MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

 In Tautoru this week we started to explore the world of money and Financial Literacy.  Funnily enough our kids knew a lot about money and how it works. They had lots of experiences to share about travelling and seeing or using different currencies.  Off the successes of our school fair we decided to set up our own market to help us learn in a real life context.   Lots of fun was had creating and running our stalls.  We could also practice adding and subtracting and even a dash of place value was included.

We settled on things to sell, put a price list together and off we went on our shopping sprees around the classroom. 

There were great discussions and negotiations happening.  We definitely had some big spenders and some thoughtful budgeters !  We explored the value of different coins and notes and it was an authentic real life context where we could include concepts we have been maintaining all year like addition, subtraction, and place value.

You can continue this learning at home by talking about the value of money, saving and making good choices.  Games are great like Monopoly etc.  Play shops, add prices and give change. 

Expressing Learning with Loose Parts

 

Here is a sneak peek of how we are expressing our learning for our Inquiry.   We will be sharing with our parents and whānau in the next couple of weeks so watch this 'space' for more :-)

Quote from:  https://theeducationhub.org.nz/materials-for-play-why-open-ended-loose-parts-are-important/

GRIT and Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset and GRIT are a big part of our learning.   We have been revisiting the difference between a Growth Mindset and a Fixed Mindset. All aspects of  Our Positive Education Model need Growth mindset and GRIT.  So what does that look like on a day to day basis ?

Our students feeling empowered  to take on difficult tasks, maintaining a positive attitude in the face of adversity, and continuously striving towards their goals, both in school and in life.

Along with learning about emotions, Grit helps children manage frustration and stress and instead,  learning to stay calm and keep trying.  Everyone needs a little reminding and encouraging when they face difficult situations or failure. Please help us on this quest and encourage your child to notice when they have dialled up their GRIT or Growth mindset.  These times are worth celebrating and great authentic opportunities to learn and develop these skills. 

The combination of these two traits encourages a strong work ethic, a positive attitude toward learning, and an understanding that success is earned through effort and perseverance—not just innate ability.

Whakawhanaungatanga - Tautoru adventures across the school ….

Over the last couple of weeks we have been enriching our learning experiences by working in whānau groups across the school.  We have been focusing in on our teamwork and collaboration skills through the arts.   Our Tautoru kids are part of a whānau group.  These are special groups where siblings get to work together in different ways.   On the odd occasion we have even been able to have cousins working together too !!   

Our whānau days have a cross curricular focus and lots of Positive Accomplishments occur during these magical times.  Children are able to express themselves creatively, thinking outside the box and developing innovative problem-solving skills.

Through collaborative art projects kids dial up their teamwork, communication, negotiation and compromise. A lot of negotiation and compromise happens when teams have to decide who is going to paint, who will assemble and most importantly, what is going to be painted or created.  They have to get their messages across to one another and work out how to best express what they have learnt. They learn to share ideas, give and receive feedback, and work towards a common goal.  It is fascinating to see our Tautoru kids dialing up the strengths to work together, encouraging, helping and supporting each other.  This is a chance to see them putting their positive Education learning  into action. 

Seeing the finished products at the end of a rotation provides a sense of Positive Accomplishment for everyone that was involved.  It’s a calm and beautiful time of the term that provides a natural opportunity for students to work with different teaching combinations and best of all Teachers connect with all kids across the school !!  It is a living example of team teaching in action and a real sense of ‘our kids’.   By the end of a full whānau group rotation all kids have had a chance to work with the whole teaching team and they will have experienced working in every space in the school too !

“He aha te mea nui o te ao ? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata !”

We have lots of things to say !!

In Tautoru,  goal setting and reflection are key aspects of our programme.   We are always encouraging students to set personal writing goals that help them take ownership of their learning.  Goals focus on improving specific writing skills, such as vocabulary use or sentence structure or just being able to add as many details as they can.   There are many ages and stages of writing to be considered. We share our goals with each other and give feedback too.   Tautoru students can be writers as soon as they have something to say ! 

Goal setting needs to be taught well for it to be effective, purposeful and worthwhile.  As you know the best goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound and this really helps us all stay focused and motivated to improve.  You might be wondering how we do this. For us, writing is beginning to happen across the curriculum as it becomes a vehicle to express and share all kinds of learning.  Our writing programme teaches the skills to enable this.  Regular check-ins are built in and reflections help students monitor their progress towards their goals themselves and of course there is oodles of teacher support to make this happen.  We encourage students to find examples of where we have achieved our goals that day to make sure we have the ‘measurement’ .  

Here are some examples from today:

We celebrate successes after every session or two.  Successes help us build confidence that we are on the right track and it encourages a Growth Mindset because students begin to see the power of ‘YET’.  

We are nurturing a love for writing while supporting students’ individual learning journeys. Progress looks different for everyone.  It even looks quite different within a level and across levels.  What we do know is progress is being made !!  We look forward to sharing progress with you soon ! 

How can you help at home ?   -       “Writing floats on a sea of talk” 

Keep having those rich conversations,  keep reading to your children and together, talking and exploring words, creating collections of beautiful things that are a real talking point, showing gratitude and noticing those awe inspiring things on your adventures out and about and most of all let them see you being a reader and a writer.  

Our Place in Space - Term 4 Inquiry

 

In Tautoru we are absolutely fizzing with the endless possibilities for learning when it comes to Space and the Solar System.  

Through our Inquiry learning in Tautoru we aim to enhance our curiosity and interest in science.  The solar system captivates students' imaginations, sparking curiosity about space, planets, and night day.  This is a topic that the kids were curious about at the end of Term 3 and actually all the time it seems !! 

It is funny, we often find ourselves as teachers very conscious that we don't want to be rocking out the same contexts every year and space and dinosaurs are often what we experienced at Primary School despite being the most captivating and exciting for our kids. They bring a huge amount of prior knowledge and can make many connections across these contexts !

Exploring concepts such as gravity, orbits, and the conditions for life on other planets encourages students to think critically and ask questions.  We will also go a bit deeper learning about our star, the sun and the moon and how it impacts our environment.  Learning about the solar system connects across many different curriculum areas. Maths is a no brainer with many opportunities to measure, make patterns, learn about time, tides etc….. 

Our big ideas and deep understandings for this Inquiry are:

OUR STAR THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE SKY.

1. The Sun is the ultimate source of energy for life on Earth.

2. Earth's system is a small part of a solar system within the vast system of the universe.

3. We order the visible stars of the night sky in the patterns that our cultures have taught us.

4. Our position in space governs what celestial objects we can see. 

5. The change in relative positions of the Moon, Earth, and Sun determines the apparent change in the shape of the Moon.  

6. The way the Moon's gravity pulls on the spinning Earth causes the environmental pattern of tides.

Through our curiosity, questions and discussions about Earth’s place in the solar system we can make endless connections to our place in the world.  Tides and the ocean are definitely front and centre in our local curriculum so lots of opportunities there.  

COLLECTING FIRST IDEAS

The students worked in co-operative groups to brainstorm all they knew about Space.  Here are their first ideas and the wealth of knowledge they already bring to this inquiry.   This task also helps us identify any misconceptions we have.  

Keep watching for regular updates on this exciting Inquiry 

A festival of Chinese language!

  

September 22nd to 28th is Chinese language week. We were very keen to celebrate since we have a number of Mandarin speakers in our school community. Luckily, we had four expert teachers who joined us on the last day of term: Kurt, Clare, Yinjing and Ruotong. We are so grateful to them for sharing their language and culture with so much Zest and Creativity: xie xie! 

Here are some highlights from an action-packed morning of learning.

Aisha and Everette helped out with some role-plays. We practised saying 'xie xie' (thank you), 'ni hao' (hello), 'dui bu qi' (sorry) and other handy phrases.

Then we had a chance to do some writing. Kurt showed us how some Chinese words look like their meaning. This helps a lot when learning thousands of characters. 

We even got to act out some of the words. 'Zuo' means 'sit' and looks like two people sitting back to back on a bench.

Here is 'shui' (water), which looks like three gushing streams of water.

'Shan' is a mountain. This mountain has three peaks, with the tallest peak in the middle.

We had a go at writing the characters. It was fascinating also to hear about how the character for words like 'horse' have evolved from a literal picture of a horse into the stylised character that is used today.

Next, some music! Yinjing and Ruotong shared a beautiful, traditional song about the jasmine flower. We have been learning a lot about different kinds of musical instruments lately, but seeing and hearing the accordion played as something new for us.  

Finally, some crafting with Clare, who showed us how to make delicate paper flowers by folding and cutting paper. 

It took quite a lot of concentration, careful drawing and cutting to make the flowers.

Opening out the folded paper to reveal the flower was very satisfying! We will definitely be making more of these.

Thank you once again to our wonderful teachers. We are so fortunate to have parents in our community who share their expertise and passions so generously.