We are storytellers: gearing up for our Haerenga

In Autahi, we are all about stories. We love to hear them and we love to tell them. Our students are still in the early stages of learning to read, meaning that you could argue that we have an oral storytelling culture in Autahi. Stories are such a powerful way to pass on knowledge and build understanding, so it's no accident that oral storytelling has long been foundational in cultures all over the world.

Later this term, we'll be setting out on our Haerenga and we hope you'll join us. We've titled it 'Titiro whakamuri, Kōkiri whakamua': it's a journey around our place to learn about our past to move forward to the future (check the Newsletter for details). Beginning up at the school, we'll make a short hīkoi to explore some of our local stories. 

In Autahi, we're focussing on the story of Tara, the remarkable person who made the first permanent settlement in Wellington. This allows us to dig into some exciting themes from the Social Sciences curriculum. It's a story that shows us how things change over time, how humans relate to and rely on their environment, how the first people discovered and settled Aotearoa. 

To whet your appetite, here's some visual storytelling from Autahi. Based on our learning, we have made two panels. One showing our place now, and one showing how our place here at Te Whetūkairangi was after Tara chose it as his pā. Pop by to Autahi to see them on our wall and we'll tell you all about what we've discovered so far.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with Music and Emotions!

This week, we were incredibly lucky to be a part of an online workshop with Chris from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Joined by violinist, Liz and flautist, Johanna, we explored a world of sound and emotion, even creating our own music using body percussion! 

Through the story of 'Murfitt the Mouse', we practised matching our facial expressions and movements to the 'happy,' 'sad,' and 'angry' tones of the instruments. Inspired by Murfitt’s journey, we got busy writing our own stories about him!

We encourage you to listen to some music at home with your tamaiti and talk about the emotions it stirs up!

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!