Jack and the Beanstalk

When you read Jack and the Beanstalk, what do you think about? 

Are there any problems with this story? 

What kind of character is Jack? Is he an honest person stealing from the Giant? Did he listen to his mother when she asked him to do a job for her?

There are lots of questions and problems around this story and in Autahi we have been thinking about and unpacking what these are for the last two weeks.

We also changed the story to have a new land above the clouds...

We finished off by creating some beautiful art with ourselves as the main character.

Integrated Curriculum with Teddy Bears

When we talk about having an integrated curriculum we are talking about pulling lots of different strands of the curriculum together under a unified concept.

A great example of that is this weeks Teddy Bear's picnic theme. We are able to pull our reading, writing, maths, arts and others together under the same umbrella. This way we are constantly making connections with all of the learning that is happening around the classroom. We are able to provide a range of provocations and activities that flow seamlessly from one subject area to the next.

Here are some examples of what we have going on around the class this week.

Measuring our toys to graph them from biggest to smallest

Responding to the text Brown bear by writing what our Teddy can see

Using different materials to create new Teddies

The Teddies are a great theme for all of our learning and we have been really engaged in lots of learning and play.

More Maths Fun!

We have been growing our Number Sense by practicing making and breaking apart numbers to get a better idea of those numbers.  This group was working on teen numbers specifically. We sang this song, which we often use as a little warm up.

This got us primed to notice straight away if we had a teen number by seeing if we had a full tens frame or not.

  

Then we used our Teddy Bears' Picnic context and were given some special dice that either added numbers or took them away.  The kids set out figuring out how many teddies would make it to the picnic.  They had to roll dice that only had tens on them and then the special dice that showed if they were adding or subtracting and how much.
They were set with the task of identifying straight away if the number they had were teens or not and explaining to buddies and the group how they knew.  Finally, at the end they worked to write the number sentence. 
  

After each team figured out how many of their teddies would make it to the picnic we talked about which bus had the most teddies and how we knew! Then we even extended our thinking to figure out how many teddies made it to the picnic altogether! There was lots of discussion, counting and comparing.  This group also showed their growth and development in their number sense and ease with which they were working with teen numbers! It was all very exciting!


The next exciting Maths Context we explored was problem solving.  The question was figuring out how much bread you would need to feed a family of ducks over 3 days.  Children worked in buddies and used materials to work out the problems.  They weren't shown a specific way to do it, they just set off working it out.  These low floor, high ceiling tasks allow for multiple strategies to be taught at once and a chance to develop critical thinking and problem solving as well as number sense.  With some, this could be used to begin skip counting in 3's, for others counting on from each set, for others the simple act of 1 to 1 counting.  The hands-on nature is engaging and the kids set out to figure it out! 

Inquiry update: Time to take action!

Taking action

We have come a long way on our journey to being kaitiaki of our local environments. Our capes are ready to go and we have done some great thinking about our own strengths. But now we have to take some action to make our environment a better place by taking some action. We had a good walk around in our school and took notice of all the things that we could do to help. This tied into our literacy for the week where we put our ideas in writing.

I can make more plants for hedgehogs.

I can make a bird house so the cats can't get the birds.

I can recycle so animals don't die and so the plastic doesn't go in the sea.

I can reuse rubbish to make a hut.

One of the key things we noticed was that there was a lot of rubbish around the grounds that animals might mistake for food. One of the actions we decided to take was to spend some time each day looking after the grounds by picking up some of the rubbish and taking photos to show other people what happens when we don't put it in the right place. Here is what we found in just one day!

We have many great ideas and are showing our creativity by building some models of what things might look like. Here is a rat trap designed by some of the awesome Autahi thinkers:

Creating new things and taking action is all part of the inquiry process. We are reflecting on all the things we have learned so far and challenging ourselves to try and make things better than they already are. Through experimenting and building we are using our problem solving skills as well as working together as a team.  

Autahi Architects

Autahi Architects

One of the activities during discovery this week was a bridge building challenge to help some lost animals cross the gap in the table to reach a water hole. The Autahi builders were up to the challenge and displayed lots of teamwork as they constructed their bridges.

Learning to work collaboratively to solve problems is a great skill and a real test of our ability to communicate and listen to each other.

Check out some of our great bridges and the other building projects that have been inspired by this challenge.