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.