Planting the seeds of inquiry learning

To start our term in Autahi we have been learning about plants as Spring is a great time to start planting. This week on the blog we will walk you through part of our Inquiry process and show how we encourage learners to use their knowledge to support their learning about the world around them.

We often try to start from a place of knowledge when seeing where an inquiry might take us. Children have experiences and learning that helps to inform them about how the world works. This helps us to see what knowledge our learners are bringing with them so that we can build upon that foundation. Here is an example of what we already knew about the different parts of a plant.

Then we did an activity to build up some of the vocabulary around the names of some of the different parts of a plant. This will prove useful in upcoming activities as we progress our learning.

  

Next we planned out the steps we would need to take in order to start planting some plants of our own. First we used pictures and oral language to share our plans and then used that in our Writing session as the basis of our story for the day.

The final step this week was to get out and plant the seeds. The weather was beautiful outside and was perfect for putting our ideas into action. Check us out!

Throughout this process we have been recording questions that have come from our Autahi learners that will help drive the next learning experience in this inquiry. During the initial knowledge building phase there was some debate around whether all plants actually had roots. 

Exploring their own questions helps keep the inquiry child led and lets us focus on finding ways to find out. 

We are so excited to have our hands in the dirt and will be diligently watering our plants so that they can grow big enough for us to find out if they all will have roots.

Gearing up for a big show

 

Over the course of this year Autahi have been exploring stories. In particular we have been exploring fairy tales and our own local myths and legends. You can check out one of our Blogs from earlier this year to see how we have used these stories throughout the curriculum.

When it came time to decide which direction we would go for this years Art's celebration the path was simple. The stories that we had been exploring would provide the perfect backdrop for learning about the performing arts.

The NZ curriculum has Art split into 4 categories: Visual art, Music, Drama and Dance. At Worser Bay School we have an annual Arts Celebration that switches focus between performing arts and visual art. This year it is the performing arts that are on show.

Our focus this year has been on exploring drama through the characters we find in the stories we have been reading. Fairy tales provide lots of rich characters from Big Bad Wolves to kindly Grandmothers for us to embody.

Rocket Words 2022

One of the core parts of our week in Autahi revolves around learning our Rocket Words. But what are Rocket Words and why is it important to practise them?

Rocket Words are lists of words that are used frequently in what we read and write. They are the building blocks of the english language. Our lists of Rocket Words are closely tied to the level of books that we are reading in the classroom. 

You might notice that when reading, your child might stop and say "I know this word, it's a Rocket Word!"

We practise these words often before starting a new story and highlight the words that they might need to know to support their reading. 

By practising these words every day we help to build the automatic recall of the words. We begin to see them recognising the entire word as a chunk and quickly reading it without thinking. This reduces the cognitive load (brainpower) that they will need to use when they are sounding out unknown words.

How do we learn Rocket Words:

Here is a fabulous link to another Autahi Blog post where we explore some of the ways our Autahi whanau have been learning Rocket Words at home.

Top tips for learning Rocket Words

There is no one size fits all way and the best advise is to do what works for you and your child. You might love to make Rocket word cards and flip through them quickly every day at breakfast. Or you might find ways of writing them in different places around the house or garden. 

Our Arts inquiry: connecting and creating

With our Arts Celebration coming up in week 10, this is an exciting time in Autahi. We are connecting some different threads of our Inquiry learning and beginning to create!

You might already be familiar with our Inquiry Model.

Children in Autahi are big on Curiosity, and we encourage them to explore their world through many mini experiments and inquiries. Some of these mini inquiries are passion projects for just one or two students. We also try to find some larger topics that we can explore as a class. Fairy tales has been this kind of inquiry topic for us this year: all of our students bring some knowledge of tradition tales, and we've been able to use drama, art and philosophy to deepen their understanding. 

This term, we have also begun to explore pattern and dynamics in music. The concept of repeating patterns comes through our maths curriculum, and we've added some art into the mix.

Repeated patterns are also an important concept in music. We've explored how we can create sound patterns and also how to capture our compositions visually, by using colours. 

To create our Arts Celebration performance, we are moving into the 'sorting and creating' part of the inquiry cycle: using what we know to take action, creating something of our own.

We've been exploring the art of performance, including how, as musicians, we are in control of our voices and instruments. We can collaborate as a group to make different kinds of sounds, at different volumes, and it sounds great when we work together as a team. Having a conductor helps, and it's a lot of fun taking control of the Autahi orchestra!

For the Arts Celebration, we're working towards some compositions based on the fairytales we know best: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We've picked out some of the highlights of these stories and are writing some music for them that communicates what action is taking place. For example, how does the Giant sound? What about Red Riding Hood skipping through the forest? What kind of voice did Jack's mother use when he told her he'd sold the cow for handful of beans? (Clue: not a whisper voice!)

We've been working on this with instruments and also with other kinds of sound-makers (including our hands and voices).

We're also thinking about recording our ideas. How can we capture them in a visual way so that we can perform our compositions again and again? In this example, different colours indicate different dynamics: pink is a whisper, yellow is medium and red is loud. Blue is silence - also important to add impact to our performance.

Hopefully, this Blog gives a little taste of all the deeper learning that lies behind the performance we'll share with you at the Arts Celebration. We're looking forward to sharing our finished composition with you.

Gratitude comics

 We have been exploring the strength of Gratitude with our friends next door in Tautoru and developing them into a Gratitude comic. These comics aren't completed yet but they show the ways we might share gratitude with those around us. Check out our start and maybe you'll see some more from us in the next issue of Te Wheke...

Gratitude is one of the strengths we teach as part of our Positive Education programme at Worser Bay School.

We explore all of the character strengths throughout the year to support learners in identifying their own strengths and how they can use them as tools for their learning.

Exploring character strengths through different mediums allows all learners to express their understanding and practise using them.

Our 100 day Celebration

 100 Days of School

This week in Autahi we celebrated 100 days of learning at Worser Bay School. Part of our daily routine is called Calendar Maths and it involves learning days of the week, months and counting how many days we have been at school. For many of our learners 100 days seems like a very long time and we could reflect on just how far they have come in that time.

Our classroom transformed with some balloons and decorations, the look on some of the children's faces was truly amazing as they wondered at the brand new look.

With many 100 themed activities to explore, the children got to dive deep into the idea of 100. One of our favourite activities is baking and we all had a turn at helping to bake some celebratory cupcakes to share.

We are looking forward to our next 100 days at school and seeing what new adventures in learning we can achieve.

Matariki Celebrations

 Nau mai Matariki, nau mai Puanga, nau mai te tau hou Māori - We welcome Matariki, we welcome Puanga and the Māori New Year.

 

Matariki / Puanga is a time for learning and storytelling and an occasion for people to come together and celebrate what has been achieved in the past year. A time for whānau being together, celebrating a new year where everyone can flourish and remembering friends and whānau we have lost over the past wee while. 

We met on the beach to see the stars and say karakia together.