Positive Purpose in Autahi

With so many members of our school community involved with the fair this weekend, this seems like a great time to talk about Positive Purpose.

In the Positive Education model, Positive Purpose is defined as 'understanding, believing in and serving something greater than yourself and deliberately engaging in activities for the benefit of others'. Doing good feels good: this is not a new idea. But it is an idea that recent studies have supported over and over again. Taking positive action for others gives our lives meaning and a sense of fulfilment. It promotes our own wellbeing, as well as that of people around us.

In our communities, such as schools and families, we have the opportunity to model and support our children's instincts for altruistic behaviour. We often see how our Autahi children are keen to help each other out with problems or reach out to new children at Rising 5s and include them in a game. Taking actions for our small Autahi community is also part of this, including sharing the load at tidy up time or getting out the picnic mat.

As our children grow, we are keen to encourage them to feel that they can have a powerful role in helping others in their wider community. Our Seniors, for example, are involved with the Mana Moana programme down at the boat club. This on-going project is rooted in custodianship of our local environment and advocacy on its behalf: Positive Purpose in action for the greater good.

With this big picture in mind, it's great to see the Zest and Love with which our Autahi children recently took on the task of baking and making for our Stay and Play. They wanted to welcome our parents and Rising 5s and make a special occasion for them, and they had huge fun doing it.

Autahi are also taking the lead with our school composting programme as Composting Champions, collecting food scraps from each class. They are showing that the smallest people in our school can make positive change.

We look forward to seeing you at the fair, spreading the Positive Purpose love and (hopefully) feeling the personal benefits of contributing to our community.

Autahi's Zones of Regulation

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you caught a case of the giggles and just couldn't stop—even when you knew it was completely the wrong time to be laughing?

Or perhaps you've felt utterly exhausted, lethargic, or simply low in body and spirit?

Maybe you've woken up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle anything that comes your way?

Or surely you've experienced frustration to the point where you just wanted to scream?

Well, your tamariki have certainly felt all of these emotions!

One of our tamariki re-designed our Zones of Regulation poster!

That is why, in Autahi this week, we have been exploring The Zones of Regulation. This comprehensive framework is specifically designed to support tamariki in understanding and managing their emotions, behaviors, and sensory needs. The framework is divided into four distinct zones:

• Green Zone: Happy, calm, focused, and ready to learn

• Yellow Zone: Energetic, excited, silly, annoyed, or worried

• Blue Zone: Tired, unwell, down, or low in energy

• Red Zone: Angry, panicked, terrified, or out of control

As adults, we have had years of experience navigating these emotions and developing a personal toolkit to support us across different zones. For tamariki, however, this journey is just beginning. They are only starting to learn how their emotions affect their body, how their body affects their emotions and what strategies to use when facing lots of these new experiences - like starting school!

These books by Michael Rosen have been a great way to support tamariki in learning about the Zones of Regulation - particularly, knowing how their bodies might react when they are in each zone. 

The most productive learning takes place when tamariki are in their Green Zone. When we feel calm and settled, our minds are ready to absorb new information. Getting into the Green Zone looks different for everyone. For some, doing some simple breathing exercises, like 5 finger breathing, does the trick. For others, maybe settling down with a picture book, or a sketchpad and a pencil helps them to return to the Green Zone. 

We asked our Autahi tamariki if there was a place within the classroom that they like to go to when they need help getting back into their Green Zone. The most popular response was our library corner! So we then decided that if our library corner was a safe and calming space for Autahi, then maybe we could also use it as a check-in space... 

And thus, the Wall of Regulation was born! The idea behind this wall is that tamariki can take their new face/name-tag (the one with a pink dot) and place themselves in the zone that they are feeling. 

We know that some mornings can be tricky! Sometimes our tamariki arrive at school in their Blue or Yellow Zone. Encouraging everyone to place their face in a Zone when they arrive at school helps us notice how everyone is feeling right from the start of the day. From there, we can support them with strategies to get back into their Green Zone, ready for a great day of learning!

We encourage you to chat with your child each morning about how they are feeling and which zone they might be in. If they aren't feeling in the Green Zone, you could try a calming activity together—like reading a story, drawing, or checking in directly with one of their kaiako. A gentle start helps set them up for a successful day!

Tiny Perfect Things: oral language in action

 

Our Inquiry is taking us on a big adventure to explore the tiny wonders of our school garden. This week, we took inspiration from 'Tiny Perfect Things' by M.H. Clark. Dialling up our Strength of Curiosity, we went searching for small wonders, keeping our eyes and minds open to the beauty of everyday objects like leaves, twigs and stones.

We returned to Autahi with quite a haul of 'tiny perfect things', and plenty of excitement about our discoveries.

Everyone had ideas to share so we made a sharing circle. Sometimes when speaking and writing, it is helpful to have a structure and a way to begin. We gave everyone the sentence starter, 'My tiny perfect thing is ...' and took turns showing and telling about our objects.

For us in Autahi, building the oral language our children need to tell others about their thoughts and ideas is vital. We want them to able to express themselves clearly and say what's on their minds. Great oral language is foundational for writing. Skills such as asking and responding to questions, actively listening to others, and using topic-specific vocabulary and important skills across the curriculum.

Our Literacy Curriculum sets out how oral language skills progress over time. For those whose children are receiving a full report this term, you'll see that we reference the skills your child is developing. These might include:

Verbal reasoning

• Ask and answer using question words like who, what, where

• Link actions and outcomes using ‘because’ or ‘so’ 

Presenting to others

• Perform songs, remembering the words and sing in time with the group.

• Use facial expressions, gestures and body language to tell a story.

Listening and responding

• Listen actively by giving full attention to a speaker.

• Take turns, share opinions and ideas, ask thoughtful questions, and respond respectfully. 

Help to support your child's learning in this important area by chatting with them about their inquiry learning or looking out for 'tiny perfect things' when you are out and about together.

Pinchy Pinchy! The importance of a good pencil grip

This term in Autahi, we’re thrilled to welcome seven new tamariki to our learning space—which means seven brand-new authors starting their writing journey!

It’s easy to forget just how challenging learning to write can be for little hands and minds. There are so many skills that have to click together just to form a single word, let alone a whole sentence!

Our curriculum breaks writing down into three main elements: composition, the writing process, and transcription.

We already know that every single child in Autahi has fantastic ideas to share—they often plan their stories out loud by telling us teachers what they want to write. Because their imaginations are already buzzing with ideas, much of our day-to-day focus in Autahi centers on the transcription elements of writing. Right now, that looks like:

• Pencil mechanics: Sitting comfortably, applying the right amount of pressure, and building a functional pencil grip.

The most commonly taught and used pencil grip is the tripod grip.  This is likely the grip that you will use when holding a pen or a pencil. When teaching tamariki, we encourage them to imagine a crabs pincer, and make that shape with their hand. This is where the name 'pinchy' grip has come from!

As you can imagine, developing a solid pencil grip is crucial to forming letters correctly. Therefore, before we even begin to write, it's important to "limber up" and build our hand muscles first!

Just like any muscle, the muscles in our hand that help us with our pencil grip require building and growing. Surprisingly, there are many everyday activities which work on those muscles, and help our tamariki to practice and maintain their 'pinchy' pencil grip. 

Here are just a few examples!

Using tweezers or tongs to pick up small objects is a great way to practice a tripod or 'pinchy' pencil grip and a great way to build the hand muscles!

These tamariki are threading small beads onto bits of string. This activity helps to build up the finger muscles, in particular, the index finger and the thumb muscles! 

You may have noticed that in Autahi, we do our handwriting "old school" on chalk boards. This is for multiple reasons!

Firstly, in order to successfully write with a little piece of chalk, you have to use a tripod grip (a.k.a 'pinchy' grip).

Secondly, the feedback from the chalk against the chalk board teaches tamariki how to use the correct amount of pressure. If they press to lightly, the chalk wont show up, and if they press too hard, then the chalk might snap or crumble! 

Tamariki love stickers! Peeling stickers is not only fun, it is also another great way to help with finger strength and control. 

More at home ideas for building hand and finger muscles:

• Pressing open pegs
• Squeezing a spray bottle 
• Making snakes with playdough
• 
  

Ask your child to show you their 'pinchy' pencil grip at home!

A Zealandia adventure

This week, the Autahi explorers were at Zealandia. It poured with rain, but we zipped up our raincoats and headed out into the ngāhere to see what we could find. Luckily for us, it seemed like the creatures of the bush really like the wet weather. There was so much to see.

'We touched the energy rock.' This special rock is just as you enter the sanctuary. 'We give it our mauri and it gives us some back.'

'We saw the special weasel-proof fence. We tested it with our fingers.' The holes have to be very small because many predators can squeeze through tiny spaces.

'The kererū is my favourite bird.' The kererū had fluffed out their feathers to stay warm, and were hiding from the rain amongst the trees.

'We saw four kererū!' We learnt that they pair up when they are young and stay together for life. 

The tākāhē were sneaking away from us.' We felt very lucky to see them because have just had their bird flu vaccines, so are feeling even more shy than usual.

'The tākāhē were new so they had a new fence to stop them climbing the bank.'

  

'We stood on the fence to try and see the tākāhē again.'

We spotted Pōpokotea (Whiteheads) hopping about in the trees. 

'We saw Tieke in the bush!' And there were lots of them. We could also hear their distinctive calls as they hopped energetically through the branches.

'We saw a gigantic spider!' This is an Orb Spider sitting on its egg sack, which is waiting to hatch out hundreds of tiny spiderlings.

'A stick insect is a rō.' This one likes Tōtara and is a female. You can tell because she's quite large: the males are much smaller and often get mistaken for babies.

It was pretty chilly for Tuatara, but we managed to find a brave one out in the rain. We learnt how to look out for their burrows as they are often close by.

'We saw a shag's nest. Their poo is very smelly because they only eat fish.'

'We found a really big, dead wētā.'

And we also saw tree wētā in bug hotels that were very much alive.

And here's where a kiwi lives. Maybe one day we'll come back for a night safari and try to spot one!

Thank you to our parent helpers who generously gave up their time to help us. And ngā mihi nui to our wonderful guides at Zealandia for leading our expedition and sharing their knowledge with us.

Te Whetū kairangi are stargazers! An out of this world Art Celebration!

 
A star was born! Or should I say, 23 stars were born!

After weeks of learning, crafting, creating, writing, choreographing and rehearsing, Autahi performed their Art Celebration piece over two evenings this week. 

A big experience like the Art celebration requires time to reflect on the highlights, the challenges, and the learning opportunities. Autahi were keen to share their reflections with us!

We finally finished the lanterns!

The Art celebration typically require a terms worth of planning and preperation. Did you know that Autahi began working on their spectacular lanterns about five weeks ago? Some of our Autahian's shared this about their lanterns:

• "Making the lanterns was my highlight!"

• "I enjoyed ripping up the pieces of tissue paper to glue into the lanterns - it was good exercise for my hand muscles!"

• "I loved being able to hold my lantern during the show"

"I am a star so twinkly and bright..."

Getting up and performing in front of a 'Tautoru-full' audience was a new experience for some of Autahi. One person shared that: "at first it was a bit scary having such a big audience, but it was fine in the end". 

The grand finale!

Most of Autahi were in agreeance that their favourite part of the whole experience was the opportunity to dance and sing! Most of you will know by now that this years Autahi cohort are a particularly musical bunch! It's no surprise then to hear...

• "I enjoyed making up the moves ourselves"

• "I enjoyed doing the jumps and twirls"

• "I enjoyed adding the actions to the songs we sang"

• "We had to learn a new song five days! But it was easy"

• "The dancing was my highlight - it was so easy and not scary!"

What a pleasure it was to share this Art Celebration experience with your tamariki. Hold onto these early memories! It’s going to be so special watching how their confidence and creativity grow in future Art Celebrations as they move up through the school.

Meet Gillian!

 

This has been a rough flu season and Annie and Beth have both been sick and out class a bit in the last couple of weeks. While we'd far prefer to be in class with the Autahi children, we know that Autahi is in good hands. We are very fortunate to have had Gillian relieving for us in Autahi while we've been away. Gillian has a long association with Worser Bay School. At one time, she was the Team Lead in Autahi, before taking a break to raise her two children. Many of the routines and rituals of our classroom originate with Gillian (think daily Calendar Maths, for one). 

Gillian loves the outdoors, children’s literature, positive psychology, creating, developing a growth mindset, seizing opportunities and pushing herself to try new things.

She brings outstanding skills in the Positive Education and social coaching space. She is focussed on building positive relationships with children, getting to know them well as individuals. She has a keen eye for noticing children's strengths and a knack for making learning accessible and fun for all.  As both a former New Entrant teacher and a mum of young kids, she has a clear understanding of where our children have come from - and where they're heading with their learning and development.

We are so fortunate to have Gillian bring her many strengths to our Autahi team.