Fishing around for ideas

 

When we explore the world, we all do so in different ways.

Some of us are dancers, makers, creators, sculptors and the list goes on.

As we have been exploring the world of Sea Creatures we have had opportunities to think about our learning and how we can express our ideas. 

Below we started with an empty tarpaulin. Then an idea, what if it was an aquarium? How could we make it a home for sea life? What could we create to fill the space?  

Some went straight for the shells and others for the blocks to build things for the fish to swim around in.

Learning can be expressed in so many different ways and sometimes all it needs is permission to be approached in a way that sings to you.

This has evolved into another rocky shore appearing. What do you notice living amongst the rocks and shells?

Exploring Our Positive Emotions

 

We all hope that our children will live lives that are full of Positive Emotions. In Autahi, we've been exploring feelings like joy, awe and excitement. How will we recognise them in ourselves and others? What experiences and people trigger these feelings for us? 

We know that the benefits of experiencing Positive Emotions are more far-reaching that simply feeling good for a while. Research tells us that frequently experiencing Positive Emotions contributes to a lasting sense of well-being: 'things are generally going well for me'. This is associated with being more socially connected, productive and physically healthy, too. This may be due to the 'broaden and build' theory (Fredrickson, 2002, 2004). This is based on the idea that negative experiences carry a perceived threat, causing us to narrow our focus, close down our attention and behave more defensively. Conversely, positive experiences cause us to engage in a more expansive and open way with our environment, allowing more curious, creative and flexible thinking.

As ever in Autahi, picture books have helped us to begin to tease apart the different kinds of Positive Emotions so that we can better identify and name what we're feeling. How Do I Feel?, with it's beautiful illustrations, is a great resource for this.

We also shared some stories in which characters experience Positive Emotions. In both cases, these feeling are prompted by doing something they love.

We asked our Autahi children to reflect on times when they experience Positive Emotions. Knowing what prompts Positive Emotions for us gives us the ability to seek out more of these experiences. Here are some of their ideas.

It is exciting to see them beginning to grapple with more nuanced vocabulary to describe their emotions, such as proud, calm, joyful and peaceful. It is also clear that they are able to recall moments when they have experienced Positive Emotions. Family, favourite toys and time spent in the natural world are themes. There is lots of inspiration here for how we can foster more Positive Emotions in our days.

Emotions and Athletics

This week Autahi joined up with our friends down the hallway in Tautoru to have a go at some athletics. As part of our P.E programme we have been practicing throwing, catching and running. These fundamental skills help us with our body movement and balance.

After this experience we associated with some emotions that we felt as we gave these activities our best try. Check out some of the amazing Autahi writers!

 

We are explorers of ... the beach!

 

This term, our Inquiry has focussed on creatures that live in the ocean. Living close to the sea, our students already have ideas about the creatures that live there. Watching Octonauts on TV has definitely had an impact, too! We have been trying to build on their knowledge and experiences by exploring some animals in detail.

Our Autahi students have been particularly interested in finding out more about some of the larger, charismatic creatures like octopuses and sea stars. A trip down to Worser Bay Beach is a chance to focus on some of the smaller creatures that inhabit the ocean. 

It's also a great opportunity to reconnect with this part of our local environment. As so often happens in Autahi, playing and exploring go hand in hand, and lead to some great learning. 

On the sand, we quickly began to find sea glass and a few pieces of pumice and mussel shells. We've been learning about the gruesome and fascinating way that octopuses eat mussels: had an octopus eaten the mussels out of these shells?

We started to make a collection of our finds along the wall.

Turning over a large log revealed sand hoppers, leaping about and shy beetles burying themselves back in the sand.

In the rock pools, we found no fewer than thirteen small crabs in quite a short time. There were also cat's eyes, a whelk and several different seaweeds. 

We hope to pay a return visit to the beach before the end of the term.  As the water warms up and Spring progresses, it will be interesting to see whether we find different creatures this time.

In the meantime, we will keep building our knowledge of the creatures that live in the ocean.

Thanks to all our parent helpers who helped to make this trip possible - and also so much fun. 

Fun with shapes

 This week Autahi have been exploring the world of shapes. In the first year at school children learn all about the different attributes that shapes have like sides, corners and size.

We explore some familiar shapes like rectangles, squares, circles and triangles and learn to sort them by their different attributes.

As a part of this exploration we also look at how shapes can connect together to make new shapes or even create a picture.

Check out what some of our shape artists have cooked up...

What kinds of shapes do you have around at home? What could they turn into?

A brief introduction to Numicon

 

In Autahi, we love to get hands-on with our Maths learning. During the first years at school, students are securing vital foundation knowledge of how numbers work. This includes counting forwards and backwards, sequencing numbers, learning about place value (hundreds, tens and ones) and beginning to partition numbers (split them into parts, for example tens and ones). Over the course of years 0 to 3, children move from counting to calculating.

Our number-writing system of numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.) has developed as a means of representing concrete objects in an abstract form. The numeral 5 stands in for an idea. The idea is the quantity of five objects, for example five counters. Perhaps the most remarkable and abstract numeral is zero, since it represents nothing: an absence.

In order to make these abstract numerals meaningful, they have to be attached to objects in the real world. Many very young children can count to ten as a sequence of words without necessarily being able to attach these words to objects in the real world. Children have to have a mental image of what four or ten or zero looks like. To achieve this, we start with concrete objects (beads, teddies, jewels etc.), then extend to include pictorial representations and, finally, abstract numerals.

Numicon is one of the resources we’re using to help our students to make these vital connections between the concrete and the abstract. You may have seen these colourful pieces in our classroom.

Each numicon piece represents a number from 1 to 10. Each is a different colour and has a distinctive pattern of holes corresponding to its number. The picture above shows a number line from 0 to 10, created with Numicon. Our Autahi students love to grapple with the idea of zero so we always make sure to include it.

Arranging the shapes this way gives an immediate sense of how the numbers increase in size as they go along. This aids sequencing (what comes next/before). These pieces can be picked up and manipulated. A nice detail is that the bigger ones are also heavier than the small ones.

Numicon shapes go two by two, making them very handy for teaching skip counting in twos. They also give an immediate sense of odd and even numbers, as you'll see in the pattern above.

Learning to work with tens and ones is a vital skill. The biggest piece in Numicon is a ten. Children learn that tens can be put alongside other numbers to build teen numbers. The tens place value house is placed to the left, corresponding to how the 'houses' are written (e.g. 11, 12, 13).

Two 'tens' plus some 'ones' gives a number in the twenties. The beauty of Numicon is that, unlike with counters, the ten cannot be divided and there is no need to count it before using it: it can be manipulated and viewed as a unit (a 'ten').

Our students are also learning to partition numbers. Partitioning is breaking down numbers into smaller parts that are either more manageable or make a calculation easier.

During the first six months at school, they will learn that number less than ten can be made by putting together smaller numbers. Numicon provides a model to visualise this and also verify ideas. Here, you can see how three and two fit together to make five. We would call this trio a 'family of facts'.

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Fast recall of numbers that go together to make ten is a foundational numeracy skill. Numicon is a great way for children to explore this for themselves, using the tens piece to check their ideas.

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Visualising these relationships also helps with fast recall of these facts for calculations.

This student has filled up their peg board with different combinations that total ten, making one hundred altogether.

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Finally, here's an example of how the concrete becomes abstract as students begin to relate the familiar Numicon shapes to numerals, writing addition 'number sentences'.

By carefully building our students' foundational number sense and knowledge, we aim to set them up for a lifetime of using and enjoying numbers in a meaningful way.