Stepping Up our Goals with Kaizen Steps

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great"

These are our writing goals broken applied with the Kaizen Steps

In Autahi, we are doing some big thinking around goals. We know that no one masters a skill immediately, but sometimes when we have a big goal, it's hard to know where to even start!

Then we we learnt about Kaizen Steps. The word ‘Kaizen’ is a Japanese word, which means to improve, or to keep getting better at something.

The ‘Kaizen Steps' philosophy is the idea of breaking up big goals into smaller, more achievable steps that you can take your time to master.

We decided to apply the Kaizen Steps to our writing, since every time we write, we work on a 'micro goal' anyway.

Some of our micro goals include: 'Listening for the sounds' and 'Letter size' 

Our micro goals are very similar to the Kaizen Steps philosophy. The wider goal is to become a great writer (every one is capable of that!), however, there are smaller steps that we need to achieve first, before we can become great writers. Some of these steps include:

• Using a 'pinchy' tripod grip on our pencils
• Forming all of the letters correctly 
• Using finger spaces between words
• Sounding out the sounds that we know in words
• Using capital letters and full stops correctly
• Painting a picture with our words.

And everyone's goal (even adults!):

• Re-reading our writing and checking for any mistakes!

Tamariki felt proud to place their goal on a step, knowing that they will soon achieve it and eventually become a great writer!

Ask your child at home what their writing micro goal is - even better - write them a sentence and see if they have a micro goal for you!

Creativity Flourishing!

 Autahi has been having a bit of a deep dive into the gorgeous book " I want my hat back" by Jon Klassen. It's got a simple, repetitive storyline.....with a bit of humour and a fab twist!

We read it, we acted it out, we honed in on expressions and the way the eyes can tell us a lot about emotion. Then we made our puppets and had a mini show. We didn't stop there though- why stop when you are on a roll?!

The children then wrote their own pieces- some took delight in veering away from the book (of course!) These are being illustrated and then will become part of a 'large book' that will sit in Autahi and be enjoyed by the class and whoever pops by and wants to check it out.

Our Puppets!

Our writing and illustrations!

We have been having a ball in Autahi. Have a look at all of our creativity bursting forth in the final weeks of Term 2. Look through our photos - you will see puppets, stories with illustrations all based on " I want my hat back" by Jon Klassen. Amazing abstract geometric shape art supported our 'thinking outside of the box' and our sparkly Matariki stars to boot!