LAST DAY OF TERM!

When the students arrived at school this morning, on the table in the middle of the Whanau Space was a MOUNTAIN of board games! Today's morning blocks were devoted to playing these games... 

We hear you say, where's the learning in that? ... Well, let us show you!

As it turns out, games can teach A LOT of different skills. Students were reading rulebooks to experience new games, negotiating with others, communicating ideas, developing strategies, solving logic puzzles, working with probabilities, resolving conflict, collaborating to succeed as a team, and working with different students. 

The teachers were all really impressed with the focus and engagement of all of the students today, especially considering it was the last day of term!   

But it didn't feel like the last day, it felt like the first day of our next inquiry, which will be centred around Game Design. 

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from today was that our students really enjoyed playing games together; face to face with their peers, and creating a shared experience. 

Over the holidays, we have encouraged the students to spend some time playing board games with you and your family. This could be an opportunity to teach your children how to play your favourite games from childhood. We hope you have as much fun as we did!!

Happy Holidays from Everyone in Team Awesome!

Exhibition week!!

This week has been our Ko Wai Au Exhibition week and the culmination of all the hard work that students have put in this term. They have worked diligently to extensively plan, prototype, give and receive feedback in order to make changes to their work and finally to create their finished pieces. Throughout this process they have developed skills in independence and self management, with many reflecting that effective time management is a next step for them. Below is a photo of some examples of student work which was completed during each stage throughout the term.

A lot of heart and soul went into these exhibition pieces and we are all very proud of the work the students have produced! Below are some examples of finished products.

Our final activity this week was to review each others exhibitions, give feedback and while we were at it we were able to learn more about each other too... which was one of the main aims of our unit! It is amazing to see how much the students have learnt about each other and how much they have bonded as a team throughout this process.

We are looking forward to more exciting learning taking place next term and to students continuing to develop the skills they have learnt throughout this term.

To the parents of Team Awesome, thank you for your on-going support. Without you, none of this would be possible!

We hope you have a wonderful holiday and look forward to seeing you for an action packed Term 2.
Kind regards,
Teachers of Team Awesome

Still Getting Ready

Getting ready

Students are busy creating their exhibition pieces ready for next week. There is much concentration  as time is running out ....

24/2/16 Prototyping and Process

Team Awesome truly lived up to it’s name today as we continued to work on our exhibition pieces and attend skills clinics that focused on our specific mediums. Miss O’Malley gave us a tour of all of the cool ways you can make a presentation online, Mr Johnston had students creating storyboards and short stop-motion animations, Miss Morris worked with our comic artists, teaching them some pro-tips & Ms Hart provided help to those who were still settling on an idea. There was a fantastic vibe in our block, as we all embarked on our personalised learning journeys. As teachers, we can’t wait to see what we all produce for the exhibition night! Have a fantastic Easter break and we will see you again on Wednesday!

Ko Wai Au- Maths link

In Team Awesome, we are linking our maths with our Ko Wai Au unit. Today we were given a list of maths skills and strategies, our challenge was to sort these skills into the different mediums that we are working on for our Ko Wai Au projects. It was challenging to find the links, but when we thought outside the square, we were able to see that there are HEAPS of ways in which maths fits into our unit. Over the next two weeks, we will be checking in to geometry and measurement clinics that relate directly to our projects.

22/3/16 DPE Ideation Day

Today, Team Awesome spent some more time with our fantastics DPE team. Our focus today was around Ideation: the process of coming up with ideas and making them stick. We practiced generating ideas, building connections between them and refining our best suggestions into a rough prototype of our idea. Today’s prompt was to think about relationships between objects. Students were given a set of random objects (pegs, cups, leaves, etc) and then brainstormed ways to connect the objects, and created interesting prototypes that demonstrated their thinking. We are all looking forward to working with DPE again in the future, especially as we settle into the rest of the year.  

                     

                                                   

18/3/16 Team Awesome Assembly

Today, Team Awesome led the school assembly and shared some of our fantastic learning. Here our some of our highlights:

Our presenting pairs, Finn & Ryan, and Ana & Stephanie, stepped up and shared in front of the whole school.

Lyle, Laura & Livia shared our inquiry into the Seven Survival Skills that all learners should have. You can view whole presentation by following this link.

Will & Ralph created a learner’s recap of our Ko Wai Au? inquiry and shared our plans for creating an exhibition of our stories.

Maths- Problem Solving!

For maths, Team Awesome are learning how to solve mathematical problems effectively by working as a group. Today students were posed a number of different problems to solve using the following guidelines to support their group work.

Maths Inquiry Group Guidelines

We make sure that we discuss things as a whanau. We listen carefully and actively to each other.

This means we:

- We ask everyone to take a turn at explaining their thinking first

- We think about what other questions we need to ask to understand what they are explaining

- We ask questions politely as someone is explaining their thinking; we wait until they have completed their full explanation

- We ask for reasons why. We use “what” and “why” questions

- We make sure that we are prepared to change our minds

- We think carefully about what they have explained before we speak or question

- We respect other peoples ideas and come to an agreement together

- We expect challenges and enjoy explaining mathematically why we might agree or disagree.

- We make sure we “Maths argue” by using “I think...because….but why…..” or we use “If you say that then…”

Ko Wai Au- Ideation Activity

After our Exhibition Extravaganza trip last week, Team Awesome have been thinking about the different ways in which we might like to exhibit our own stories (our exhibition will be held in Week 11. There will be more info for parents as the term goes on!). To help us further develop our ideas we took part in an Ideation activity on Tuesday afternoon. 

We had to think of 10 different important moments from our lives and list them in our books. Around the room there were many different mediums and ways of telling stories displayed on little bits of paper (there are some examples below). Mr Johnston played music and we moved around the room. When the music stopped we stood near one of the bits of paper and teamed up with a new partner. We then had to describe how we would tell one of our 10 stories using that particular way of story telling. 

The purpose of this activity was to think creatively and bounce ideas off each other so that we could add depth to our own ideas. It was a super fun activity! Our next step is to plan our ideas even further and design a pitch for our exhibition piece. We are getting excited about beginning to prototype our pieces!

Literacy- 'Moment in Time' writing and Effective Feedback

In literacy, we have been writing 'Moment in Time' pieces, firstly about our walk in the chasm and now about a moment from our own lives. We are focused on using descriptive language, subtle senses, sneaky 5 w's and a hot hook in. 

Alongside this, we have also been learning how to give effective feedback. First, we looked at examples of feedback and analysed the structure and content of the different examples, making comments about why it was effective. Next we started using what we had seen to give and receive effective feedback on our writing.

Examples of our feedback analysis.

Working as a group to give effective feedback.

Planning our 'Moment in Time' pieces of writing. 

Levels of Independence

At Raroa and in Team Awesome, we strive to be independent and self-reflective learners. On Monday we were shown the Team Awesome 'Levels of Independence'. We were set the task of looking at each of the levels and making connections between them. We noticed that as the levels progress, the expectations become more challenging. 

We all start at level one, and throughout the year we will be working our way up the levels. We were asked to look at different ways in which we can provide evidence of which level we are at. Our next step is to use these levels to support us in setting our ASPIRE goals and to provide evidence of how we are working within these levels.

The Levels of Independence is a working document and changes to the levels may be made as the year goes on, depending on the needs we see within the team. 

Here we are breaking down each of the levels and making connections between them. 

An example of our work once we were finished breaking it down. 

Maths!

Students in team awesome have been continuing to explore geometry and measurement through practical applications. We have been really impressed with the ways we have seen students collaborate to find information and solve problems.

Logos students created using reflective symmetry:

Team Awesome Trip!

Today we visited three different museums to explore different stories about New Zealand and how they are told. From miniature dioramas to life-size models and props, the great War Museum at Pukeahu offered us the chance to see how modern techniques can tell older stories. The layout of their exhibit also provided us with a lot to think about for when we create our own exhibition. Our next stop, Te Papa, provided us with a chance to see an un-guided exhibit. Students found stories that were relevant to their family history, and engaged with the material in interesting ways. We saw text, film, pictures, artefacts and much more. We also visited Nga Taonga, the National Film archive, which presented us with a range of clips around the theme of New Zealand Identity. This provided us with a chance to sit down and rest for a while, as we took in the different clips and identified the techniques they were using to tell (and sometimes ‘sell’) us their story. Overall, it was a very productive trip which has given us a lot of exciting ideas to work with as we look to create our own exhibit!

A special thanks to our wonderful parent helpers for coming along :)

Ko Wai Au? Timeline

Our team is continuing to explore our stories. Today students began a personal timeline identifying important moments in their lives. Some important moments included, being named, when their siblings were born, first family holiday and first pet. They recorded questions for further research and will be asking friends and family about these for home learning this week. Thinking about their personal story will assist them when looking at exhibitions and other's stories at our team trip on Thursday.

7 Survival Skills for 21st Century Learners

Today students were introduced to the 7 Survival Skills for 21st Century Learners, a set of skills that are central to our curriculum at Raroa. Click the link to find out more about these skills.

7 Survival Skills

- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
- Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
- Curiosity and Imagination
- Agility and Adaptability
- Initiative and Entrepreneurship
- Effective Oral and Written Communication
- Accessing and Analysing Information

Students discussed and unpacked the skills by answering the questions; What is it in kid speak? What does this look like in the real world? Why is it important? What is the definition of this skill?

Lots of groups found getting their head around these skills challenging but we were impressed with their persistence and ability to communicate an understanding of the skills they worked on. By the end of the term we will be experts!

Chasm Walk Video

(Click this link to watch it with sound!)

https://drive.google.com/a/raroa.school.nz/file/d/0B3CmqOAO7odZQ0t3MDlkTEpnR0k/view?usp=sharing