Tēnā koutou! Our new te reo Māori learning

 We are starting new te reo Māori learning in Tautoru this week.

We're learning how to greet and farewell each other in lots of different ways. We're building up our te reo vocab so we can have full conversations in te reo Māori.

Here is a video that covers some of the greetings and farewells that we are learning.

Check out our skits from Thursday this week. This was after our first full lesson with this new kupu (words). Here we have some kids greeting each other, asking how each other are feeling and then farewelling each other.

Making our Garden Grow

 We have begun preparing our garden beds for our spring crop this week. We have investigated which seeds can be planted now that we can harvest in spring. This has given us lots of new language when we learn about words like sow and germination. We've had to select plants that are suited to the season and learn how to sow them according to the instructions on the packet.

We have also begun to learn about what we need to improve the soil for our when our seedlings are ready to plant. Even though it's winter, our garden is still full of life and opportunities for learning.

Winter Poems

Winter is definitely here! We can feel it and see it all around us, so we have been using our senses to describe winter and some of us wrote poems about it.

Some of us have been learning how to structure poems. Poems break quite a few rules of what we are used to in writing because we have to write lines instead of sentences. We have also been learning how to use precise adjectives and verbs, as well as similes and metaphors to make our ideas more powerful.

Here are some examples of our writing. If you come in you can see more examples of our writing on our Writers' Wall in Tautoru.

Kapa Haka Festival

 The excitement is building and we are nearly ready to bring the ASB house down next Friday at the Kapa Haka festival! All of our students have been working very hard at working as a team, keeping in time, and bringing the energy to our performances. 

We are all very proud of the Perseverance, Love of Learning, and Teamwork that the students in Tautoru have shown. 

This week has been about strengthening our lines, knowing where to stand and keeping our focus. Not an easy task with well over 150 students. Luckily the weather has been kind and getting down to bottom court has been a pleasant experience.

Be sure to come to our Dress Rehearsal on Monday morning next week. We will have our new t-shirts on and would love an audience. See you there at 9.15 for the start at 9.20!

Writers Wall

We have set up two spaces in Tautoru to display student writing. It is important for students to see themselves as writers and one way for them to do this is through displaying their work in the classroom. Writing for an audience is an important aspect of the writing process and we encourage whanau to pop in and spend some time reading with your children. 

The writers wall gives students an opportunity to publish a piece of writing. Publishing is not something we do a lot of but it helps to develop handwriting skills as students are asked to focus on writing their letters with the correct shape and size. Writing for an audience is an important aspect of the writing process and we encourage whanau to pop in and spend some time reading with your children. 

The writers wall also gives students an insight into what writing looks like across Tautoru. We often use student writing as a model and having their work on display is a great motivator for all of our students in the space.

We will continue to add new pieces of writing over the year so keep your eyes and ears glued to this space!

Growth Mindset Strategies

 Our Positive Education programme continues to thrive in Tautoru. As you may have noticed from previous blog posts, this term we have a focus on The Learning Pit and how we can use Growth Mindset strategies to help us move out of the pit. Read this blog post to find out more about The Learning Pit.

This term, we have learnt about the difference between a Growth Mindset and a Fixed Mindset. This is a cool video that explores Growth Mindset.

The Growth Mindset strategies we are learning:

• Breathing techniques
• Positive Self Talk
• Savouring the Moment

We are well and truly masters of different breathing techniques to help us move out of The Learning Pit from the 2 or 3 years of practice at Worser Bay School! Some of these are 5 finger breathing, shark fin breathing and belly breathing.

We can use positive self talk to help us use a growth mindset when we are in The Learning Pit.

This week we have been focusing on a new Growth Mindset called Savouring the Moment! Check out these videos and photos of us savouring a special moment. This makes us focus on the positive rather than on the negative. Our brain is wired to focus on the negative so we have to consciously make sure we velcro those positives into our minds!

Here we are writing about a moment in the past that made us happy. This is one way we can savour the moment! We could also close our eyes and think about what happened in that moment and how it made us feel.

Exploring Sculptures and using a Growth Mindset- City Gallery Visit

We went to visit the City Gallery to practice being in the Learning Pit!  This week we tackled how to create endomorphic sculptures. These are sculptures that can have open ended meanings and are created by what we see in our environment. 

First we see took a sculpture tour and visited some of the sculptures around the waterfront. We learned about how different artists have used materials, elements and the environment to create their sculptures. Claire and Helen shared all their amazing knowledge to help us learn more about this outdoor art gallery.

Then we learned about endomorphic shapes and how we can use our creativity to form shapes that have volume. We used lots of positive self-talk to help us persevere when creating something so open ended because we didn't know how our shape would look like when we started. 

We told Claire, one of our art teachers, about the Learning Pit and she said she will definitely used that when she does her art as she sometimes gets a bit frustrated, too!

We are really looking forward to going back to the gallery to learn more and keep challenging ourselves in different ways.