He Puna Tārei, Room 5; Year Four

 In He Puna Kōtuitui we are all about teaching and learning together to support one another's learning experience and outcomes.  The concepts of 'teaching' and 'learning' are represented by just one word from the Māori World View, that word is  'Ako'.  We have been discussing this concept and doing teamwork challenges to support our understanding.  Check out some photos of the children teaching each other - and learning from each other - through contexts of physical challenges. Children will be encouraged to take this philosophy and apply it to all areas of the curriculum and all our learning in He Puna Kōtuitui throughout the year.  The children had lots of fun with the 'Pass Water' challenge! Do you think YOU could get the water from one bucket to the other if you are not allowed to move your feet when you have water in your cup?? What about if the buckets are too far apart to form one human chain? "I couldn't do it

We have been unpacking our class name... At Carlton all our classrooms are called 'Puna' A puna is a spring (of water) - we came up with ideas for why we thought our classes were being compared to a 'spring'. These are some of our ideas... "It's about life, bringing life" "Water makes things grow, like we are growing and getting smarter" "The water moves, and changes and it changes things around it and makes them better" Then we thought about why OUR Puna is called 'Kōtuitui' and what THAT might be all about... Kōtuitui is all about interconnectedness. The children are beginning to learn about how words are made and about how some big words begin with a smaller word- this word is called the 'root word'. The root word of interconnectedness is 'connect'.  The children thought about why we would be thinking about connections and connectedness. These are some of their ideas... "