Setting The Scene For Learning

We've had a really positive start to the year in Koru 1. It has been wonderful seeing our friends from last year, meeting some new people and being in a new classroom space.

During the first few days of school, we explored what we value most in a classroom. This came in the form of a group activity that had us rank different aspects and behaviours in a classroom by displaying them in a diamond formation. It was interesting seeing and hearing about how we all have different experiences, which have shaped our beliefs.

We also had other activities including circle times and a forum through our Koru 1 Google Classroom to help bring out many of our ideas for our classroom vision. The participation and contribution form everyone was important. Just some of the things they wanted in our vision were:

Jaxon - "We look for learning opportunity’s is one of the things I would like to see on our classroom vision"

Taya - "To feel happy and safe in class"

Jarome - "I would like for everyone to be kind to each other"

Chelsea - "I would like to have an organised class or it will be too messy to learn"

Kate - "We should admit when we are wrong"

Archie - "We should be flexible"

Coby - "I would like us to be peaceful, because in our class it would be nice to have a cool calm and collected class well we are working. It would make a difference to people’s learning"

A few photos of the journey are shown below, along with our completed vision, which we are excited about and will refer to often throughout the year.

Ōtautahi Pizza Project - Part Two

We have just completed our Ōtautahi Pizza website and have entered it in the Grow Waitaha DigiAwards under the website category.

The project has taken us most of the term and we have chipped away at it during our literacy sessions. Everyone has contributed in some way, with some individuals having a huge input.

You can read about the project on the website itself. We are really proud of it!

Click here: www.otautahipizza.weebly.com

Measurement - Understanding Perimeter And Area

Over the past two weeks, those of us working with Mr K for maths have been learning all about finding the perimeter and area of shapes.

Once you understand the basics of what each of these words mean, it might seem quite simple. However, actually calculating perimeter and area requires knowledge of measurement units, how to measure, as well as additive and multiplicative numeracy strategies.

After some focussed workshops in the first couple of sessions around this, the last session was a group assessment project. We sorted ourselves into groups of 3 and the task was to create a video to show our understanding of perimeter and area. There was a one hour time limit.



It was interesting to see how some groups were able to communicate ideas effectively and successfully negotiate group roles. Other groups found this the challenging part, despite actually having a good understanding of the mathematical ideas.

Arona, Quinn and Cole were one of the groups who we all thought were successful. Below is their video, which as you will notice, clearly shows their understanding using a simple playground shape as the subject.

Ka pai boys!

All About Me - Interest Projects

We are well underway with out first IPs of the year. Interest projects, also referred to with students as ‘IPs’, are independent or collaborative group projects that arise out of the structured class inquiries focussed around our core school themes. Interest projects are designed to be student-driven and teacher-guided. 

An interest project requires students to have a plan, keep others updated with our progress, and finally to share our learning to give and receive feedback from our peers.

The focus for this term is an All About Me project that each of us are working on. Mr K and Mrs Harris shared their finished projects with us several weeks ago, and since then we have been using IP workshop times to create our own. Some parts of the project have been really interesting to think about, like the meanings of our names or where our families come from. Here is what we are including...



IP workshop times have been a great chance for us to develop our self management skills, including being able to organise our own materials and setting up spaces for learning.

We will give another update when we are closer to sharing time, including some of our personal reflections.

Hauora Interest Projects - Part 2

This week we have been sharing our recent interest projects. It has been wonderful seeing our peers taking the stage, putting the focus on them and their learning. The main idea behind sharing our interest projects is to celebrate our efforts, identifying highlights, and giving and receiving valuable feedback in order to set new goals for ourselves.



Interest projects can be testing for students. We really need to show that we are developing important skills and attitudes in the areas of organisation and time management, as well as general research abilities. How we use the time that we are allocated in class for these projects, called IP workshops, is one of the areas of evaluation at the end of each interest project cycle. The end products are not the only important thing, the process is also significant.

Here are some student reactions and comments:

Jesse said "Sharing was good. When I saw others doing it, I was not as nervous. I really felt excited and wanted to go up. I feel pretty good about my next interest projects. I learned that I can get up in front of people and not have a big shock. Overall I feel proud of myself".

Quinn said that when sharing he "... Had a good feeling because I knew that others didn't know much about my topic, so I was providing them with personal information. I think next time I would practice my speech a bit more, but overall I think it was pretty good for my IP that I've done at school".

See our individual blogs for our IP evaluations and links to the media many of us created. The evaluation template we each completed is shown below. You can see the particular areas of focus for these projects.

Hauora Interest Projects

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

We are currently in the middle of individual interest projects (IPs) that relate to Hauora (health and wellbeing). This has been a significant focus for us this year and these projects are a chance for us each to dig deeper into a topic of interest within the wider theme. 

The aim of the project is to learn all about something that we know, or have heard, can affect the health and wellbeing of people, then share back our findings with our peers and teachers. One of the main goals here is to create a powerful forum for the students of Koru 1 to educate their peers about how they can improve their own hauora, while developing many of the independent inquiry skills that successful interest projects require. 

Our IPs have 3 rules that we must follow. 



Late last term we completed our plans and displayed them on our classroom walls. During our open evening, we were able to share these with our friends and whānau, getting their feedback and explaining how we would be approaching each of our projects.



This week we are reaching the 'putting it all together' phase, where we are beginning to write up our research findings. Some of us have been using Google Forms for the first time to create our own surveys. Especially as many of our topics of interested within our health and wellbeing theme affect us kids, we think we can get some valuable information from our peers about certain issues.



Next week we will be working on our presentations, which will come in many different forms, and we will be sharing these projects in Week 3. After presenting, we will be spending time reflecting on our projects, identifying our highlights and challenges, and finishing off our IP documentation.

Interest projects are not new for many Bromley students. Madison, who is in Year 6 and has completed 3 IPs before, has some insightful thoughts about them:
"I like interest projects because we get to find out about things we don't know. I get excited finding out new things. The researching is fun. I can get a bit nervous sharing, but once I start, I'm fine. You are really proud of yourself afterwards".

Keep an eye on our Twitter and blog for updates.

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.