortune and abundance as well.

Sharing our ideas through Art

 We have been learning about the importance of Manaakitanga and what this looks like in our world.  

This week we have begun to think about how we can show our ideas using the art of Keith Haring, and learning how to use bold lines and solid colour to show ideas. 

Keith Haring- Untitled (source )

Later on we will be developing our ideas further to create some exciting printed art works. Here we are using creativity and developing our ideas.

Maths Problem Solving

 During our maths session we worked on problem solving. Students were buddied up across Tautoru and encouraged to share ideas and strategies to solve a problem.

This is a great opportunity for students to teach and learn from one another. There are a wide range of strategies and knowledge that students are keen to develop and share. 

2021 - Manaakitanga

 What a great start to the year! We have come together after the break with everyone ready to learn and enthusiastic to make new friends along with re-establishing old friendships. We are all very excited about 2021.

This week we have been unpacking the concept of Manaakitanga which is about caring for people and the environment. Many of the students are familiar with Manaakitanga through our school Karakia, Kapa Haka,  and prior learning.

Over the course of the coming week we will continue to look at Manaakitanga and how we can encourage students to see it in others and also themselves. On Tuesday we worked in base groups and discussed  the different ways we care for the people around us , at school, and the wider world. We had a range of ideas from picking up rubbish, doing the dishes after dinner, and using our manners when we are out shopping!

We are looking forward to supporting the students in Tautoru in building their understanding of Manaakitanga so keep an eye out for future posts. 

The end of year already?

So here it is, our final blog post for 2020. It's been an eventful, challenging, surprising and inspiring year to say the least. 

Today we spent some time remembering and reflecting on our year. At the end of last year, we made some time capsules. This week we had a look and measured our hands again. We also reflected on some of the things we had hoped for last year. 

We've grown, we've accomplished some of our hopes and dreams, and some have some more time to go yet. We realised that we have so much to be grateful for: our tamariki have grown, have challenged themselves, and most importantly, have been kind to themselves and each other. 

On behalf of Team Tautoru, we wish you all a safe and joyful time with your whānau as we welcome a new year.

Gearing up for The Wrap!

 Each morning Tautoru have been busting down the walls with our voices and dance moves. We are practising, practising aaaaaand practising some more to get our wrap piece just right. We have had to employ many character strengths throughout this journey. Our wrap piece is pretty technical for our Tautorians but we are persevering! We make sure we use our Growth Mindset and Optimism to focus on what we are doing right and our strengths. At times, we've put on our critical lens to see how we can improve. What a learning rollercoaster it has been!

We'd love to share some photos of our practices but we're going to keep it a secret! You will have to wait until Tuesday next week.

Just know it has something to do with this....

(It'd be great to keep practising at home over the weekend so we can really nail our performance on Tuesday!)