Gratitude is one of our Character Strengths. On our Character Strengths poster, it looks like this:
In our recent Positive Education lessons, Autahi has begun to explore what Gratitude means. We have begun by first noticing the things and people that we are thankful for. We will go on to find ways to turn our Gratitude into action.
Our classroom now has a Gratitude Jar.
This is a simple way to encourage us to notice and capture (in writing or a picture) the moments when we experience Gratitude. Here are some of the things we are thankful for.
Research has shown that noticing and cultivating feelings of Gratitude can improve our wellbeing and resilience.
In our Flourish model, Gratitude comes into the sphere of Positive Emotions. While we encourage our students to feel all of their feelings, it is important to learn the skill of cultivating Positive Emotions like Optimism, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence and Gratitude.
A daily practice of noticing the things in life that we are grateful for (they may be very small things!) helps to build our resilience and ability to cope with life's challenges. Positive emotions broaden our attention, leading to more open and flexible thinking (rather than shutting down or flight responses to problems). This is also known as Broaden and Build Theory.
Recalling and revisiting moments that we are thankful for allows us to re-experience the positive emotion. This is important because, as humans, our brains are wired towards a negativity bias. We need to experience a lot more positives to outweigh a few negatives.
By teaching our students how to exercise their 'Gratitude muscles', we hope to help them to develop a habit of noticing positives. Capturing things we are grateful for in a picture or a diary gives us the opportunity to revisit the experience - and reinforce the positive emotion. Doing this as a group makes this even more powerful.
You might like to try this at home, too. Start by asking each other on the way home, "What are you feeling thankful for today?"
And if you would like to know more about Broaden and Build Theory, our Flourish model, or any other aspect of our Positive Education programme, please chat with Beth or Carl.
This week in Autahi, we have begun exploring patterns.
Some patterns are repeating patterns. Others are sequential (like counting, for example). Sequential patterns often contain some kind of growth. This week, we been exploring repeating patterns in shapes and colours, noticing what the pattern is and how it repeat.
Pattern is part of our Maths curriculum, but an awareness of how patterns work helps in many areas of our learning. Patterns are not only visual, but also occur in numbers, words and sounds. We will be making plenty of connections between our learning about pattern in Maths and patterns that occur in Music and Art also.
This week we have been exploring the concept of measurement in Mathematics. At the beginning of the measurement learning we start to learn the vocabulary associated with measuring things. Using toys from our classroom, we explored which were big, bigger and biggest, long, longer and longest and so on. Learning the key words helps us to think and talk about the concept of measurement and size.
Organising these foods from biggest to smallest on the washing line helps us to compare objects and notice their relative sizes. It also gives us a great opportunity to practice the mathematical language that we need to talk about size.
Here is a different activity to encourage our students to notice and estimate the relative sizes of objects: make a worm that is BIGGER and a worm that is SMALLER than the worm on the play dough mat. How do we make sure our worms are the right size, especially when they are wiggly?
We also took this learning into our Writing this week.
The next step in our learning has been to begin measuring objects. Eventually, our students will learn how to use standard units of measurement like centimetres and metres. But their first experiences of measuring are with non-standard units like cubes, glue sticks and matchsticks.
Using non-standard units allows our students to practice the key skills of measuring and develop an understanding of how measuring works without having to grapple with the precision of standard units. When measuring our toys, we made sure that we followed the rules of measuring: start at the beginning of the object, use multiples of the exactly the same thing to measure with, units should touch (no gaps), stop placing units at the end of the object.
In Autahi, we are keen for our students to have clear visual images to support their growing number knowledge. For this reason, our maths lessons are very practical, using plenty of physical resources such a counters and cubes.
At level 1 of our curriculum, students are counting groups of objects up to ten. To do this, they need to know the sequence of number words (one, two, three/tahi, run, toru etc.). They also need one-to-one matching. This is the understanding that each object in the group is matched with one word in the counting sequence, thus making sure that each object is counted only one time.
This is what we are practising here. In the activity, the children move each object from one side of the whiteboard to the other as they say each number. That way they know that they have counted each object only once.
At level 2 of our curriculum, we build on this knowledge as we introduce the key idea that our number system is based on groups of ten. Understanding this is vital to working meaningfully with bigger numbers into the teens, tens, hundreds and beyond.
With this is mind, we have been introducing our students to ten frames. This versatile maths resource helps to make these key understandings explicit.
So, what is a ten frame? Well, it is a small grid of two rows of squares, five squares on the top row and five squares on the bottom row. The grid can be populated with counters or other objects to make numbers to ten.
Eventually, we might use multiple ten frames together to show numbers to 100 as several groups of ten and some ones.
Here, we are practising making numbers to ten on a ten frame.
Building numbers on a ten frame benefits our counting. It provides a a visual for each number to ten, and cements the understanding that there are more counters as we count forwards through the sequence, and fewer counters as we count backwards.
Ten frames are great for developing the skill of subtilising, too: this is seeing small groups of objects and knowing how many there are without having to count (typically, up to five).
When using the ten frames, we learn to fill up the top row of the ten frame first. This enables us to see that all the squares filled makes ten and a whole row is five (without having to count!). Students also begin to explore how numbers bigger than five are 'a group of five and some more'. For example, six is a group of five and one more. It's is the same on our fingers, too.
This is the beginning of the 'part-whole' thinking that builds into our students being able to add and subtract numbers to make ten (knowing that a number can be composed to two smaller numbers added together).
Ten frames are just so handy. This is why we are celebrating them at our assembly this week.
We will be displaying our beautiful ten frames in class and using them as a resource for many different learning activities in the future. Drop by and take a look!
This week we held the pleasure of sharing our Positive Education bedrock with our school community. While this has been a part of our schools kaupapa for many years it is always great to reflect and share the 'why' behind it all.
In a nutshell, Positive Education is an embedded programme that teaches a variety of tools and skills to equip people to flourish and weather challenges that they may face. All of this is backed by science and research that support this approach. Think of it as tools for resilience and growth, something we always wish we had more of I'm sure.
These tools support our learners, teachers and community to think optimistically, bounce forward (not just back) from setbacks and learn from our mistakes.
One area of Pos Ed is character strengths. Each of us have our own strengths and being able to identify them and use them effectively is important. Knowing when we are overusing them is just as important too.
You hopefully will have seen these around our school, either on posters on walls our scattered in key locations in the playground. More importantly you will hear them being talked about around the school and in our community. Even better you might have heard the around the dinner table.
These are just a selection of strengths that we focus on and serve as a guide for us to help navigate different situations. In Autahi we have been learning about a few of these strengths that have helped us so far. Things like Bravery, Perseverance and Curiosity are key for those first few weeks of school. We dial up our Bravery when we say goodbye to our whanau in the morning and we dial up our Perseverance when we are trying to write the words we want to make a story.
In Autahi, we love picture books. We take every chance we can to share them, from snack time stories to end of the day picture books. Sometimes we have a guest storyteller, too.
An important part of our Literacy programme is our focus picture book. This book is carefully-chosen because it is rich with story features, juicy words and ideas for us to explore. We take a whole week to fully unpack what the book has to offer, returning to it daily to explore new themes. Sometimes our focus picture book connects with our Inquiry topic. It might also provide inspiration for our writing.
Our book this week is Henry's Map by David Elliot.
Here are some ways that we are using this delightful picture book to help with our learning.
