Ready, set, fire! The Autahi Slingshot Project

This week, Autahi investigated measurement by building recycled bottle slingshots! Using blueprints from Lorraine at the Wellington City Council, we transformed plastic bottles, rubber bands, and string into awesome launching tools.

Navigating our slingshots wasn't easy. We quickly realized that we needed to dial up our Perseverance, Creativity, and Teamwork, as well as use our Growth Mindsets if we were going to make them work!

Once we felt like professional slingshotters, we put our skills to the test, using our measurement skills to see exactly how far our paper balls could fly!

We discussed how we could go about measuring the distance that our paper balls would shoot. Some idea we had were: 

- measuring with the length of our feet 

- measuring with glue sticks

- measuring with interlocking cubes

- measuring with rulers (who would've thought!)

- and finally, measuring with the height of Jude!

As you can imagine, our last idea was the most popular. After firing away, Annie and Jude would mark the spot where each paper ball had landed. From there, we estimated how many 'Jude's' the distance would be. I think our record was three Judes long!

As exciting as using the slingshots was, we also learned a very valuable lesson; that things do not always turn out as we hope. For every short, underwhelming shoot that we shot, we had to remind ourselves about our Growth Mindsets. We had to tell ourselves 'Keep trying! You will get better with practice'. 

Although we had many 'Jude' length distances being measured, we also had some glue stick length distances as well and that was fine because everyone gave it their best shot!

We are sure you'll have plenty of 'slingshotting' taking place around your whare over the next wee while!

Teamwork in action, down at the beach

Earlier this term, we explored some of the history of Te Whetūkairangi Pā, where our school now stands. We learnt about how Tara founded the first permanent settlement in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Welllington on this site. More recently, we've been focussing on building our awareness of our Character Strength of Teamwork: what we each bring to our collective and how we can play and work together.

This week, we brought together these two threads of of learning with a trip down to Worser Bay Beach. Working in small teams, our goal was to show our learning about pā by building one on the beach - a 'sand pā'. The pā had to include whare, māra kai, fences and defences. We also talking about shaping the sand into hills and mountains so that our pā could be built in safe places.

We thought about the kinds of jobs we would need to do in our teams. The children decided who would be builders and diggers, and who would be 'finders' and decorators, adding other materials such as shells, sticks and seaweed to complete the picture. 

Here are our pā engineers at work and sharing their creations with each other. We're sure you'll agree that great Teamwork leads to some beautiful creations!

The Right to Write!

In Autahi we have been dialling up our Strengths of Creativity, Love of Learning and Humour in writing. Based on Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoo, we wrote about our own pets.

To begin our writing, we check what important ingredients are needed to write a good sentence:

• Finger spaces.
• A capital letter at the start of the sentence.
• A full stop at the end of the sentence.

Sharing ideas is an important part of our process, as well as saying our sentence out loud. Before getting started, we often also draw a picture plan. This helps us remember what it was that we wanted to write about in our sentence.

A big part of writing is being able to hear the sound that each letter makes so that we can spell words properly. If we are not sure of a sound, our teacher can help.

Some of us dialled up our Perseverance to write more sentences! After describing our pet, we wrote whether we would keep them or not - just like in Dear Zoo.

Writing can be really tricky because there is so much to remember! But with our Creativity, our Love of Learning, our Humour and our Perseverance we can become the finest of wordsmiths!