The Inquiry Cycle

At Worser Bay School we use an inquiry cycle to help us with our new learning in inquiry. Each stage leads into the next and helps to guide our learning to the next stage.
Today I'll give you a brief outline of each step and what that looks like in Autahi.

We start our cycle at the curiosity stage. Here we start with provocations that get us thinking and asking questions. We want to find out what people already know and focus our inquiry on exploring the things that we don't know yet. Yet is that keyword because it tells us that it is possible for us to know. We just need to do a little exploring to find out. At the curiosity stage we try to work out which questions are really rich and full of lots of opportunities for us.




Then once we have found a question to hone in on, we begin the exploring stage. Here we start to look at ways we can find out the answers to our questions and maybe even develop more questions to deepen our inquiry. We look at pictures and try our hand at drawing our ideas. Books are a great resource for finding out new things.

We might watch a video, especially if it is about a topic that we can't visit like the bottom of the ocean.
We take trips and meet with experts to ask our questions.

Next we move on to sorting and creating.

Here we take some of our new learning start to loom at ways we can create new things to show our learning. Here we are experimenting with some learning about the sun and how it's light shines on the earth.

We looked at ways we can get into space and decided building a rocket might help us on our journey.

Finally the last stage is celebrating where we reflect on our learning and share or findings with others. We use Seesaw as a great tool to share our learning and you will see this grow over time as we put up lots of examples of our learning.

Perseverance

This week we have had a focus on the strength of perseverance. Sometimes we try things that are a bit tricky and it can be easy to write something off as too hard. By practising things we help to grow our brain and get a little better every time we attempt it. To show this in Autahi we put out lots of perseverance challenges for us to try and keep trying all week.
We celebrated giving things a go and challenging ourselves to keep going even when it seemed too hard. The feeling of joy when you finally get something is what it is all about and reminds us of how hard we worked to get there.

Check us out as we attempted some challenges...

Balancing can be tricky especially on a wobble board. We practised perseverance by trying and learning each time we wobbled off. Some of us mastered the board with two feet and challenged ourselves a bit further by trying one foot.


We did a bit of sorting. Only we couldn't use our hands and had to use tweezers instead. It was challenging trying to pick things up, especially the glass beads. The learners in Autahi persevered though and found lots of different ways to meet this challenge.




Building a card tower is pretty tricky. It takes lots of creativity and perseverance to even build the first part. We have been having lots of fun trying different ideas and even when it falls down we just pick it back up and start again.




Skipping is another of our perseverance challenges. We are having lots of fun trying to work out the best way to skip.

There are so many other ways we can practise perseverance. Have a go at home and see what you can come up with and share your ideas with us.

Character Strength Spotlight

“Character strengths are ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that come naturally and easily to a person and that enable high functioning and performance.” (Linley, 2006)
 

We have begun to explore our character strengths in Autahi and we have begun by unpacking kindness.  

We have been reading some books that make us think about ways to show kindness and examples of other showing kindness.

We read:    

We brainstormed lots of ways we can be kind to each other and fill each other's buckets.  

We then started making kindness coupons for people in our class and for our family.

My kindness coupon is for Archie and it says I will play marble run with you.

                                                                                                                           

One of the things we discovered about being kind is that it makes other people feel good, but it also makes us feel good too! 

Our Trip to Space!

Our First School Trip

Yesterday we went on our first school trip.  We went and had a quick lunch and play at the playground in the Botanic Gardens.

 


After our quick picnic and play we headed to the Space Place at the Carter Observatory.  We got to go to the planetarium to look at the stars in the sky and watch a movie about Space and Seasons.  Then we had a lesson with Troy who helped us understand about the size of the Earth compared to the Sun and about how we have night and day.  Then we got to explore around the Space Place.  There were so many cool things like Rocket Ships, an enormous telescope and the ropes of Maui trying to hold back the sun! 

The trip was lots of fun and it got us thinking about lots of the questions that we had.  Some of our questions were answered on the trip and some of what we saw made us wonder new things.  Stay tuned to find out more about our inquiry and what we learned or are interested in learning! 

Exploring the school

Last week we explored the school to find out where everything is around the school and where our boundaries are within the school.

First we checked out the driveway. When we play we know to keep clear of the driveway and to find an adult if something we are playing with rolls down the drive.

Next we explored the top grass behind Autahi. We talked about climbing trees and making sure that any branch we try to climb on is thicker than our leg. This helps to keep us safe and also protects the trees from having branches broken off. 

Then we checked out our back courts and the gardens we have around the school. There are some fruit and vegetables growing and we need to help look after the plants by not picking anything off.

We explored the two playgrounds and had a go with lots of the equipment so that we know which ones we feel comfortable using.

Lastly we checked out the bottom grass and the court. We saw lots of bugs in the garden and we know to just look at them without picking them up. 

There are lots of places in the school for us to play and have fun. 

Global play day

Global School Play Day

Global School Play Day is an initiative started back in February 2015 that promotes unstructured play in schools. This means that we don't direct the play and let the learners explore things naturally and in their own way. Play is a way for us to find things that we are passionate about and try new things. It takes the pressure away from 'getting things right' and allows us to give things a try that we otherwise might steer away from.

Some of us explored the instruments and tried making music together. Carl tried singing us a song but we think he might need to keep practising.

We made a pet shop for lots of the animals. We made food for them and made some homes for them. 

We worked together to create things we enjoyed. Some of us made marble runs and others made tracks for the cars to drive around on.

We explored some of the maths equipment and tried making patterns with beads and seeing how long we can make the chain. We even tricked people into thinking we had made some snakes.

In the afternoon we grabbed our sun hats and took the play out into the playground. We took turns zooming down the slide with our toys and climbed trees and climbing walls. There was also a lot of swinging on the monkey bars.

When the day was finished we were all really tired from all the fun. Lots of us made new friends and got to try a lot of new things that we might want to explore more of through our play in discovery time and out in the playground.