How Well Do We Manage Our Time?

This morning Mr K's literacy groups worked out that we have about 1200 hours of school each year. It sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But we wonder how well we use this time.

We wrote about how we feel we having be doing with time management. This involved placing ourselves on a continuum, then explaining why we put ourselves there. When sharing, we praised those who were able to give evidence and explain specific times when they have or have not been managing their time well. This was a very reflective task.

In Koru 1, we have a lot of systems in place that help to encourage us in this area. These include having our own weekly planners, classroom jobs, regular routines like personal reading, and a number of independent learning tasks we need to manage our time and resource to complete each week.

We will continue our discussions and reflect on time management as the year progresses. It is an important skill to master and we certainly want to make the most of our learning time at school.

Discovering Our Character Strengths

On Wednesday Koru 1 learned about character strengths. Character strengths are positive parts of our personalities that impact how we think, feel and behave. If we know what our main strengths are we can “flex our strengths muscles” and be the best version of ourselves.

First we had a discussion about what character strengths are and what strengths we might have. We talked with our friends and spotted strengths that they have too. Then Mrs Harris displayed a character strength and what it means on the TV. If we thought YES this is definitely like me we wrote it down. Eventually we all had a list of our strengths.

Next it was time to narrow down our list. Most of us came up with three or four main character strengths. Then we did some more research on these and added key words to a brain storm. Some of us used the character strengths cards to find the māori word for our strengths.

We used the online tool worditout to generate a word cloud. We could customise this to our preferences and make it look unique to us. Use took the word cloud and added it to a slide of us with a speech bubble. These are displayed in Koru 1 for you to see on open evening in week 10.

Where to next? What does it mean for us now that we know what our main character strengths are? How can we “flex our strengths muscles?”

I understand myself a bit better now – Zeke

Kind of like Zeke, I know myself a bit better now and now that I know some of my strengths I will be able to use them more – Arona

I feel brightened and excited – Lakiesha

Now I know more of my character strengths I’m going to discover who I am more and find new ones – Caleb.

Now that I have learned about myself a little better with my strengths I can trust them and hopefully they assist me in the future, hopefully they will do good into my future – Mana.

We could improve them - Levi

Experiment with our strengths and see which one is the most popular in our class – Zeke

Maybe we could do a survey to see - Jaycee

One of mine is creativity. I was thinking I could create something to do with it - Yossi

Experiment with our strengths and make a system out of it. Maybe that will boost the education system in the school and help all the classes. We could help the juniors with their strengths like junior mentors. Or maybe a lunch time club – Mana.

Make an iMovie about them – Levi

What do you think your character strengths are?

Data Analysis And The Football World Cup

We have some avid football fans in Koru 1, evident in the large number of students we have getting stuck in to some very energetic, passionate football games at break times. It only seemed fitting to connect some of the learning in our classroom with the excitement in Koru 1 and around the world currently with the Football World Cup taking place in Russia.

Last week some students working with Mr K began a number of maths related challenges based around football. We have done a lot of learning this year around statistics, specifically conducting statistical investigations that have included posing questions, collecting and analysing data, and presenting information in clear and easy to interpret ways.

To push this a little further, students involved in the World Cup challenges have been learning more about data analysis, involving understanding what the mean, median, mode and range of a data set is, and how these can be calculated. We initially learned how to do this by using the example of a group of us and our ages. We were then using squad information from international football teams - including age, caps and number of goals from each player.



It has been great to see students like Wyatt so pumped up and engaged in this, to the point where he has been doing his own statistical research into other teams besides those given.

Check out some of our individual blogs for more personalised learning reports.

We Have Moved Learning Spaces

We are now in our new classroom space. Well, it will be ours for while. Our old Koru 1 block is being redeveloped and is likely to be ready for us to return to later this year.

Everyone in Koru 1 was very helpful, participating and contributing to the team effort to move all of our furniture, displays and belongings to the new space. Things are running very smoothly and we are finding enjoyment and challenge in exploring how we can use our new spaces differently than before. We certainly have more options available to us now and want to make the most of these.




Here is a personal post from Caleb B's blog:




We are looking forward to showing our parents and whānau around in Week 10 during our mid year reporting round. It will be interesting to hear what they think too!

Getting to Know Ourselves Better

On Wednesday Koru 1 enjoyed another project based learning day. Mr K took half of the class for a statistical investigation, involving the physical world and Mrs Harris took the other half on a journey to stronger self awareness in regards to our surroundings and our preferred learning environments.

First the children with Mrs Harris took part in a kōrero by participating in a human continuum. Mrs Harris said some statements to get us thinking. Here are some of them:

I would rather read instructions than listen to the teacher explain them. I like to get up and move around throughout the day. I like drawing lots of pictures whenever I get the chance. I remember things better if I write them down. I like a peaceful learning environment. I prefer to set up a work space on the floor.

If we agreed with the statement we would walk down towards the end of the room with the yes sign pinned on the wall and if we disagreed we would walk down the other end. Some of us ended up somewhere in between for certain statements. We shared our opinions and listened to what other people had to say.



After we got our brains thinking during the human continuum we wrote a list of all the things we need to shine as learners. We took this list and used the ipads to make our own google slide titled "I Learn Best When..." This made us to think about what we need as a learner, so that school is a positive, successful experience. Some of us like sitting at tables, while others enjoy setting up on the floor. Some of us need to write things down while others need to take pictures or draw more. We are all unique and it's important that we respect each others' differences.

For the second half of the day we explored our favourite places. We drew sketches of our favourite place at school and outside of school. We shared with the group why we like these places and how they make us feel. We talked about spending time in these places to improve our hauora (wellbeing). We also learned that when we feel like we need a positivity boost we can close our eyes and picture these places in our mind. This gave us many positive emotions such as excitement, happiness, peace, love, connection, bravery, warmth and gratitude. We wrote these fantastic words on a piece of paper because it felt wonderful! We discussed our favourite spaces in the classroom and how spending our learning time in these spaces make us feel safe and focused.



The key ideas we need to take away from today are;

- To be successful learners we need to know what's right for us.
- Thinking about our favourite places can evoke positive emotions.
- Everyone's needs are different and we respect that.
- Getting to know our learning needs better will help us make wiser choices in the classroom.

How Important Is It For Us To Understand Our Habits?

Olivier Fahrni


How much do you know about the effects of your daily habits?

Do you have a lot of good habits that lead to positive outcomes for yourself and others, both in the short and in the long term? On the other hand, do you have bad habits that might be doing the opposite?

In Koru 1 we have been exploring how creating positive habits can put us in control of shaping the lives we want to live. This has required a lot of self-reflection and the ability to actively notice the habits we have, while exploring all of the outcomes of these.

We have looked into areas like:
- How habits can help us reduce stress
- How habits can help us to be healthy
- How habits can help us to be productive

Dance is Geometry

On Wednesday, Koru 1 had a project based learning day. Children learning with Mrs Harris explored geometry through dance and children learning with Mr K explored the effects of music.

First Mrs Harris played us an amazing video that showed us how we can use our bodies to create shapes and patterns. We discovered that we would be creating our own dance sequence that day.

To begin we needed to revisit what we know about geometric patterns. We completed two art based activities so that we could demonstrate our understanding of reflection and rotation.

Exploring The Effects Of Music

Yesterday we had an interesting day where all of the children in Koru 1 were involved in an integrated project day. Those with Mrs Harris were exploring geometry through dance, while Mr K's group were exploring the effects of music.

At the beginning of the day with Mr K, he explained the following values and key competency focus areas for us to think about, as we would be reflecting on these later on.

Showing We Care

On Tuesday afternoon we were looking forward to going to Duffy Theatre at the Bromley Community Centre. Unfortunately, due to rain this was cancelled. Prior to this we discussed and planned how we will show we care during our walk to the community centre and throughout the performance. On Wednesday we would be given time to blog and show evidence of what we did. Here's what we came up with:

Mrs Harris, Mr K and Mrs Nooapii needed to come up with a plan b. So on Wednesday morning we had a paper plane flying competition instead. We needed to come up with a new criteria to show we care so that we could give clear evidence in our writing. This is what we came up with:

It was a fun experience and we were all able to reflect on how we showed the school value, caring. Check out our personal learning blogs to read more.