Our Inquiry: timelines

 

Autahi took some first steps back in time this week as we began our local history Inquiry. This inquiry will likely stretch over a long period of time as our local area is rich with pūrakau, legend and historical happenings. But, to begin with, we are focussing in on some learning about the place where our school now stands. 

Inquiry is a style of learning that builds on a child's existing knowledge base by encouraging them to questions about a topic, pursuing knowledge through exploration and experimentation, review their findings and perhaps ask more questions. In other words, it's a never-ending cycle of discovery!

In Autahi, we aim to build our students' inquiry skills, such as how to ask questions, observe closely, gather and record new information. We try to be responsive to our students' interests as we go along. This means that we don't have a fixed roadmap of where we are going. But, at the same time, we aim to fuel the Inquiry by offering new information or experiences to help build knowledge or spark Curiosity. 

This week, we tackled the concept of time. It's tricky to talk about things that happened in the past without some sense of how time passes: sometimes it can be hard to get a grip on what happened last week, let alone 800 years ago.

This is why we've been playing around with some timelines this week, starting close to home with a timeline of how people grow up. What order should we put the pictures in? What came first, next?

We built on this foundation by beginning to look at some images related to our history over the last thousand years or so. We included a recent photo of Autahi so that we could locate where we are now on the timeline.

As we tried to place them in order from oldest to newest, a rich conversation developed. It was exciting to hear our Autahi students thinking like historians and evaluating the evidence in front of them. Is it a photograph? Is it black and white and what might that mean? What about pictures that aren't photos? What are the people wearing and doing? What order should the different waka/boats/planes go in? 

We still have plenty of questions about this and will need to return to our timeline We may move some of our pictures as we learn more...

With our time line to help us, we will begin to think and ask questions about now and then at Whetūkairangi.

We're looking forward to sharing our learning with you at our upcoming whānau hīkoi (check the Newletter for details). In the meantime, come and check our our timeline in Autahi and see what order you would put our pictures in!

Music and Movement Breaks

We know that it can be challenging to sit still for long periods of time. That's why in Autahi, we've been exploring different ways to wiggle, stretch, stomp and sing with lots of musical movement breaks!

Music & movement have been very popular in Autahi this term. We have enjoyed exploring new songs and new musical instruments, as well as learning dances and ways to move our bodies. All this music and movement is also helping us with our learning, as having short opportunities to burn off our energy and have a little fun, mean that we can sustain our focus in the long term. 

Going for a little run in the morning is a great way to wake up our bodies and our brains, but sometimes, the weather doesn't play ball and we have to find other ways to energize ourselves. We have found that dancing has been a really great way to get us ready for learning, while still having fun! You may have heard us talking about milkshakes, waffles, pizza and broken eggs - despite sounding a bit random, this has been one of our favourite songs to boogie to!

For the times when our energy is through the roof and we need help to return to our learning brains, we have been exploring yoga poses and breathing techniques.  Poses like downward dog and spinal twists, paired with rainbow breathing, have worked a treat for helping us to calm our bodies and brains so that we are ready for learning. 

You can try any of these music and movement breaks at home - ask your tamaiti to share them with you!

The Power of Yet: what to expect in your Goal Setting meeting

'Learning to be a learner' is an on-going theme as children grow through our school. This includes setting personal goals (big and small), strategies to break down big goals into smaller steps, and also embracing the struggle that comes with learning something new.

Term one Goal Setting is a chance for our Autahi students to begin to think and talk about what their personal goals are and how they will work towards them. 

Before our Autahi students start school, they have already learnt to do lots of hard things, such as walking and talking. This learning took lots of Bravery and Perseverance: our students are already learners.

We can build on this. In Autahi, we are just beginning to understand how we can set goals for ourselves, and work towards them through many small steps, called Kaisen Steps. As we achieve each small step, we can celebrate and be boosted to keep working towards the bigger goal.

 

A great example of this can be seen if you flick through your child's writing book. Each child has a 'micro-goal' for writing that they are working on. It might be holding their pencil in a pinchy grip or listening for the first sound in a word: bite-sized goals that build towards the bigger goal of writing 'one good sentence'.

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Keeping going takes Grit and positive self-talk can help. This is where the word 'yet' is so important. I can't play the guitar YET (but I will!). I can't read all the words in my reading book YET (but I will!). Tell yourself, 'I can do it!', 'keep practising!' and 'mistakes make your brain grow'.

Our Goal Setting meeting is a three-way conversation between child, parent and teacher. We have done some thinking and talking with our students about things they can do now, and things they would like to be able to do - but can't YET.

Our students' goals are often big and chunky. We will support them to think about how big goals can be broken down into smaller, bite-sized pieces (Kaisen steps). We will talk about who can help, what we can say to ourselves to keep going ('I can do this!'), and also some Character Strengths that we can engage to help us.

We are looking forward to sharing these conversations with you and celebrating your child's achievements day by day, week by week as the year progresses.

Autahi 2026: how our programme works

 

At our workshop this week, we aimed to provide insight into how our Autahi programme comes together this term. If you didn't make it - or even if you did - here are the main ideas we shared.

When you come into Autahi in the morning, one of the first things you'll see is our Rātaka/Timetable. 

We encourage our students to check the Rātaka as we go through the day so that they know what's happening next. You'll see that our day is varied - and jam-packed. We can imagine it as a delicious, fresh salad with many different ingredients. 

In preparing our daily Autahi 'salad', we have to ensure we're using a range of ingredients. These fall into five basic categories: Literacy and Maths (we are mandated to teach five hours each of Reading, Writing and Maths each week), Health and Wellbeing (which includes our Positive Education programme), Sustainability and the Arts.

You'll see the word 'Inquiry' on the Rātaka. We use this word for exploratory, discovery-based learning, an approach we often apply in the Sustainability space but can work throughout the curriculum. We're beginning this term by inquiring into our feelings and strategies to self-regulate, but will be moving on to explore both compost and stories of our local places.

Not included in the Rātaka are the many times during the day that we stop for a brain and body break to jump around, dance, go for a run or game, do yoga, make music... There are so many benefits to this: our children learn through experience what helps them to self-regulate and be ready to learn, it helps to bond us as a whānau - and it's great fun! Last but by no means least, play and playful learning are also essential to our programme, with opportunities for free play sprinkled through the day.

Every day draws something from each of these categories. There is a lot to cover here. However, although some topics benefit from being taught in dedicated, skills-building sessions (phonics and reading, for instance), there is a lot to be gained from working in more than one area of our curriculum at a time. For instance, right now in Autahi our Writing explores our friendships and relationships, taking us into the Positive Education space related to our current Inquiry topic. To continue the salad analogy, we might take a bite of avocado and tomato at the same time - and it's extra delicious!

Let's drill down a little further to the foundations of our programme. It is underpinned by three key documents: the New Zealand Curriculum, our 2026 Strategic Plan and our Local Curriculum (click on the links to read more). These last two are written in consultation with our community and aim to reflect what our parents want to see in our classrooms: Sustainability and the Arts are a strong area of focus for us as a result of these consultations.

Finally, at the heart of our programme design are our Autahi children: we aim to balance all the 'must dos' from the curriculum and build our programme around their personalities, interests and needs. Careful observation and on-going light-touch assessments enable us to build children's skills and knowledge step by step. This means that our programme will look a little different each year and will change through the next twelve months as we respond to new starters and our children grow.

Keep and eye on Seesaw for the latest on what your child is doing in class. We will also use Seesaw alongside our Blogs to keep you informed as we move through our inquiry topics this term.

Zooming in on plankton

 

Our Inquiry into sea creatures has included exploring the lifecycles of creatures like jellyfish and pāua. Many of these creatures go through a larval stage. During this time, they are plankton. We have also explored how some of the biggest creatures on the planet, baleen whales, feed by collecting tiny plankton.

In fact, it has become clear to us that plankton may be tiny, but it's a pretty important part of our marine environment.

Time to find out more and take a look at some local plankton! Luckily, our Senior students have for a number of years been part of a project called Moana Mana. This has allowed them to build up a wealth of knowledge around observing and monitoring the health of our marine environment. During beach week, and at other regular times throughout the year, they can be found down at Worser Bay Boat Club, working with experts to survey the ocean and the creatures that live there. This has including taking plankton samples to view under microscopes in order to survey the creatures they find.

On Tuesday afternoon, we headed down the track to the beach.

On arrival, our first job was to collect some plankton. This is done by dragging a fine-gauge net through the sea. 

The plankton collects at the bottom of the net.

John showed us how the cap at the bottom of the net is unscrewed and the plankton tipped into a container with a small amount of water. It is usually possible to see some very tiny creatures zipping around in the jar and also some green slimy stuff which is mainly phytoplankton (small algae and plants). Zooplankton is the name for the animal part of plankton, like larvae and fish babies. 

Now, it was time to take our container of plankton back to the boat club classroom for analysis.

We put a few drops of plankton onto some petri dishes, placed them under the microscopes and focussed in. We quickly began to find creatures!

We had a plankton identification guide and some photos on hand to help us to figure out what we were looking at. Crustaceans of various kinds, jellyfish larva, salps and very small jellyfish were all visible. 

We also saw plenty of phytoplankton: the green slime looks pretty under the microscope.

This was a cat's eye under the microscope: not plankton, but pretty interesting to look at, all the same.

Thanks so much to our big buddies in Māhutonga and Matariki for hosting us and sharing your knowledge and giving us a whole new perspective on the ocean near our school.

When we got back to school we looked at some of the pictures of plankton and had a go at sketching the details of the microscopic sea creatures.

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.