Tinkering and Exploring the Past

We have thoroughly enjoyed our time tinkering with and learning about gadgets and gizmos from the past.   We know that most inventions have changed over time to meet new needs that emerge.  We went to the Tautoru University to learn about a famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell. We learnt that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone as a way of improving communication and how communication was able to happen.

We have been learning to take notes as we watching short learning clips about inventors and their inventions. This is also another opportunity to work on our individual writing goals within Inquiry.

We have been learning to put the information into our own words. This also connects to our reading goals of summarising, retelling and making connections.

Here is an example of the comparisons we have been making.

This week we move on to computational thinking so watch this space.  

Tautoru Celebration of Learning

Thank you so much to everyone who came to our Tautoru celebration of Learning this week. It was so exciting for our tamariki to share all of our learning from the year so far with their whānau. Thanks as well for the shared kai. Your children loved enjoying it again on Thursday. Here are the highlights if you couldn't make it.

Ko wai tō ingoa?

In Term 1 we conducted a study of the origins of our names. It is so special to know where our names came from and the Mana they carry. Thank you to the parents who helped provide information for this.

World Map

Alongside with our names we investigated our whānau origins. We found out that as a class whānau we cover a lot of the world. We placed our connections on a world map.

Neighbourhoods

As term 1 progressed our inquiry shifted from who We are, to where do all creatures live? Our learning shifted naturally to a focus on habitats. We learnt that creatures occupy certain areas were they have the best chances of survival. We created our own houses and dream neighbourhood habitats, fitting for what our homes represented.

Project Garden

We then progressed to thinking about our Worser Bay School habitat. Being an enviroschool, planting is very important to us and we want to make sure our gardens are a place were plants have the best chance of survival. We learnt about the five things plants need to survive, and repotted the Tautoru garden to make sure all five of these conditions were present. To top this off we created individual gardens, with mini houses and cress seeds.

Check out these photos of our celebration of learning. We had a blast and hope to see you at the next one! 

Innovation and Invention

This term in Tautoru we are looking at Innovation and Invention over time for our inquiry, with a Science and Technology focus.

We will be exploring ,designing, making and appraising our inventions and innovations by following a process.

We want to:

• know and understand that technology can be purposeful interventions that have gone through a design process.
• Understand that technological outcomes are products or systems developed by people. These things have a functional nature and often a specific purpose. Once upon a time they are or were a possible solution to a problem or just invented to make life easier.

We will be delving into Computational Thinking: We will be writing and following instructions and procedures. We will be making mazes and using lots of different skills to be creative problem solvers.

We asked our Whānau to bring in anything that they had at home, which our students would possibly not know in todays modern world.

We were supplied with many interesting things to explore- tools, old telephones, typewriters, a walkman, old school scales and old kitchen implements to name a few.

We spent time looking at the equipment and discussing the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. Who would use it?
3. What is it used for?
4. Why was it created in the first place ?

We worked in mixed groups to discuss what we had found out sharing all our ideas. We had lots of questions too.

It was fun to see how things have changed or been improved over time!

School Swimming

 

School Swimming 

New Zealand's landscapes offer countless opportunities for water-based fun. Boating, sailing, snorkelling, experiencing Moanamana and just exploring our beach are a few of our Worser Bay School favourites.  Learning to swim opens up a world of recreational activities, allowing children to fully enjoy and appreciate these special environments.

Learning to swim is crucial for ensuring water safety and something that is built into our Physical Education Programme every year.  It aims to help equip children with the skills necessary to enjoy water environments safely.  Swimming also offers many opportunities to enhance our Positive Health, developing confidence too.    

Our Swimming Lessons took off with great gusto on our first day back, with smiles all round.  We listened carefully and had a great time showing our instructors what we can do already.  We look forward to this adventure every week! 

Garden Habitats

 We've been hard at work over the past couple of weeks, building our Tautoru Garden Habitat.

Our inquiry focus has shifted from large scale habitats to habitats in our own backyard. Our garden (which needed some love!) felt like a great place to base our learning. Firstly, we learnt about what plants need to survive; water, soil, air, space and sunlight. 

We looked at the soil in our Tautoru garden beds and decided that it wasn't a great environment for our plants to thrive. This formed garden project number 1: Empty out the soil, remove the weeds and put the old soil back in, mixed with new soil and compost. This project involved some heavy lifting and your tamariki were hard at work!

Once the soil met our high Tautou standards we were ready to plant seeds. We made sure to spread our seeds evenly throughout the gardens as we know space is an important part of a plants survival.

Alongside our hard work in the garden beds, we've been learning in class about what else in a plants habitat helps it survive - check out these notes we made about bees!

Next time you're at school, please check out our plant habitat by Little Kids, we are very proud of it! 

Habitats

This term we have been looking at what makes us unique, with a focus on Whanaungatanga (creating a sense of family and connection) and  Kotahitanga (unity, togetherness and collective action).  

We have looked at special places to us and have traced around our feet as a symbol of Tūrangawaewae, (tūranga - having a standing place and waewae - feet).

Gathering up all this learning, our tamariki have been interested in the different places we all come from and where we choose to live. This lead us to looking and learning about animals and the different habitats they choose to live and why.

We decided to have our first 'Tautoru University' session.

This is where we watch a video one time and discuss what we have learnt,

watch it again and takes notes,

and watch it for a third time and categorise our learning.

We also read this funny book about a child who designed their very own school - it was crazy! We were very excited to try this ourselves.

We made 'spider mind maps' with all our ideas - using different colours to catergorise the different spaces and needs of each school area, just like a habitat.

Just imagine if these schools were real!

"When you step on a sensor at the school, a super slide will suck you up into your classroom. It scans you so that it knows which class you are in. In the morning you play educational video games and 2k drive, forza, mario carts and minecraft". Felix.

Writing - The Story Mountain!

Now that we have well and truely settled into the school year, we are beginning to introduce and revisit structures to support our writing.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the 'Story Mountain' - a structure that stories can follow: 

First of all, key characters and a setting are introduced. After this, a build up occurs which leads to a big problem. Our stories then progress to solving this problem, and ultimately ending. 

As we know, stories will have multiple problems throughout, and sometimes we have two (or more) mountains within a piece - which the kids love to call camel stories!

This week we've completed story mountains about Jess getting stuck in a train station in Italy (which actually happened!), and stories a bit closer to home, about losing teeth and what could happen at a birthday party. Come into Tautoru to check them out!