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.

Developing our sketching skills

We had a very determined request last week: when can we do more sketching? In lieu of heading outside for sports in the wet and cold weather this week, we had to oblige. So we have spent the cold and wintry afternoons perfecting our observation and shading skills. This is new learning for some of us and building on previous skills for others.

Sketching is a very fine motor skill that requires deep concentration and observation. Developing our concentration and fine motor skills also have benefits for writing. Creating the illusion of depth on a flat surface has links to the maths skills of estimation (of distance) and getting to know the properties of 2D and 3D shapes.

We are learning how to create the illusion of depth on a flat surface with clever tricks. We have been practising how to press hard and softly to create different shades, as well as notice the outer lines of shapes and how the light hits a surface in different ways.

Here are some examples of our sketching this week.

Filling in lines to practice adding depth with shading:

Tracing our hands and adding lines and shading to create depth:

Optimism

We were lucky this week to have students from the senior zone visit us and share their learning around Optimism.



Students created worry eaters that would consume any of their worries they may have.

  

There were groups writing notes to their future self to give them a boost when they were feeling sad or angry.

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Comics were very popular. They are going to be valuable when students need to cool down or to manage their emotions.

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Thanks to the team that came through. We always enjoy your energy and enthusiasm but also your optimism.

Unplugged Sorting Networks

An unplugged sorting network will sort a group of random numbers from the smallest to the largest. The students had to work through a process of deciding which of the numbers were greater than or smaller than before moving them through the network.



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Computational Thinking - We are learning to think like a computer scientist!

Over lockdown period, us teachers were learning all about the new digital technologies curriculum. We are so excited to knuckle down and get into teaching it now!

This week we kickstarted some new learning within the curriculum. Each base group has been learning all about algorithms, debugging codes, logical sequencing and computational thinking.

Computational thinking is the process of approaching a problem in a systematic manner and creating and expressing a solution. But you don't need to be a computer scientist to think like a computer scientist!

Here is a video with some more info on the digital technologies curriculum.

Check out some of our learning from this week!

Mini beasts in our garden- Our Blue Planet inquiry

For Our Blue Planet inquiry, we have been learning about all the small creatures that live in our gardens. We have focused on insects and lizards, in particular.

We have learned about insects and their body parts, as well as how important they are for our planet.

We have learned about how lizards and skinks are both lizards but they have some different characteristics. Did you know that skinks can't climb trees but geckos can? And geckos don't have eyelids!

We are now designing models of lizard habitats, making sure that our models have all the things lizards would love to have in their homes.

Symmetrical Insects

We have been learning about the line of symmetry in shapes around us. We went on a hunt for shapes at school that had lines of symmetry.

We also studied how some animals, in particular insects, have beautiful symmetrical patterns. We designed our insects and made patterns for them. We used different art materials to decorate our insects.