IL Journey

Term Two Concept: Creativity

Inquiry for Term 2

Our Inquiry for Term 2 is based around our Central Idea-

Creativity is the way in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs and values.

Our concept

This term the whole school concept is Creativity.  The key understanding that we would expect the students to gain is that, ‘Original ideas have value’.  We will be exploring this concept through music dance and drama with our context being “Forces that shape our earth”. This includes exploring plate tectonics and the creation of physical features in Aotearoa and the impact of recent earth movements in the South Island, in particular the 7.8 earthquake in Kaikoura. We will be linking this to the humanitarian responses from different communities and the creative problem solving that took place during and after this disaster.

TERM ONE CONCEPT:
Our concept this term is 

"Whanaungatanga - we are all connected"

From this concept we have been working on understanding our central idea that 

Learning is an active connected experience. People connect to learning in different ways and we learn from different sources. When people share their learning, people learn more.

In Room 25 and 26 we have started our inquiries based around creating an instructional tool that will cater for all types of learners; audio, visual and tactile. They began by deciding what sort of subject they wanted to investigate and created questions that would help drive their inquiries. They are currently in research mode, busy collecting information.

 "We have been inquiring about how to teach new entrants and Year 1 students how to tie their show laces. We have found out from them that they prefer a slow step by step video with a song to help them remember the steps. We have also learned the importance of feedback from our audience as they described our first song as "weird". We are now researching the types of songs that they will connect with."

 "We are learning how to make an electrical circuit for our learning tool. We want to create a learning tool to for younger students to learn their number bonds to ten as we have found out that this knowledge can help them use different strategies in Maths later on. We have enjoyed it so far because we get to work with our friends, experiment with ideas, try new things, make prototypes and constantly ask questions"

"What about this?""But, what about this?"

Stay with us to hear from other groups who are taking risks with their learning and  adventuring into the unknown!

To be continued ....

Josh and Blake's Group

Our main idea is how to make campfire cones and provide a learning resource for the  Year 5's next year on camp. We need waffle cones, so we are going to make the waffle cones ourselves and we have found out how to do this on a camp fire.

Now we need to find out the following:

How to make a camp fire to cook on.

how to set up the fire

how to light the fire

 how to keep it going

how to be safe around a fire

Finally what equipment do we need to make the waffle cone.

 "Hey guys, did you know that we could make our own waffle cones!"

Alex; "I am finding the safety tips we need to think about when cooking on an open fire. I am really looking forward to doing it on camp and presenting our ideas. Mrs Strickett and Mrs Hannan are looking forward to eating them."

Maths Communities

Maths Communities

Room 25 and Room 26 are now into our fifth week of Maths Communities. The first thing we needed to establish was that as a community, who are we for each other? What are the expectations of our community? So we displayed our expectations on the wall and set about learning what this might look like in our Maths Community.

We have been inquiring into what good mathematicians do.

Through our inquiry we have learned how to share our strategies, understand other strategies and use different strategies. This has been achieved by asking good maths questions, actively listening and participating in "friendly argue". By sharing our strategies we explain and justify our thinking. 

" We are connected as learners because we learn from one another."

 "I now know how to ask someone to explain how their strategy worked."

Organisation
The groups meet twice a week. The approach during these 1 hour sessions is to use the nature of inquiry. Word problems are designed to encourage students to use a variety of mathematical strategies. They have opportunities for individual, pair and group time to develop and share their strategies. These sessions are working really well now that we all know the routine and expectations around them.

Shared thoughts from the 25/26 maths communities

"I love maths."

"It's fun, it's different and we get to solve a problem and then to share it."

"I Like doing the problems because they are fun and I like working in small groups."

"You get hard problems and I like hard problems. It makes me go home and ask my dad for other ways."

"Fun you get to work with people from other classes."

"Maths communities are fun. You learn new strategies from other people and share it!"