Whanau Day: Nic and Shona's Group

Last Friday was Positive Education Whanau day. We were in groups with others from Autahi, Tautoru, Matariki and Mahutonga. It was fun to work with our brothers and sisters and to make new friends.

Each Whanau group had five character strengths to unpack. Ours were Judgement, Perseverance, Social Intelligence, Honesty and Love.

 

We talked about Judgement which is thinking things through and examining them from all sides, without jumping to conclusions and then we played "Would You Rather?" It was fun!

We talked about Perseverance and how we work hard to finish things that we start. We shared ideas of times we have persevered- Cross Country running, swimming, writing, maths, etc.

We discussed Love, and then we helped each other to weave a heart and create a mobile which is hanging in Tautoru.

We talked about Social Intelligence. It is when you are aware of the motives and feelings of other people. You know what to do to fit in to different social situations, and you know what to do to put others at ease. We read the story, Knuffle Bunny Three and discussed how the girl in the story used her character strength of Social Intelligence. 

Lastly, we discussed the character strength of Honesty. We played a fun game called "two truths and a lie."

We are Powerful: An update on our Kaitiaki Inquiry

As you would have read in our last post, we have been thinking about what we are kaitiaki of and we have created crests to represent these ideas.  We also have been exploring how this is like us being Super Heroes of that domain.  We have finished our Super Hero artwork in which we have posed in powerful poses, added crests to represent our initial letters, 1 to represent what we look after and have added 3 of what we consider to be our top character strengths.  Have a look at how powerful we look!

Whanau Day--Character Strength Exploration

We had a hugely successful Whanau Day on Friday and a big part of that was the fantastic parent involvement on the day! Thanks so much to everyone who came, got involved and helped out! 

A core tenant of the Positive Education Model is learning about your character strengths.  On Friday, we spent the whole day in whanau groups working across the school unpacking 4 -5 strengths.

The VIA Institute explains the proven benefits of knowing your strengths:

Children worked in mixed groups with parents and teachers and senior students unpacking strengths through literacy, role play, art, music, PE, dance, science and more.

We explored fairness through playing some games where random people had certain advantages, while others had disadvantages.  This sparked some interesting conversations and ideas.

                                                  

During our whanau day we explored the character strength of curiosity. We are exploring different objects and thinking about what they could be used for.

During our whanau day we explored the character strength of leadership. We are discussing the qualities of a leader.....what a good leader is and what a good leader isn’t.

We explored Prudence and created a movie script and a film illustrating what it is to be prudent.  

We talked about what kinds of things are zest builders and busters.

We explored Love of Learning by doing science experiments and trying to make slime!

We explored Creativity by learning how to weave flax birds!


We explored Forgiveness by thinking of things that make us angry ....

  .... and then practising letting them go and physically throwing them away.  We then followed this up with some "Let it Go," meditation. 

This is just a snip-it of the many different activities and strengths that were explored on Friday.  But ultimately after the exploration each group created artworks to visually represent 1 of the strengths they had learned about all day.  These will be collated to create our own WBS Character Strength Poster similar to this:

Here are some of the works in progress:

Stay tuned for the final product!

Kaitiakitanga

Kaitiakitanga

Traditionally, Māori believe there is a deep kinship between humans and the natural world. This connection is expressed through kaitiakitanga – a way of managing the environment.

This term as part of our inquiry about the environment we have been looking at becoming superheroes of our environment. 

We had Matt visit from the SPCA to tell us about how they are Kaitiaki or guardians of animals and how we can be guardians of animals too. We have also spent time with the bush builders who showed us how to care for our local environment.

We created super hero badges that show what we are Kaitiaki of: 

Some chose animals:

Others chose the environment:

Then we posed as superheroes to complete our transformation into Kaitiaki:

But it wouldn't be complete without our super hero/Kaitiaki capes. We have started screen printing and will be decorating them later this week. 

Our next step is to think about what we can do as Kaitiaki in our local environment. We can't wait to see where we go next. 

Discovery and working together

Discovery and working together

In the New Zealand curriculum there are key competencies that all learners are working on throughout their time at school. Discovery learning helps us to work on two of those skills at the same time. The first is relating to others which means how we work and communicate with those around us. Discovery is a social time where we work together to build marble runs or run a restaurant with our friends. We need to listen and come up with ideas together to make the most of our time.

Running a restaurant can be tricky if we don't work together.

The second skill is participating and contributing. We encourage each other to have a go at trying new things and we support each other. So whether it's building a marble run the size of a table or squishing play dough into interesting shapes, we all have a go. Discovery is a great time for learning more about ourselves and those around us.