Fun Facts!

 

In Maths this week, we're working on our Basic Facts. Having quick recall of basic facts helps speed along calculations and support number sense. We start to build our students' recall of Basic Facts in Autahi. For us, this includes doubles and addition pairs to 10, 20 and beyond. 

Doubles are pairs of the same number such as 2 + 2 or 4 + 4. We learn doubles to 5, then 10. Fingers are a really helpful for learning doubles to 5.

Addition pairs include number bonds to 10 (all the pairings of numbers that make 10, such as 2 + 8, 6 + 4, 3 + 7) and 20. We also practise other addition pairings within 10 and 20. With practise, our students are able to recall many of these facts straight away, without having to do a calculation.

There are plenty of fun ways to learn these valuable facts. This week, we have been introducing our students to a variety of basic facts activities and games. We will be using these to build their basic facts recall over the next couple of weeks.

Ask your child about the games they've been playing and the facts they're learning. There are many easy ways to support their learning by practising these skills at home, too (quizzing doubles or number bonds makes those long car journeys or the walk to school fly by!). Here is our Games With Playing Cards blog, a useful source of simple maths games using a regular pack of playing cards. Enjoy!

Data Collection

 Branching out in Maths

Maths is more than just learning the names of numbers and counting them. In Autahi we do a mix of different things during Maths.

 Number knowledge is where we learn about numbers, a good example of this is the calendar where we practice counting every day. Quick little activities help us to learn numbers in different ways.

Number strategy is where we start to put those numbers together, this is where we practice things like counting groups using materials and writing number sentences like 3+3=6.

The last part of Maths is called Strand and it encompasses things like measurement, shapes and statistics.

This week we have been exploring the world of Statistics through some data collection. 

We are learning to ask people what their favourite fruits are and record their answers. Afterwards we pooled all of our data to see which were the most and least popular fruits. Plus we got use clipboards!!!

Arts update - The Sun

 

Autahi have been hard at work exploring the domain of Ranginui and all the things that live in the sky.

Check us out as we work through the design process from drafting to a finished product.

Keep your eyes on the school newsletter for details about the dates and times of our upcoming Arts Celebration.

Takaro Tahi

 Traditionally on Friday afternoons, the junior school have had 'golden time'. This is where tamariki have been able to celebrate the great work they have completed throughout the week by choosing how they would like to spend the afternoon. Some people bought board games to share and play, others spent time creating craft, music, lego or marble runs and also had more time to choose play outside. 

During this time, the seniors also had 'Friday Games' afternoon. They were able to choose which game they would like to join, after they had completed their weekly reflection.

We have decided to trial a new idea on Friday afternoons this term by combining the whole school together to create a play afternoon called Takaro Tahi (play together). 

Our tamariki can still choose the things that they love to do the most (two ball football with John is a big draw card!), but as an added bonus, we now have the 'big kids' playing with and alongside our juniors. 

We have been using this time to put out some 'loose parts' like ropes, pulleys, pipes and containers to see what the tamariki would create together. 

We have been excited to see how well they work together and help each other create new ways to play. The seniors are experts at helping us tie knots, making swings in the trees and creating a pulley system along the big slide. 

Even more reasons to share a book or shoot the breeze with our tamariki.

 

I want to start this blog by celebrating the word 'Ako'. Unlike the word 'teach' in English (implying one-way traffic from the teacher to the learner), 'ako' contains the concepts of both teaching and learning. This beautifully conveys how we experience life as kaiako: we hope to pass on a little learning, but daily find ourselves learning just as much in return from our students! Added to this, ongoing study to keep our skills sharp is part of the mix. 

Right now, the Junior team is doing some literacy study with the University of Canterbury. We will definitely be sharing lots more on this with you - and soon. But for now, I thought I'd share one small nugget of learning that spoke to me as a parent, as well as a teacher. 

Oral narrative skills: the ability to tell or retell fictional stories

Kaiako are always keen to encourage whānau to share books together. We also know that a rich, oral language environment at home (lots of talk with lots of different words - in any language or languages) helps children when they start school. Our recent studies have focussed especially on the skill of oral storytelling (oral narrative skills).

Our children's oral narrative skills are important in the early years of school. They help children to take part in classroom life and connect with subjects from across the curriculum. Our students bring a lot of knowledge with them to school. They learn best when they can connect new ideas with what they already know. Sharing knowledge and experiences is part of this. For children, sharing often in the form of a simple story. Sound oral language skills enable children to share ideas with others and to build on what they already know.

 

Research now also shows us that a child's ability to retell a story is a predictor of their success at school, particularly at reading comprehension. Reading comprehension means being able to understand fully what a text means. It is possible to decode and 'read' a story without really understanding it. The Simple View of Reading suggests that good readers combine efficient decoding (identifying the sounds in a word and blending them together) with comprehension skills to make sense of what they are reading. In other words, for our children to be good readers, we need to work on both decoding and comprehension.

To understand what we are reading, we use our vocabulary knowledge plus general and subject-specific knowledge. If we have experienced other similar stories or texts, this helps us, too. For children, sharing books and stories with an adult is very beneficial. An adult reader can help them to understand new words and check their understanding of the story by asking questions and retelling the tricky parts. Adult readers can also provide extra information and context around the story to support the child's understanding and build their general knowledge.

And there is more. Enjoyed reading a story or watching a movie together? Now try retelling that story with your child, perhaps while walking or driving together. Who is in the story? How did the story begin? What happened next? What was the exciting bit? How did the story end up? Storytelling opens up golden opportunities to practice oral language skills and sequencing (arranging things in order). You could also try making up a silly story together. Or ask your child: "Tell me about something that happened at school today." This is worth persevering with even if, like me, you sometimes get the response, "I can't remember!"

In telling even the simplest story, your child will need to use their language skills at text level (choosing the right individual words), sentence level (putting the words together in the right order to create meaning) and text level (sequencing events to tell the story). There is a lot of wonderful, rich learning going on here - as well as connecting and sharing. 

Making a cloud - A science experiment

This week in Autahi we have been thinking like a scientist. The first thing a scientist needs to do is make a prediction about what they think might happen. We had read that clouds are formed from water vapour and wanted to find out more.

So when Carl, Beth and Brooke left a kettle in the middle of the mat, it naturally generated lots of questions. We had to think about what would happen to the water inside the kettle when we switched it on.

As you can see above we made a prediction based on what we already knew about kettles.

Next chief scientist Carl moved everyone away from the danger zone and turned the kettle on. We used a metal tray to see what we would find coming out of the kettle.

After discovering the water that had been collected on the lid we talked about how water heats to make steam and then cools again to turn back into water. 

While there was some disappointment that it didn't rain inside the classroom, we still had lots of fun being scientists and finding out through experimenting. 

We will continue exploring more science as we explore the domains of more of the Atua through our inquiry. Stay tuned to the blog for more as we continue our scientific journeys.